Downbeat | Electronica | Leftfield 49 Items

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.

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.

10 year anniversary edition on orange & red marble vinyl. While his formative years were spent listening to everything from Yes to Photek, Scott Hansen didn't get his hands on an actual guitar or drum machine until he left his native Sacramento for San Francisco in 1995. "Encountering this whole new world at 20 years old was a profound experience," says Hansen, better known by his musical pseudonym Tycho and as the graphic artist Iso50. "At the time, I was just learning the processes of design and music; both felt very similar, and have flowed back and forth for me ever since."As seamless as his two creative outlets have been, nearly a decade passed before the release of Hansen's first proper Tycho LP, Sunrise Projector (later expanded and reissued under the title Past Is Prologue). And while three striking singles have emerged since then, the sum of all those sepia-toned parts is nowhere near the double-exposed soundscapes of Dive. The product of a prolonged break from IS050's design work and blog, it pays tribute to Tycho's prismatic past (the dense, guitar-guided turning points of "Daydream" and "Adrift") but spends most of its time pointing to the project's not-so-distant future.That can mean any number of things, really, from the halcyon hooks and hopeful horizons of "A Walk" to the expansive, wildly expressive tone poetry of the title track, an eight-minute epic that unfolds like a compressed concept album. Or at the very least, a restless vision of prog-rock - one that's been coated in neon colors and filtered through a thick piece of blotter paper. And then there's "Elegy," a spare curtain closer that pairs a vulnerable crescendo with a fitting bridge to future works.And with that, Dive establishes its position as the most diverse musical statement of Hansen's multi-medium career; the point where his skills as a performer finally catch up with his vaporized vision of a world that doesn't belong to any particular time or place."Nostalgia is a common thread in my work," says Hansen, "but this album wasn't driven by that idea. I see these songs as artifacts from a future which might have more in common with our past than our present."

10th Anniversary Edition on black & orange swirl vinyl! A decade ago, the static signal of "Terminal" booting-up sounded and Galactic Melt launched into the atmosphere for the first time; Seth Haley's Com Truise project arrived in full. A graphic designer based in New Jersey at the time, Haley found a sound on his synthesizers that sparked an immediate nostalgia response, tapping into classic sci-fi and proto-electro in a way that felt early '80s in scope, but also remarkably weird - stutter-step proggy and intoxicatingly psychedelic. Unknowingly he had stepped into a genre prism; suppose we know it now as synth-wave though the tag never landed squarely. To Haley, this was a space to explore and a story to tell, which he'd do across a saga of releases that would resonate with a legion of fans and send the producer touring the world in perpetual orbit. His full-length debut on Ghostly International, Galactic Melt delivered on the promise of Haley's Cyanide Sisters EP as well as high-profile remixes for Twin Shadow, Neon Indian, and Daft Punk. Bold, imaginative, and unapologetically cosmic, the set occupies a beloved coordinate in the Com Truise catalog, considered the gateway for many. To celebrate its 10th anniversary, Haley and Ghostly have repressed the long-sold out 2xLP and added five unreleased tracks to the expanded digital edition, giving this classic its due treatment as it passes the milestone. From the keyed-up, skyscraping machine love of "vhs Sex" and "Cathode Girls" to pulsing cuts like "Air Cal" and "Ether Drift," the music on Galactic Melt is mathy, forlorn, funky, and mighty in technical ambition. That they're all noticeably cinematic is, of course, by design. Haley envisioned Galactic Melt as a "sort of film score...from the mind," chronicling the life and death of Com Truise, the world's first synthetic/robotic astronaut, from his creation and time on earth to his subsequent mission to a newly discovered galaxy called Wave 1 (released in 2014).

"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.”

Limited edition for Black Friday Record Store Day 2021!

limited to 500 copies

Horizontal Structures is palpably a more open, more expressive album than the previous studio recording, Vertical Ascent. There is more contrast, more light and shade. St Hilaire and Muellbauer add fresh drama and swing to the intimate tonal and rhythmic interactions of the core grouping.

