Downbeat | Electronica | Leftfield 292 Items

POP – the album that has become widely recognized as the defining moment in which Wolfgang Voigt brought us into a clearing of his deep, psychedelic forest. A landmark release in the GAS odyssey that drew international attention, POP was originally released in 2000 on the iconic Frankfurt imprint MILLE PLATEAUX. POP was heralded by Pitchfork at the time of release as being “an exercise in sonic texture… pure sonic velvet, the layered drone radiating a palpable warmth.”

POP has since been reissued in 2016 as a part of GAS “BOX” (now out of print) and finally now, POP is released on KOMPAKT – for the first time on CD in its original artwork.

Please note: This CD is a single release of the GAS BOX released in 2016.

incl. Remixes by Claude + Dollkraut

FULGEANCE drops his own vision of club funk and future beats. 4 original tracks that prove FULGEANCE has no limit in sound. From dreamy vocoder poetry to broken dance moves, this EP is complete. Even more with 2 remixe

From P60 is an alias of Zoltan Nagy who this year marks the significant milestone of a quarter of a century in the music game. He celebrates that by launching his new label Midnight Fashion Chill with his own first EP for it. Over the years, Nagy has done it all from deep house to Balearic to lounge and downtempo and here brings that touch of class to six superbly soothing sounds that fuse all that and more. The opener is pure horizontal bliss, 'The Times We Spent Together' is a slow-motion daydream, 'Fallin' (with Jaidene Veda) is pure soul-soothing magic and 'When' is a gently lilting ambient soundscape crafted to perfection.

Through a sleet storm of bunkered kicks and arpeggiation arrives the rushing EP 'No Rest Among Angels' from Free The ID. Best recognised as Internazionale, and for directing the label Janushoved, the principal transmission under this new sign presents a collection of tracks as spartan as they are romantic, contorting the noisiest impulses into a sleek toolset.

Unequal cycles searching for synchronous experiences: On his new album »Pounding«, Frank Bretschneider tells of distance, convergence and congruence in a continuous, ever-changing flow of events. What is often considered to be an unquestionable dogma in club music (for which Bretschneider has provided significant impetus since the 1990s) – the groove – appears precarious, unstable, and in motion. Pulse and accent are volatile encounters and have to be found again and again for short, delightful moments. Music becomes a constant process of negotiation.

In search of new sound spaces, Bretschneider has recently worked a lot with modular synthesizers, both solo (for example on »abtasten_halten«, 2020) and in collaborations, including the project Beispiel together with Jan Jelinek. »Pounding« was created using similar means – conceived in 2020 for the Pochen Biennale in Chemnitz, subsequently developed further and recorded in March and April 2023 on a sample-based modular system. And in fact, Bretschneider is once again exemplarily scanning his own sound material, for example Dub effects that listen to themselves crumbling. But also the human voice, or more precisely: the stuttering of fragments of speech, far in the distance but omnipresent, like a mysterious narration. Aesthetically, the eleven pieces form part of a series of works with a focus on percussion. Bretschneider has already perfected this approach with albums like »Rhythm« (2007) and has been shifting the perspective ever since, for ever new results.

Shifting is the basic principle of »Pounding«. Bretschneider combines elements that are in different aggregate states, changing their relationship to each other and thus ensuring the complex overall movement. He lets one to two-bar loops run against each other and through manipulations, develops a network of rhythms that creates a hypnotic state in the counterplay of repetition and mutation, between clearly recognizable meter and disorientation. There are comparable approaches in aleatoric music. Bretschneider combines them with sounds and patterns that are reminiscent of step sequencer logic and at the same time go far beyond it. The result is relational techno. Never clear, constantly restless and exciting.

Palaces began to take shape when Flume returned to his native Australia after struggling to write music in Los Angeles at the beginning of the pandemic. Settling in a coastal town in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, Flume quickly found the inspiration he needed through reconnecting with the nature around him—the rolling hills, walking around barefoot, the green colour the sky turns before a big storm, growing and eating his own vegetables, the smell of rain. He and his neighbour and long-time collaborator, the visual artist Jonathan Zawada, became fascinated by the local wildlife, in particular the birds, collecting field recordings that ultimately worked their way in to the album. As Flume continued to forge a strong connection to his surroundings, the album he wanted to make started to form, eventually adopting a title to properly highlight the luxury and magic of the natural world. Palaces is his most confident, mature and uncompromising work to date, a true testament to nurturing the relationships that make us whole and bring us peace.

The album features a host of vocalists and collaborators, its cast list spanning new and household names from around the world—breakout U.S. star Caroline Polachek, British polymath-icon Damon Albarn, Spain’s Vergen Maria, France’s Oklouand fellow Australian Kučka, who returns following her standout turn on Skin.

