Downbeat | Electronica | Leftfield Vinyl 316 Items

“It’s just too easy to make a standard dance track,” Aphex Twin said of his mindset back in 1992. “You’ve got to put a bit of thought into it to get something a bit different.”

‘Digeridoo’ was released on the Belgian R&S Records label in 1992, and originally peaked at #55 in the UK singles chart in May of that year. Over the last 32 years the track has become one of the essential Aphex Twin tracks in a gargantuan catalogue that continues to amaze and inspire.

“I wanted to have some tracks to play to finish the raves I used to play in Cornwall, to really kill everybody off so they couldn’t dance,” Richard D James, AKA Aphex, told Select magazine back in the 90s. “Digeridoo came out of that.”

Released as a 4 track EP that also included early Aphex productions (now classics) including the industrial, acidic clang of ‘Flap Head’ and hyperbolic futurism of ‘Isopropanol’, the release cemented a relationship with the R&S label that went on to release the ‘Xylem Tube’ EP and the pivotal album ‘Selected Ambient Works 85-92’ in the same year. The label’s owner & A&R Renaat Vandepapeliere reflected “When I first heard Aphex Twin’s music I said, ‘This is it!’, and everybody else said, ‘You’re crazy!’ …a lot of the hardcore R&S fans dropped us. To them it wasn’t music.”

‘Didgeridoo’ (Expanded Edition) is the first time the EP has been re-issued with extra material. Whilst digging in his DAT archive (allegedly stored in an airtight military ammo box), Richard James revisited the recordings, encoding them through a Nakamichi CR7e cassette deck, using the customised deck with vari-speed to encode at speeds “felt right at the time”. Alongside these CR7e versions, the original mixes have been remastered by Beau Thomas at Ten Eight Seven Mastering, offering a dilated insight into one of electronic music’s most endearing releases.

‘Didgeridoo’ (Expanded Edition) by Aphex Twin is available on R&S Records from 31st May 2024.

This classic Massive Attack album finally gets an official reissue.

25th anniversary edition of the album "Roseland NYC Live" by the trio from Bristol, which was recorded and filmed in 1997 in New York's Roseland Ballroom with a 28-piece orchestra and released in 1998.

The live album and the concert film have sold over 1 million copies to date. The album features the most acclaimed tracks "Glory Box", "Sour Times" and "Roads" from their debut and second album "Dummy" and "Portishead".

The track list has been remastered and expanded to include 'Undenied' and 'Numb' from the concert film, as well as the full-length performance of 'Western Eyes', part of which was featured in the film credits.

'Sour Times' and 'Roads' are also now the original Roseland versions (previously replaced on the album by recordings from other performances). All 5 of these tracks will be released on CD and vinyl for the first time.

- 2LP, pressed on solid red vinyl, with gatefold sleeve, a double-sided fold-out poster and a replica of the backstage pass used at the concert.

Limited to 1000 copies on clear vinyl in occasion of HHV's 20th birthday.

20 years HHV: our team has selected an album from each of these years that is particularly relevant and precious to us. On a monthly basis, we release exclusive and limited pressings of these records in collaboration with some of our favorite labels.

The Late Night Tales compilation is a bit of a ‘stealth’ project for me personally. I’m very proud of it, but at the time, I probably didn’t appreciate it as much as I do now because there was so much going on. You do these things in-between touring and you don’t really have time to reflect on them because you’re immediately onto the next thing. It’s nice to know that it’s getting re-released.

180g Vinyl including download code.

On vinyl for the first time, ‘Random Album Title’ is a seminal body of work in electronic music from Canadian producer deadmau5. The vinyl includes “Not Exactly,” “I Remember,” “Arguru,” and more. This award-winning, chart-topping album is arguably the most sought-after physical piece of work from deadmau5’s impressive catalogue - this is ‘Random Album Title’.

The slo-beat pioneers Kruder &Dorfmeister of Vienna are among thehottest producers in the dance universe.Even though they only produced twounreleased maxis, big names like CountBasie, Bomb The Bass, Alex Reece orUnited Future Organization had some oftheir tracks remixed by these exceptionalproducers. Their productions oncompilations of Ninja Tune, SSR and WallOf Sound are considered mile stonesregarding the trip-hop genre.During the work for DJ-Kicks and theirdebut album they refused doing remixesfor U2, Grace Jones, Elvis Costello and theFantastic Four!

