Downbeat | Electronica | Leftfield Vinyl 287 Items

The new edition of Late Night Tales journeys to Scandinavia to invite Norwegian duo Röyksopp to delve through their record collection.

180g vinyl / white pink colored

Through the course of time, DSR Lines (David Edren) never loses his intimate and profound connection to the universe of modular synths. These recordings made during 2014 in a residence at the Cem/Worm studio in Rotterdam, represent a further magical compendium of his Organic Electronic Music. In particular, here he draws from his expressive arsenal the cosmic and galactic potential of the Arp 2500, which happily floating throughout. A rigorous magician of vaporous, oscillating patterns, sidereal frequencies, nebulous dust; an explorer of inter-zonal paths, he unveils new dreamlike dimensions en route to unfold planets. Between Kraut-Kosmische accelerations and a personal approach of gentle minimalism, he always forges rare atmospheres of rhythmic pulsation, full of enveloping, spherical and spiralling sounds, luminous and radiant in their hypnotic aura, or magnificently ecstatic and ascending. Originally released by Ultra Eczema.

Itʼs been five years since the last Belong long player, as the duo works slowly to organize their sound works. Both the time invested, and the wait, have been well rewarded with this return. Common Era shows extraordinary progression from that first album of dense, scorched earth instrumentals, hints of a new direction having been revealed on the Colorless Record EP from 2008 which contained covers of four should-have-been classics from the original psychedelic era. The new material has such common pop elements as “songs”, vocals and drum machines, but the results could hardly be called conventional and are like little else happening on the current “scene”. The songs themselves are akin to radio transmissions received from another time and place, just as likely to be the future as the past, or even from a contemporary alternate universe. They are both passionate and dispassionate, grey yet technicolor, ghostly and palpable, distant yet immediate, grainy and focused. Upon listening these conceptual contradictions are dismissed with ease, as the recordings reveal that they fit all of these descriptors simultaneously, an extraordinary balancing act.

LP includes download card!

For the past ten years, all roads Shepherd has followed have been slowly leading to Elaenia - an album with roots deep in his formative years, and one that draws upon everything Shepherd has done so far. An album that provides context to the music that Shepherd has been making to date. Every DJ set he’s performed, every talent he has produced, every composition he has written are thought of as precursors to Elaenia - a dazzling score which puts Shepherd in the spotlight as a composer who has produced an album that bridges the gap between his rapturous dance music and formative classical roots. Drawing inspiration from classical, jazz, electronic music, soul and even Brazilian popular music, Elaenia - named after the bird of the same name - is the epitome of the forward-thinking Floating Points vision in 2015.

"We are excited to reissue Kuedo's classic 2011 album 'Severant' on double vinyl for the first time, and with a bonus track 'Work, Live &
Sleep In Collapsing Space'. The cover artwork has been redesigned by Raf Rennie (Who also designed Kuedo's recent album on
Brainfeeder, Infinite Window). In terms of feeling, ‘Severant’ explores the space between the detached world of the imagination and the
real-time world; that feeling of coming out of a daydream, on the edge of the drift from the day-to-day grind. Jamie says of this moment
”As reality shapes imagination and escapism affects your choices in the real world, there is a strange relational loop between the two
and the space in between the two. There’s a bitter sweetness in that gap, it has a certain emotive quality, kind of in between being and
non-being”. Again, musically ‘Severant’ is inspired by related themes. It sounds as if it’s in a sweet spot between the emotive, innately
futurist synth soundtracks of Tangerine Dream and Vangelis, borne from a time when the very idea of futurism was more prevalent, in
combination with musical ideas and inspiration from the emotionally ambivalent, materialist fantasies of ‘coke rap‘ such as The Clipse.
Rhythmically the record is influenced by what Jamie calls ”the two ultra modern musics of modern times”, footwork from Chicago, which
Planet Mu has explored in depth on its recent releases, and again the drum machine grids of coke rap. Jamie says ”I wanted to capture
a really futurist sentiment, kind of melancholy and grand luminescent, so I used the instrument that most evokes that for me - that
sweeping Vangelis brass sound.” And on coke rap he talks about the emotional ‘half being’ of the music, the energetically charged,
detached ambivalence of the MCs, and the admission that the MCs could be ”fantasising without admitting to doing so.”