Federico Albanese is a composer born in Milan, Italy in 1982, and currently based in Berlin. His musical versatility is a natural gift that pushes him to explore music in all its facets. Albanese's compositions are airy and cinematic, blending classical music, electronics and psychedelia. Federico started studying piano and clarinet as a child before becoming fascinated by rock music. As a teenager he studied bass and became a self-taught guitarist and soon became one of the leading figures of Milan's underground scene, performing in several bands. Influenced by black music, folk, electronic, modern and contemporary classical music his skills as a composer soon emerged, He worked for 5 years as prop man in several film sets. This experience made him understand the power of the connection between music and images and helped him to develop his personal musical path.

In 2007 Albanese met singer and songwriter Jessica Einaudi and together they founded the avant-garde duo ""La Blanche Alchimie"". Composing songs with Jessica he rediscovered his love for the piano, which from that moment on, became his main instrument. Since then Federico has scored several films, short films and documentaries, including a documentary on a project commissioned by Ermenegildo Zegna in the National Museum of XXI Century Arts in Rome.

In February 2014, Federico Albanese will release his debut album entitled ""The Houseboat and the Moon"". He found a place, an imaginary place, where, whenever he wanted to, he could jump on and just float away. On this moving shelter, traveling across memories and imagination, lulled by water and led by the moon, Federico wrote the 13 compositions of his debut. He recorded all of the piano parts with a 1969 German tape recorder, the Uher Royal Deluxe, which allowed him to catch all of the tiny hidden shades, the imperfections, the noises of the piano and its surrounding space. Federico melts this rarefied sound with electronics, live recordings, strings, and homemade instruments. The result is a combination of contrasts and colors with a variety of atmospheres that wonderfully represents Federico's musical universe.

After the success of 2021’s Ursgal, Mongolian jazz singer Enji returns with her third album Ulaan. The line-up has grown in size with drummer Mariá Portugal and clarinettist Joana Queiroz from Brazil joining the band to create an invigorating blend of grounded Folk and brooding Jazz.

Next year the iconic anthem Cafe Del Mar will celebrate its 30th anniversary, a landmark that will be celebrated with a series of brand new remixes alongside the finest existing remixes in specially remastered versions. Launching the series of vinyl releases in September is a remastered vinyl-only release of the original mix, as well as the best-known version of this classic track, the iconic Three ‘N One Remix.

Nearly 30 years ago, Paul M aka DJ Kid Paul recording as Energy 52 unleashed a record onto an unsuspecting public that would go on to define club culture for an entire generation of dance music enthusiasts. Named as an homage to the legendary Ibiza sunset spot, Café Del Mar broke down boundaries between the underground and the mainstream, charting in the UK singles charts on three separate occasions and named as the “best tune ever” by Mixmag at the start of the new millennium. In terms of cultural and emotional impact in dance music, it’s hard to find a record that comes close.

Café Del Mar has come to represent the most euphoric and hedonistic pleasures of dancefloors - in Ibiza and all around the world - and has been remixed by some of the biggest names in the industry. Now, 30 years after its original release, Superstition Records will be putting out a new series of releases, with brand new remixes as well as remastered versions of some of the many remixes from across the last three decades. The vinyl-only remastered version of the original and Three ‘N One mixes will launch the series, with further details about the rest of the series announced in the coming weeks.

In 2021 Paul Van Dyk’s Café Del Mar remixes launched a series of vinyl and digital re-issues on the Superstition Records imprint after an almost 20 years hiatus. From 1993 until 2003 Superstition Records was a groundbreaking Techno, Tech-House and Trance Label and released some of the biggest and most revered records of the early German electronic scene.

Damaged cover!

Douglas Appling (born 1987), better known by his stage name Emancipator, is an American electronic music producer based in Portland, Oregon. He launched his music career by self-releasing his debut album “Soon It Will Be Cold Enough” in 2006 while he was still a college student. He has subsequently released six albums, founded his own record label, and formed a live band, the Emancipator Ensemble, whose sold-out shows have been called by one critic "an unforgettable experience".

Damaged Cover.

Deluxe Anniversary Edition of the 2013 Emancipator album 'Dusk to Dawn'. Features 4 previously unreleased songs from the album sessions. 3LP vinyl edition also includes remixes of 'Dusk to Dawn' tracks.

A two CD set containing Eliane Radigue's live performance of »Chry-Ptus« (1971), her first work for modular synthesizer, and the world premier of parts one and three of »Triptych« (1978) – Part 2« is also performed. Upon hearing these performances for the first time in many years Radigue declared them to be the best versions she'd ever heard. Radigue's sublime renderings of these major pieces are full of illusory stasis, slow change and dense, slow motion drone that has characterized her pioneering electronic work.