Originally released via the R&S Ambient sub-label Apollo in '92 and repressed more times than anyone could even begin to keep a count of, Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works 85-92 is not only one of the most important releases in both the Aphex catalogue but also electronic music as an entire entity. A richly woven tapestry of blissful sounds that offer the listener new surprises, twists and turns no matter how many times they venture through its cosmos. The techno equivalent of mainlining serotonin, Selected Ambient Works 85-92 should be prescribed on a daily dose twice a day for any and everyone reading this...

2023 repress. Massive Attack's third album "Mezzanine" finally gets the reissue treatment. Essential!

Finally, this Portishead classic is back in print!!

Responding to popular demand, Warp Records is repressing its seminal Boards of Canada catalogue on vinyl for the first time in over five years. Each Warp reissue comes with a download code and an original BOC sticker design from the era.

Faitiche presents a long-lost vinyl album: for the last 14 years, Jan Jelinek's Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records, originally released in 2001 on ~scape, existed only as a download. Now the landmark album is available again on vinyl, as a double LP with two bonus tracks (B-sides from the Tendency EP, 2000).

As the first-ever album composed entirely of sampled material, "Endtroducing....." is a landmark in the history of electronic music. Its influence reverberates through the years, inspiring countless artists and solidifying DJ Shadow's place as a visionary in the realm of sample-based production.

Each track tells a unique story, from the hypnotic groove of "Building Steam With a Grain of Salt" to the cinematic atmosphere of "Midnight in a Perfect World." Shadow's meticulous craftsmanship shines through, showcasing his unparalleled skill in constructing beats that resonate with both intensity and emotion.

Edition on 180g.

Repress 2021

Another reissue slammer form Warp's Nightmares On Wax back cataloque!

/ the hoe - 2 remixes

This classic Massive Attack album finally gets an official reissue.

Classic Aphex Twin 12" with four nice mixes!

One of the all-time classic ambient albums finally available on strictly limited edition 180gr vinyl. 

Responding to popular demand, Warp Records is repressing its seminal Boards of Canada catalogue on vinyl for the first time in over five years. Each Warp reissue comes with a download code and an original BOC sticker design from the era.

Another Aphex Twinclassic back in print! Pressed 180 gram wax, download code included!

Kompakt is proud to announce, finally, a reissue of the first, self-titled GAS album. Originally released on electronica imprint Mille Plateaux back in 1996, it’s been unavailable in its original form ever since – the version of GAS included in 2008’s Nah Und Fern box featured several different tracks. Here, however, GAS is restored in all its glory, the debut full-length from Wolfgang Voigt’s most enigmatic, quixotic project.

There had, of course, been signs of what was to come. Back in 1995, Voigt essayed the first GAS release, a slender, yet remarkable four-track EP, Modern. Its centre label featured a reduced symbol – an overhead or lamp light, switched on, its glow radiating outwards in four bold black lines – a perfect representation of the tight, stylised ambient electronic pop contained on that 12”. A few curious compilation tracks were floating around, too, for Mille Plateaux’s Modulation & Transformation and Electric Ladyland series. If you were attentive enough, you could tell something was up.

But nothing quite prepared us for the languorous, effervescing loops and regular-like-clockwork beats that Voigt folded together on GAS. Its six long tracks, all untitled, neither begin nor end but hazily fade into earshot, vibrate majestically in your cochlea for fifteen-or-so minutes – some a bit shorter, some longer – and then meander away, reading the mise-en-scène for the next example of Voigt’s drift and dream logic to unfold. The material is referential in the most distant way, and you can sense only the most evanescent of ghostly presences, haunting these six compositions.

GAS feels, also, like a more pliable hint at what’s to come, as the GAS concept really solidified on its successor, 1997’s Zauberberg, and reach its apotheosis on Königsforst and Pop. Those three albums share a very similar palette – blurred, hazy samples, often of classical music, stacked and cross-thatched across a muted 4/4 thud. GAS, then, is an outlier of sorts: it’s more expansive in its remit, lighter in its mood, perhaps more fleet of foot. This, of course, is part of its charm.

In clearing space for Voigt, by preparing the terrain, GAS sits both at the edge of the forest, and at the verge of an expansive, wide-eyed future; one where GAS would become truly eternal.