Volker Bertelmann and Hildur Guðnadóttir hardly need an introduction - their distinct styles have graced the speakers of pretty much anyone enamored with experimental music in the last decade, and between them the two have chalked up an enviable canon of successes. Bertelmann, under the Hauschka moniker has explored the extremities of prepared piano improvisation, and Guðnadóttir has taken cinematic, explorative cello music into a new era of depth and passion, so to hear them both together is a rare and unexpected treat. Rare is putting it lightly even - „Pan Tone“ is a recording of a single concert which the duo performed on the 26th of February 2010 as part of Arctic Circle - Bubbly Blue and Green festival at Kings Place in London, and documents an event that would truly never be repeated. Sure, they could attempt to re-create the event, but the spontaneity and glorious serendipity in this particular recording is a pleasure to behold.

Bertelmann and Guðnadóttir decided to create a set of compositions which based on the idea of the ocean, and took a book of Pantones to extract exact references to the specific colors of the sea. These watery tones form the backbone of the performance and inform the direction of the collaboration, guiding us through rich blues, glassy greens and frothy whites. In listening to the music it seems incredibly appropriate that the artists should choose blue as the middle ground in their work; the ineffable lightness that Bertelmann brings to the table is a stark contrast to Guðnadóttir´s sinking darkness, and as the two styles collide we witness a plethora of tones, shades and hues. It sounds as if the two artists have been playing together for decades, and their sound is so perfectly matched you might wonder why it´s taken them this long to collaborate. All that´s left for us to do is to soak in the tidal beauty of this very exclusive body of music, to listen to it sing, bubble and crash through its duration before settling in total silence. When the record reaches its conclusion there is an unsettling calm, a sense that you have witnessed something very special indeed, and that is a feeling to prize amongst all else.

Deluxe edition. Includes 3 exclusive tracks. Biophilia is an interdisciplinary exploration of the universe and its physical forces - particularly those where music, nature, and technology meet - inspired by these relationships between musical structures and natural phenomena, from the atomic to the cosmic. The Independent on Sunday calls it "brilliantly original and ambitious .

This version of the album is housed in a six-panel cardboard package.

2LP, remaster - Imperial Tiger Orchestra's Mercato [12th years Anniversary Edition] includes the best of both albums Mercato & Addis Abeba remastered with bonuses live recordings in London, Paris, Addis, Tokyo & Cape Town.

Three years have passed since the world first learned of Ursula Bogner's work. Since then, her identity has been surrounded by rumours, her graphic work have been exhibited (ceacc, Strasbourg, France, 2011 and elsewhere) and her compositional instructions have been performed (by Mo Loschelder, Andrew Pekler, Kassian Troyer, Jan Jelinek among others). The release of Sonne = Blackbox brings together all of these aspects in one CD and book: compiled by Andrew Pekler, the album presents Bogner's early experiments with voice and tape music – a previously unknown emotional side of her music is revealed here through her singing.

The 126 page book contains, along with drawings, photos and other curiosities from Bogner’s life, an introduction by Jan Jelinek, texts by Momus, Andrew Pekler, Tim Tetzner, and Bettina Klein as well as interviews with the orgone researcher Jürgen Fischer and the ethnographer Kiwi Menrath. Sonne = Blackbox attempts to locate Ursula Bogner, the sound experimentalist within broader cultural history. A central theme is the phenomenon of fake: how did the erroneous suspicion of fakery come about in the case of Ursula Bogner and what is a post-fake? Answers in this book.

Following on from his last EP, 'Stacker Upper', Lunice returns to his spiritual home, LuckyMe, looking more confident than ever with his next release, 'One Hunned'. Much like his fellow LuckyMe cohorts, Hudson Mohawke and Rustie, Lunice takes ample inspiration from 80s/90s r'n'b, but still manages to be part of a small contingency of producers who are completely carving out a whole new path. Expect big neon-clad synths, soul laden vocal snippets and slick as hell drum-programming, with remixes from The Blessings and Girl Unit to boot.

Pictureplane has made his name circling the outer limits of pop culture in several mediums. The Brooklyn-based artist's gallery works, shown both in the U.S. and abroad, collide familiar with fringe and hard lines with visceral spatter. His Alien Body clothing line serves up a stylized study of symbology, the occult, and societal decay. And his music—beautiful yet heavy, swirling wild strains of industrial dance, gothic hip-hop, and emotive New Age—treats electronics not as artificial, but as extensions of our analog selves. After a decade thrashing the status quo, Egedy is not only kin to makers of lovely dark music everywhere, but a vital player in the global DIY community. He is a proud outsider, yes, but his tribe is legion and ever-growing.