Still in a zone of its own, ‘The Neurobiology of Moral Decision Making’ is the result of Mark Fell’s trip to Budapest in 2014, where he and his acolyte, Gábor Lázár practically unravelled the vernacular of contemporary computer and club musics and re-stitched them into brilliantly new & devious designs. Decimating elements familiar to 2-step, footwork, electro, flashcore and f*ck knows, they arrived at a mutual conclusion of sleekly turbulent minimalism in 10 jawdropping permutations that dance in the integers of rave music. In the process they effectively re-programmed limbic and motor systems in-the-moment with a wickedly diffractive sense of rhythmic anticipation and shockingly crisp sound for a pinnacle of modern experimental dance music. With benefit of hindsight, we can now hear this album as a watershed moment for both artists, and this style of production. Since its release, Mark has notably moved away from the sound to work with acoustic instrumentalists, while Gábor has firmly picked up the baton and run with it on the likes of 2018’s ‘Unfold’ album, and more recently ‘Boundary Object’ with Planet Mu. It’s not hard to hear it as a logical peak of Mark’s practice in this mode, solo and with SND, as much as a springboard for Gábor’s future work, while also catalysing a new wave of operators ranging from Rian Treanor to Kindohm, Kirk Barley’s Church Andrews, and Rhyw, who’ve all harnessed these sort of energies to their respective wills. No doubt the tunes still scare the shit out of DJs with their spasmodic flux, but brave cnuts will recognise the genius on show and let instinct kick in, finding proper club shockers in the slippery 2.1 step whorl of ‘Track 2’ and the scudding dancehall accelerationism of ‘Track 6’, while advanced adventurers will get theirs in the greased straightjacket laser-intensity of ‘Track 7’ or the devilish dexterities of its closing 12 minute zinger. It’s all just blindingly strong stuff for insatiable ravers and computer music neeks alike, properly future-proofed by its makers’ unyielding tenacity and visionary ingenuity.

limited to 500 copies

Copy closer to NM

Copy closer to NM

Vinyl with small stains.

Limited edition for Black Friday Record Store Day 2021!

Sam Binga returns to drop his debut EP for Critical Music. Inviting back the infamous Redders for vocal duties, picking up where his trail blazing single AYO and the much loved 'Lef Dem' from Critical's 'Underground Sonics' LP left off. A deft combination of low slung beats and bass with a nod to the jungle tradition.

Swedish producer HNNY (real name Johan Cederberg) releases his debut album 'Sunday' on Omena Records, a label set up by Tobias 'Tooli' Lidstrom. The ten track debut album continues an ongoing partnership between HNNY and Omena Records that started in April 2014 when the 12" 'Always' was released which also marked the starting point of the label. Sunday is released as a 180 g vinyl edition in gatefold sleeve.

Floating Points’ first productions emerged in 2008 and 2009, around the same time that he moved from Manchester to London (where he, fairly famously, studied neuroscience). He collaborated with early supporter Alexander Nut on Eglo, a label that has housed music by Fatima, Funkineven and Floating Points himself. Eglo has remained the main home for Floating Points’ music, though he’s also released on Planet Mu, Ninja Tune and Border Community. He also played a key role at now-closed London club Plastic People, as both a resident and a sounding board for its set-up.

For Elaenia’s artwork, Floating Points “built a harmonograph from scratch to create the artwork for Elaenia, the end result created by using it and 2 fibre optic cables of 0.5 and 1.5mm diameters, which were connected to light sources responding to bass drum and white noise percussive sounds from the album track ‘For Marmish’.”

