Downbeat | Electronica | Leftfield 131 Items

One of ASC's finest musical moments, repressed for 2018 on crystal clear vinyl.

The recent rediscovery of J.D. Emmanuel by critics and audience, and his comeback to underground scene from 2010 was crucial to reweave the development of electronic music in the early Eighties. This new publication cast new light on his first activity of composing and performing electronic music during 1979-83, experiments totally unreleased and never before published on vinyl.

From Detroit techno and hip-hop's early sampling experiments to Terre Thaemlitz, electronic music has long proven its political potential, even in instrumental form. With "OstWest", Berlin-based electronic-kraut-dub trio Automat complete their LP trilogy with a deep and entrancing take on the failures of neoliberalism.

Black vinyl. Artwork by Mikey Joyce. Limited to 300 copies.

Gonzo is the ''why so serious?'' moniker of musician, DJ and discrepant head honcho, Goncalo F. Cardoso. Since starting the label back in 2010 gonzo has released a series of limited collage tapes on the label, “Dies Irae” being the very first one back in 2012. He now decides to give it the vinyl treatment with specially commissioned artwork from Belgium artist, Elzo Durt. “Dies Irae” (aka Latin hymn sung in a mass for the dead) explores the themes of religion, sects, cults and judgement day. It unapologetically stitches together field recordings, sound generators, random loops and 'unfinished' compositions to accompany weird spoken word moments or uncorrectable views and opinions. It kick started the self-penned Gonzo collage style and whether you like or not he's been at it ever since. Featuring spiritual leaders, enlightened gurus, cult leaders and good old fashion lunatics. Guest appearances by Jim Jones, David Koresh and Harold Camping among others. Iain Chambers plays guitars when you hear one.

After These Hidden Hands re-surfaced earlier this year with the collaborative single These Moments Dismantled featuring Lucrecia Dalt, Tommy Four Seven and Alain Paul a.k.a. Shards are set to release Vicarious Memories, their second full length LP, on August 8th 2016. Vicarious Memories builds substantially upon the sound forged with their debut album and brings a considerable new level of detail, complexity, and musicality, which ranges from flowing mellifluous grooves, somber drones, to the outright bizarre and unexpected. Although loosely an instrumental electronic album, the album makes extensive use of guitar and vocals and features prominent guest vocal contributions from underground Berlin based musicians Julia Kotowski and Ale Hop. The album’s preceding single, SZ31X71, a track which features on the LP is out July 11th, featuring a remix by revered Tri Angle artist, Roly Porter. Vicarious Memories will be released via the group’s own imprint, Hidden Hundred available both digitally and as a 12? vinyl LP featuring gatefold cover art by Norwegian illustrator Anders Røkkum.

New music from Simon Green aka Bonobo is always an event, but when it heralds the arrival of a whole new album (his first since 2013’s “The North Borders”), it’s really something to get excited about. The masterful, magisterial “Migration” is Green’s sixth album and it’s a record which cements his place in the very highest echelons of electronic music and beyond.
It might be difficult to imagine it, but “Migration” will take his beautiful, emotive, intricate music to an even bigger audience. “My own personal idea of identity has played into this record and the theme of migration,” Green explains. “Is home where you are or where you are from, when you move around?” The personal, it seems, can also be universal.

Idee 1', published (but never released) by Team in February 1972, is filled with experimental sparks, staggering orchestrations, breakbeat, funk, mournful atmospheres and world music influences.

Industrially minimalistic, generously coherent & truly acidic LP in the vain of techno, EBM & true underground electronic music. Dark droned ambience and skeletal rhythms but also beautifull and trippy pieces spaceously cut for sonically heavy playback on soundsystems & home stereos. From the rigid & non-confirmist ideology of General Elektro & Sex Tags Mani

Conversation Sur Lettres Mortes is a conceptual album revolving around the relationship between Berlin’s Jesse Osborne Lanthier & Grischa Lichtenberger and the archaic apparatus of old cathode ray televisions and VHS units. It was first conceived as a live project for the Mutek/Elektra festival 2014 at the MAC in Montre´al, QC Canada, and now lands heavy on Cosmo Rhythmatic - the label curated by Shapednoise.