Text by Jonathan Dale

1st studio produced album by the New Zealand group from 2005. The album utilized the band's trademark dub, reggae, soul and funk influenced sound, and has been successful both in terms of sales and of critical reception. 7 times platinum in New Zealand!

Limited edition 45 rpm import version in gatefold sleeve!

Are you sitting comfortably? Artificial Intelligence is for long journeys, quiet nights and club drowsy dawns. Listen with an open mind.

Back in 1992 when Warp released the Artificial Intelligence compilation it almost instantly changed both the course of Warp as a label and arguably what many would consider club music as an entity to be. Artificial Intelligence came housed inside a prog rock styled gatefold sleeve depicting a cover image of a robot blowing smoke rings whilst reclining on an armchair. Its extra long rolling papers and tin of tobacco just out of reach, whilst a high-end stereo plays out the sounds of Kraftwerk's Autobahn and Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon, their LP sleeves lay strewn across the floor. This image along with the above text that as printed on the sleeve acted as a guide for the listener on how to best experience this new mode of techno music, one that was designed for those nights when your body stays in but your mind steps out.

Having been in operation for three years by the time they compiled and released the Artificial Intelligence compilation, Warp had already proved itself as a worthy force within the world of quickfire 12 singles of acid house and the emerging hardcore scene. Starting as a predominant pusher of the new bleep 'n' bass sounds of their hometown Sheffield, Warp had enjoyed success with early anthemic singles from artists such as Nightmares on Wax, LFO & Richard H. Kirk's Sweet Exorcist project. These building blocks laid the foundations for what many would go on to define as the Warp sound but it was 1992's Artificial Intelligence compilation that cemented their place in music history.

Artificial Intelligence was notable for early appearances by people who went on to become pioneers of the hypnotic groove for both Warp and electronic music in its entirety. Artists such as The Black Dog/Plaid whose melancholic contribution The Clan (produced under the alias I.A.O.) bears long drawn out strings combine perfectly with the tear-drenched techno of Carl Craig with the trend for looped breakbeats to create a track that still resonates deeply every time it is played. Looking further out than most, B12's Telefone 529 with its recording of an automated incorrect phone number message carries an air of nostalgic puzzlement, while Preminition transports a diva vocal and hardcore piano roll into a zero-gravity soundtrack of space. Autechre's Crystel and The Egg offers the first steps towards the path of abstract oblivion that they would go on to travel throughout the post-AI years. Both pieces focus an acidic gurgle around some cut up vocals, its timeframe existing perfectly within a distinct hip-hop cylinder that brilliantly displays their roots within b-boy culture.

Aphex Twin appears under his alias The Dice Man, opening up the operation with a track that would become an alias in itself, Polygon Window in many ways formed the core sound of the Artificial Intelligence compilation and subsequent album series that followed it. Rolling post-acid dynamics, a strong knowledge of breakbeat techno and some serious subs keep the track in a full forward motion, Polygon Window still stands out as one of the most unbeatable techno tracks within Warp's discography. Elsewhere, chief ambient technologist Dr Alex Paterson put forward a four-minute cosmic ambient piece akin to his work as the central figure of which The Orb revolves around. Whilst Richie Hawtin made an appearance with his euphoric almost gabba track Spiritual High, produced under the name Up! his fellow Plus 8 producer Speedy J stepped in with De-Orbit, a track that you could say on reflection, almost helped shape the early steps towards what would turn into the deeper recesses of liquid drum & bass.

Warp co-founder Steve Beckett was quoted around the time of the Artificial Intelligence compilations release in 1992 as saying you started to hear tracks by B12 and Plaid and Speedy J that just didn't fit into any category, B-sides and last tracks on EPs. We just realised that they weren't meant for 12-inches, it was just that this was the only outlet for that kind of music. We realised you could make a really good album out of it. You could sit down and listen to it like you would a Kraftwerk or Pink Floyd album. That's why we put those sleeves on the cover of Artificial Intelligence - to get it into people's heads that you weren't supposed to dance to it!. This train of thought led to Warp putting together one of the most forward-thinking compilations to appear within the early 90s post-acid explosion, and many others tried to copy the formula but arguably no imprint ever came close to topping or even releasing anything that stands tall alongside Artificial Intelligence for its undeniably experimental, yet sheer futuristic scope and vision.