The album features various contributors, including Tom Skinner and Leo Taylor (drums), Rahel Debebe-Dessalegne and Layla Rutherford (vocals), Susumu Mukai (bass), Alex Reeve (guitar), Qian Wu and Edward Benton (violin), Matthew Kettle (viola) and Joe Zeitlin (cello). Floating Points also contributes vocals.

Issued in a specially designed plastic-sleeve.

Brown vinyl is close to NM

TIM HECKER’s classic Ravedeath 1972 approaches a form of secular musical transcendentalism from within the battered temple of spirituality. Recorded in a church in Reykjavik, Iceland and using a pipe organ as the primary sound source, this piece is essentially a live recording. In reality, it exists in a nether world between captured live performance and meticulous studio work, melding the two approaches to sonic artifice as a unity. It is in parts a document of air circulating within a wooden room, and also a pagan work of physical resonance within a space once reserved for the hallowed breath of the divine. While the title of the piece “Hatred of Music” might be a clue, the album is also partly an attempt to confront a pervasive negativity surrounding music. Historical rituals of destroying pianos, mountains of pirated CDRs pushed by bulldozers in Eastern Europe, or the melancholy of the digital music era began as sideline motifs which quickly informed the work on this record. They also really didn't at all. Despite that the context is wide open in such a form of musical abstraction, the substance of these immersive compositions showcases Hecker s continued mastery of organizing sound into a visceral near entity. It is an almost physical presence that the listener feels as much as hears. This work is a significant contribution to Hecker's oeuvre, one which spans over ten years of musical production. Ravedeath is an enigmatic document of beauty and force. The album was recorded mostly over the period of one day in July of 2010. Iceland-based musician BEN Frost assisted with the engineering and performs on this recording.

Rival Consoles is Ryan Lee West - a London based electronic producer signed to Erased Tapes who has his roots in rock music and is primarily a guitarist. His mission on his new album, Howl was to find the perfect balance between club music and something more personal to listen to at home. The album’s title track is made up from West’s experiments of wiring synths up to guitar pedals, the resulting noises were howl-like. These experiments also inspired a darker tone to the album. His less-is-more approach to composition fits in with the Erased Tapes ethos.

Oracolo is Skinshape's second full length originally released in 2015 and now remastered for 2020. The album plays out like the soundtrack to a psychedelic Spaghetti Western. 'Old Days' is one of a handful of vocal-lead tracks on the release that along with 'Summer' and the cinematic album title track, 'Oracolo' conjure references to bands like Can, The Bees or modern pysch pioneers Tame Impala. The instrumentals peppered throughout like the Quentin Tarantino-esque gem 'Mandala' and Motown reminiscing 'Rubber Gloves' highlight Dorey's superb talent as an arranger and composer. Don't let the vintage sound fool you either. All of his magic is original, without a sample in sight. Every instrument either played by Dorey himself, or his array of guest friend musicians. For the Oracolo artwork, Skinshape joined forces with acclaimed New York based artist Jared Buschang. This is one of Buschang's early pieces simply named 'Untitled'. The Picasco-esqe style makes the perfect visual representation for the music within.

Smart bomb alert! Senegalese Mbalax derivatives in approved Dub mode.

A 1994 tape by Ghanaian musician Ata Kak called Obaa Sima is being reissued by Awesome Tapes From Africa.

The release is the culmination of a 13-year story for Awesome Tapes From Africa founder Brian Shimkovitz, who bought a cassette copy of Obaa Sima from a roadside stall in Cape Coast, Ghana, in 2002. The tape was the subject of the first post on his Awesome Tapes From Africa blog in 2006—the blog spawned a full record label in 2011.

Shimkovitz began searching for Ata Kat and says "Google and endless phone calls provided no leads." It was eventually discovered the musician, real name Yaw Atta-Owusu, had recorded Obaa Sima in Toronto before moving back to Ghana in 2006.

The restoration of the tape proved challenging. Only about 50 copies of the original tape were produced, and Atta-Owusu's master DAT had disintegrated, so the second-hand copy purchased by Shimkovitz was used as the source for the reissue.