In the three years following ‘Mixed Signals’, Frederic has been developing his spectacular live show, experimenting with new instruments and technologies, and, naturally, working on his stunning follow up LP, Flea Waltz.

The crossover between electronic music and classical composition has never been in more vibrant and dynamic health. Multifarious musician Emika explores this fertile ground on her ambitious new opus 'Melanfonie': her first orchestral composition, some four years in the making.
Funded by a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign that exceeded its target by an impressive €25,000.
While many rebel from their classical training never to return to it explicitly, Emika has always been attracted to the potential and freedoms offered by the symphony form. As well as taking inspiration from her electronic music background in composing the music itself, Emika also applied some of production and playback principles from that realm to create a piece whose every element has been carefully considered.
Emika is on a quest to try and change what we mean when we talk about ‘classical music’. For her, the magic of the ‘genre’ is about the instruments themselves and more importantly the people who play them; not the restricting traditions and conventions of the classical world itself. I want to change the face of classical music and give it a more honest and real image. It is time we had something other than pomp and circumstance and avant-garde squeaks and pops.”

Andy Moor (guitar) and Yannis Kyriakides (computer) lovingly deconstruct and reassemble their favourite Rebetika music in a set of 9 pieces that encompass a wide scope of musical vision. This is an unusual and original take on the so called "blues" music of the Greek diaspora of the early 20th century. Originally recorded and released as an exclusive download for seven things, this live set recorded in Glasgow’s CCA in 2006 is a re-release collaboration between discrepant & unsounds. On vinyl for the first time after the cd release on Unsounds in 2010.

Vigilant electronics and desolated soundscapes by Lundin Oil aka Abdulla Rashim with the first long player under this moniker. Ltd supplies!

We present the third instalment of our mega compilation album, FUTURES Vol. 3, containing 46 artists with 44 tracks running in at 82 minutes. Fam unite on this ultra chill release, featuring the quality grooves of some lo-fi community favourites and some fresh faces to the scene.

This is one for the people, all the studio dwellers lighting up their SP's providing the soundtrack to the forever chill life.

Unreleased Neo Classic tracks by Max Richter. Hauschka, Johann Johannsson, Dustin O’Halloran, Sylvain Chauveau, etc. on Fat Cat's sub label 130701.

Boris Blenn from Berlin releases a Nu Jazz Downtempo full-length album, ‘Berlin Future Lounge’ on Cold Busted. A seasoned producer with a colorful background, Boris Blenn delivers with this 14-track album, a fruitful and joyful collection of sounds. Fans of Prefuse73, Pole, Mark Farina and Gotan Project will likely dig this album.

On the "Transmissions from Revarsavr" LP, Lumisokea continue their exploration of rhythm technology and electro-acoustic experiments while paying tribute to the pioneering spirit of the visionary inventors and composers from the early 20th century from the former Soviet Union. Linking the polyrhythmic ferocity of “Apophenia” (Opal Tapes 2014) to the otherworldly acoustic biotope of “Mnemosyne” (Alter 2015), “Transmission from Revarsavr” presents a meticulously balanced aural web of spiralling polyrhythmic constructions, clashing and chiming copper plates, sub-zero bass shudders and glowing synths. Combining their fondness of electro-acoustic experimentalism with traditional rhythm science from southern India and Korea, Lumisokea create a music in which the pulsating rhythms wind and coil unto themselves like a snake biting its own tail while metallic clangs and howling drones float in and out of focus. The point of departure for “Transmissions from Revarsavr” was a recording Lumisokea made in early 2014 of Vladimir Popov’s “Noise Instruments” - remarkable mechanical contraptions designed in the 1920’s to imitate the sounds of the coming industrial era. Like the “Noise Instruments”, many of these initially outlandish and far-fetched sounds have imperceptibly become self-evident to present-day music, while pioneers such as Arseny Avraamov (aka Revarsavr) and Vladimir Popov have been largely forgotten. With these “Noise Instruments” as a basis, Lumisokea craft the spiraling rhythm trips of “Generation Z” and “Nanissaanah”, the eerie procession of “Buk”, the rapid-fire blasts of “Hyman Otor”, the spectral shimmering dub of “Engrams” and the corroded percussion-mayhem of “Uroboros”. The album has been mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, features artwork by Darren Brian Adcock and will be released on LP and digital formats by Opal Tapes on January 22nd 2016. The "Noise Machines" used in the recording are courtesy of The Music Laboratory (Moscow) and were recorded at the ReNoise exhibition in Berlin by Lumisokea. Lumisokea would like to give special thanks to Konstantin Dudakov-Kashuro, Peter Aido and Evgenia Vorobyeva for the permission to use and record the reproductions of Vladimir Popov’s “Noise Instruments”.