Listening back now, 30 years since its original release, it's striking how contemporary and fresh the music of Artificial Intelligence still sounds. While many tracks from those days still and will forever sound brilliant, many AI contemporary compilations have taken on the sheen of a more retro and throwback feel. When digested with a knowledge of what has been made within the last quarter of a century, the tracks that form Artificial Intelligence still carry a strong, almost outside of time feeling that's influence shines as strongly today as it did 30 years ago. A timeless record that will continue to point the way forward for electronic music for many years yet to come.

Finally reissued for all those that can't spend three digit amounts for the original pressing. A true gem.
“Lovage” is defined as “an herb that is said to be a benefit for relieving abdominal pains due to gastrointestinal gas…also touted to reduce flatulence when consumed as a tea.” But when placed in the able hands of sonic mastermind Dan “The Automator” Nakamura, recording under the guise of musical lothario Nathaniel Merriweather, the result is a concept album of “music to make love to your old lady by.” With the help of collaborators such as Mike Patton (vocals), Jennifer Charles (vocals) and Kid Koala (turntables), Merriweather serves as your personal guide to the sensual side of life, painting a satirical, darkly funny portrait of love and sex with left-field hip-hop and instrumentals as only he can do.

Kranky re-release Bowery Electric's second long-player, their 1996 album, Beat. Its horizontal, morphine-drip trip hop and drone-gazing really don't sound like something that could have come from the mid-nineties. But for the very Bristolian title track the tone of the album is actually far more in-keeping with either Spacemen 3-style eighties indie or modern day dream-pop. In addition to soaring effects-laden epics like 'Empty Words' and 'Fear Of Flying' there's some sensitive minimalism afoot on the self-explanatory ambience of 'Looped' and the sixteen-minute 'Postscript', all of which helps make Beat a worthy and seasonable reissue. A secret Downbeat gem from the middle of the 90s.

The Avalanches' Downbeat milestone back in print!

One of those albums everybody is refering to! Classic beats by the one and only DJ Shadow!

Timely reissue with digital download card for digital smoking delights!

re:discovery records proudly presents the first vinyl issuing of Off the Sky 'Gently Down the Stream'. Originally released in 2006 on the cult ambient label Databloem, it has grown over the past 15 years as one of the seminal releases in their discography. Fans of glitch styled rhythm based ambient like Shuttle 358, Mille Plateaux, Thinner, 12k records and later Force Inc to minimal and dub fans of the Cologne style should really be taken by this beautiful sounding album. Like the title suggests, expect to drift off to a desert island to this beautiful serenade. Off the Sky (Jason Corder) is a veteran of the ambiant scene. With over 25+ albums to his credits, come listen to one of hisearliest in his discography. A magical album to chill-out to. Bring back the chill-out rooms!

Back for a limited edition, individually numbered 12” single from The Future Sound of London comes the iconic original ‘12tot17r’ collection of “Papua New Guinea” mixes. Mixes alongside the classic 12” Original include the full length Andrew Weatherall Mix, reissued here for the first time since 1992. Andrew Weatherall (1963-2020) was one of the key DJs on the acid house dance scene and this mix is one of his most highly regarded works next to Happy Mondays, New Order and Bjork. This edition is a limited edition to only 2000 copies only.

Repress 2020 on 140g

Having honed his craft across a set of EPs and albums (all remarkably released within 1996), DJ and producer Matthew Herbert solidified his reputation as one of electronic music’s greatest conceptual artists with 1998’s Around The House. Largely made from tones you’re likely to hear in the home; the clinking of glasses, the scraping of cutlery, the spray of an aerosol can. The humbleness of its musical raw materials belies the fact that it’s Herbert’s first great masterpiece.

A domestic scene is set from the off, as the listener is beckoned into the record by an apartment door buzzer and the sultry vocal of Dani Siciliano, who imbues the remainder of Around The House with a jazz sophistication. As it happens, the loft analogy is appropriate, given the funk and disco reference points in the liquid bass groove of ‘So Now?’ and ‘Close To Me’. Microhouse scrapes and scratches field the classy dance mood with a Detroit-style buoyancy, as the subtle rhythmic elements mingle and flirt with one another on charming cuts like ‘We Still Have (The Music)’ and ‘Going Around’.

Around The House is a cordial invitation to a house party, where Herbert is both esteemed host and house band.