Ekkehard Ehlers' seminal plays series was originally released on three 12inches (Staubgold) and two 7inches (Bottrop-Boy) in very limited runs. The entire series was previously only available as a CD compilation or digitally. Keplar finally presents it on double vinyl for the first time, featuring a new cover artwork. Domestic ethnology: Ekkehard Ehlers plays. ‘Play’ is a word in English with many meanings attached. Each one sends you down a different cognitive pathway. When I think of ‘playing’, in the sense of a game, I think of an activity involving more than one person. When Ekkehard Ehlers plays, he is very much on his own. Or, at least, alone but at the same time keeping intimate company with the artistic innovators named in his titles. Robert Johnson. John Cassavetes. Albert Ayler. Cornelius Cardew. Hubert Fichte. Is he playing with them, against them, about them, for them, to them? This can never be known. It is certainly a mistake to try to hear the ‘work’ of these originals in the sounds played by Ekkehard. They’re not cover versions. They’re hardly tributes in the conventional sense. Cassavetes and Fichte are not even musicians, although music played an important part in both their careers. Sure, there are little nods and flashes of recognition – tiny guitar licks among the minimal beats of ‘Robert Johnson 2’; rich bowed instruments in ‘Albert Ayler’, recalling the violin, cello and double bass arrangements on Ayler’s 1967 Live in Greenwich Village LP; the elongated organ lines of ‘Cornelius Cardew 1’ gesturing towards passages in Paragraph 1 of the British composer’s 1971 Marxist monolith, The Great Learning. Ekkehard is not so much playing these figures as allowing himself to be played by them. Playing as an activity also suggests freedom. Maybe the only thing all five named persons have in common is that they were all quiet radicals. In music, literature and cinema, they all stepped, without self-promotion or fanfare, into unmapped territories. Once there they found it necessary to invent new languages in order to survive. Necessity was the mother of their inventiveness. They were also uncomfortable avant gardists. Lonely types, fighting their corners out on the margins, with little reward, often misunderstood, ridiculed or ignored. All died unfairly young. Fichte a victim of Hiv/aids, Cassavetes of cirrhosis of the liver. (‘Cassavetes 2’ sounds like a tender farewell played across the 59 year old alcoholic director’s death bed.) The deaths of Johnson, Ayler and Cardew have never been satisfactorily explained, and remain shrouded in myths and conspiracy theories. The pioneering expeditions of all five began in that spirit of playful freedom, but inexorably drew them towards the heart of darkness. So these ‘plays’ are micro-dramas, sonic soliloquies, monolog-ins to the private accounts of various geniuses in Ekkehard’s ‘follow’ list. Hacked sensibilities. Artistic manifestos boiled down and distilled, skinned and dried in the digital smokehouse. (Ekkehard Ehlers Flays.) Each of these plays was originally floated out into the world alone on its own disc. The collected works play well as a team – a tranquil, introspective experience where each artist has his own identifiably unique sound character. As an album, Plays is a ‘Plattenragout’ – a ‘record stew’ – which was the title of Hubert Fichte’s LP review column in the leftist culture magazine konkret in the 1960s. The novelist’s work investigating the cultures of South America and the Caribbean islands has been called ‘domestic ethnology’. The writer himself referred to his ‘ethnopoesie’. Ekkehard Ehlers’s intuitive electronic portraits are a form of domestic ethnology in themselves. Invoking another of Ekkehard’s musical aliases, they are portraits of cultural ‘autopoiesies’ – creators whose works were strong enough to have their own self-regenerating life force. (by Rob Young)

At the end of the '60s in Italy - but also abroad, especially in France and England - a very particular trend began to spread, that one known as 'Library music' or 'sonorization': as suggested by its name, those were real music libraries intended for the accompaniment of audiovisual productions such as television programs, advertisements, documentaries and films. Since they were created in total artistic freedom condition, they are often difficult if not impossible to catalog, as they're not anchored to a specific musical genre; this freedom also allowed the authors to compose, sometimes in the most complete anonymity, experimental and avant-garde music, capable of anticipating the sounds that only many years later would have been widespread on a larger scale.

Egisto Macchi (1928-1992) was one of the most active composers of the sonorization and soundtrack genres together with artists such as Piero Umiliani, Alessandro Alessandroni and Ennio Morricone; he also collaborated with the latter in the experimental music project Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza. "Fauna Marina" is among his most popular and sought-after by collectors titles: a set of eleven compositions intended to accompany the images of a hypothetical fish fauna documentary, an abstract hybrid of classical, contemporary and jazz music that is still fresh and surprising today.

"Fauna Marina" is part of a reissues series, made in collaboration with Edizioni Leonardi (Milan, Italy), of extremely rare library music LP's published between late '60s and early '70s, most of which have never been released again until today, and that are finally made available again for collectors and sonorization music lovers.

180gr. Clear blue vinyl edition.