First split LP in a brand new series of collaborations, pairing artists working on the fringes - or not at all. This first split pairs Brighton’s Blood Stereo's tape “Gonk” with Hair & Treasure's “Farm Life Loops”. Blood Stereo are Dylan Nyoukis and Karen Constance, a British institution, the sound complete immersion for people who don't immerse easily. Idiot twins Burchill and Slim may behave as though they own Sussex, but Constance and Nyoukis are immune to their surroundings, making livid eyes at confused glitter vixens up and down this squalid isle. Hair & Treasure are Alex Jones and Goncalo F. Cardoso, a prankster randy dust duo from nowhere dwelling on tape loops and webbed finger piano ballads. The material was pulled from a mound of who cares electro-acoustic improvised sessions as an offering to the associated deities of the zwieback buttermilk trade.

Discrepant presents Tiago Sousa's brand new LP with collaborations from Tó Trips, Ricardo Ribeiro, Balthazar Molina and Rebecca Roth.
Expect a unique work by one of the most interesting and intriguing musicians to come out of the burgeoning Portuguese music scene.

WM009 is the debut album from White Material co founder Young Male. A collection of dark ambient and textured experimental songs created as a personal soundtrack for life in uncertain times. Paranoia, lust, virtual experience, and tension/release are themes explored in this tour through a dystopian American landscape.

I‘ll skip your school, I‘ll change the rules“ sings Fee R. Kuerten aka Tellavision on ‘Juxtaposition‘ a short but poignant track on her latest album ‘The Third Eye‘. Though it‘s seemingly only a small moment on the record amongst grander gestures – performed half-jokingly in the form of an avantgardist nursery rhyme – it manages to sum up Tellavision‘s modus operandi perfectly. The singer, instrumentalist, and producer is no stranger to trying new things. Over the course of three albums, she honed a very distinct sound aesthetic where there seems to be a twist lurking around the odd corner – be it musical styles clashing, unexpected dynamical shifts or her soulful yet unusually expressive vocal delivery that swings like a pendulum between Pop-exuberance and DIY-understatement. With ‘jux TAP O Remixes‘ Tellavision makes the move to give the songs of her LP ‘The Third Eye‘ to a group of diverse artists to broaden the musical realm of her work even further. The selection of remixers was natural to Fee R. Kuerten as she is a vital and integral part of the DIY music scene, whether she is performing shows in the US and Europe or collaborating with other like-minded musicians. As much as we are familiar with remixes, mashups, and shreds from the music we know, ‘jux TAP O Remixes‘ somehow manages to be a quite surprising compilation of reworkings and deconstructions. From the opening Hammond hooks by Look Look to the modular sound dissections of René Huthwelker, from Host Stuart‘s pitch-vocal discotheque to the tape mangling synth excursions of Window Magic, from Tintin Patrone‘s concrète teasings to Zooanzoo‘s liquid transformations – the range and sheer creative joy of sonic exploration is ever present. Essentially, it‘s these traits that make the music of Tellavision refreshingly engaging and real in the first place.