Shapeshifting between electronic experimentation and acoustic texture, Eartheater has long delved into themes of erosion and lithification, along with the infinite possibilities of metamorphosis. On her new album Powders, alchemical forces connect ideas from every stage of her career just as they dissolve her practice into atomized particles ripe for reconstitution. The results find Eartheater at a fertile crossroads, honing her pop songwriting and lyrics to their most vivid state to date—all without losing the thread of experimentation that has always enlivened her work.

Powders took its initial shape and vision within the hallowed walls of Sunset Sound in Hollywood. Showcasing production that shifts on a dime between mutated dance music, unadorned folk balladry, trip-hop, and torch song pop songcraft, if her compositions seem to inhabit a shell of one style for the span of a verse or so, tendrils of another soon slide into view. Powders draws varied energies from Eartheater’s own omnivorous tastes as a songwriter and from her stable of co-producers and players, including Yves Rothman, Sega Bodega, Lecx Stacy, Casey MQ, Elliott Kozel, Tony Seltzer, Luis Aponte, Isaiah Barr, Sammy, and Kiri. While previous albums found Eartheater’s vocals typically warped by effects or piled thick with multi-tracked layering, Powders presents her signature transfixing multi-octave melodic runs resolutely up front in the mix, highlighting her performances with new purity and detail.

Dylan Henner (AD 93, Phantom Limb) returns to Dauw with 'Performs Raymond Scott’s Soothing Sounds for Baby’, a new album where he reinterprets a selection of Raymond Scott’s iconic work originally released in 1962. Artwork is provided by Skrew Studio in reference to the original releases.

The contributions of Raymond Scott to our world are immeasurable and pioneering, and his records still sound totally unique. But one could say that, viewed through the lens of what we now understand to be "ambient" music, the meaning of his compositions have changed since their inception. Now, we (mistakenly or not) see them as archival or documentarian pieces preserving an era of early electronic music and the capabilities and limitations of the technology of its time. It has become an artefact, a means to an end. So, with huge reverence to Scott's foresight and genius, Dylan Henner wanted to recontextualise those same ideas into the mindset and studio of a musician in 2024, to create a version of what Scott left us that corresponds with Henner's own perception of this music's purpose: soothing baby. He returned to the original records only once or twice, transcribing melodies and taking notes on timbre, before setting off his own journey.

“I didn't want to take too much from Scott or his music, as it is untouchable, both creatively and culturally. But I wanted to offer my baby (and any babies whose parents play this record) something soothing and meaningful of my own.” Dylan Henner

Sonic Behavior by Driftmachine & Ammer is an album exploring the origins of sound, noise, and various music genres. Alongside lyrical declarations of love for noise ("Song To Noise"), the album delves into sonic reflections on how beauty and emotion emerge from mundane vibrations in the air ("The Siren Is A Simple Device"). For the first time, the analog sound researchers of Driftmachine (Andreas Gerth, Florian Zimmer) incorporate spoken language and noise into their sound research. They have collaborated with word and sound artist Andreas Ammer, renowned for his radio plays with Acid Pauli, aka Console ("Spaceman 85"), or FM Einheit ("Radio Inferno," "Symphony of Sirens").

In "The Siren Is A Simple Device," the words are spoken by 81-year-old musician and poet legend Ted Milton (Blurt, Loopspool). Despite its simplicity and obvious ability to produce high volumes, the siren has led a marginal existence as a musical instrument. Yet, it is capable of evoking the most intense emotional states in the listener in the shortest possible time, like almost no other sound-producing mechanism. "Sonic Behavior" capitalizes on this fact. The familiar hypnotic sounds of Driftmachine are accompanied by a siren organ inspired by the revolutionary Russian futurist Arsenij Avranov and built by Andreas Ammer, while the lyrics talk about the simple physical reasons behind the sound chaos that has just been unleashed: A siren ... chops the air into sound.

The core of the album is "Song To Noise," an electro-acoustic mini-symphony about the beauties of noise and all its producers, which is based on a poem by the British poet Deryn Rees-Jones and spoken by the poet herself and Alexander Hacke (Einstürzende Neubauten, Hackedepicciotto). Driftmachine & Ammer develop a soundtrack that is as powerful as it is loud and danceable (which is why the LP also includes a textless version of the composition).

"Sonic Sculpture" is the zenith of the work: a text/music track spoken by Ted Milton, which creates the possibility of a sound sculpture that encompasses the universe: What if one could imagine the infernal sound that encompasses all conceivable harmonies at the same time? A piano does when you throw it down an earthly staircase (the epitome of music is a piano falling down the stairs) through silent space to the next theoretically life-filled, Earth-like planet, Proxima Centauri B. The radio makes it possible. Driftmachine & Ammer tried it. The result will be heard there in 4.24 light-years. On planet Earth, the time has come on May 2, 2024. On this day, Sonic Behavior will be released, a conceptual album by Driftmachine & Ammer exploring sound, its creation, and its power.