In 2011, Pictureplane's Thee Physical arrived, marking a major leap forward. Egedy's voice was suddenly dripping sex at the forefront of a lush synthscape, while cuts like "Trancegender" and "Breath Work" explored the human body with gender-dissolving aplomb. He moved to Brooklyn in 2012 in order to stoke alt-rave culture from a more powerful vantage before teaming up with fabled indie-rap imprint Anticon for Technomancer (2015), an LP about the blurring line between ourselves and our machines. Along the way, Egedy's toured with everyone from Crystal Castles and Major Lazer to the Faint and Gang of Four. He has remixed Lil B; been remixed by Grimes; collaborated with bands (Prayers) and SoundCloud stars (Goth Boi Clique)

Autopsia is a cult art project dealing with music and visual production. Its art practice began in London in the late 1970s and continued during the 1980s in the art centers of the former Yugoslavia. Since 1990, Autopsia has acted from Prague, Czech Republic. Above all Autopsia is not concerned with music. What is Autopsia? Art? Theory? Framing? Projection? Gaze? Autopsia is language is image is sound. Autopsia is a tombstone on the grave of time. Autopsia is archaeology. The discourse of the beginning and about the beginning. At the beginning is Death and the pity of Death. The music is in the pity. The music of Autopsia oscillates from romanticism to avantgarde, from industrial rhythms and dark ambient drones to relentless choral swells and academic minimalism. Autopsia Archive 1982-1995 Engineered & Mastered at Mustakillah Studio Prague, 2017

Continuing our ambitious People Like Us vinyl reissue program with Welcome Aboard – a strangely relevant 10-year-old album (originally released in May 2011) when People Like Us aka Vicki Bennett became stranded in the US after the Icelandic Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption closed much of northern Europe’s airspace. Volcanically marooned in Baltimore and NYC, Bennett utilized some of her “free” time to work on the album and even gained audio contributions from fellow experimental musicians Jason Willett (of Half Japanese) and M.C. Schmidt (of Matmos) via her extended stay. Bennett derived thematic material of displacement, travel, and a longing for elsewhere from the natural disaster that caused her own predicament. Now strangely echoed by the Covid-19 outbreak and the various grounding of planes and stay at home policies worldwide.

Originally released in 2011, Small Black's chillwave mixtape classic "Moon Killer" highlights the band's range of influences while masterfully incorporating it all into their signature sound. It is now available for the first time on vinyl with bonus tracks! Limited to 500qty. Comes with a digital download of the album.

High quality reissue of the monumental work August 1974 by Japanese experimental music ensemble Taj Mahal Travellers. Pressed on 180gr. vinyl with extensive liner notes by Julian Cowley. Remastered & Cut by Rashad Becker. In April 1972 a group of Japanese musicians set off from Rotterdam in a Volkswagen van. As they crossed Europe and then made their way through Asia they made music in a wide range of locations. They also paid close attention to the changing scene and to differing ways of life. Midway through May they reached their destination, the iconic Taj Mahal on the bank of the Yamuna river in Agra, India. The Taj Mahal Travellers had fulfilled physically the promise of the name they adopted when they formed in 1969. But their music had always been a journey, a sonic adventure designed to lead any listener’s imagination into unfamiliar territory.

For their Summer Of Seven tracks Iso68 have, as usual, recorded many live instruments. We hear drums, guitar, keys, and brass, mixed into two tight tracks which unfold their addiction not at first glance. But after several plays the two pieces by Florian Zimmer (who also plays with the bands Saroos and Jersey) and Thomas Leboeg (member of Hamburg?s Popband Kante) become essential beauties.

Brand new 5 track EP by Chazwick Bundick!

Rare, super limited 002 from SATURATE! Records 7’’ single series, featuring the now legendary Coco Bryce with some wonky, honey dripping beats. Head bob neck snaps.

Goto80 from Sweden is one of the heroes of the chiptunes scene. He makes his music only with old soundchips, above all the SID chip from the C64. The two songs he delivers here prove once more that he is a brilliant composer with this very peculiar sound. Nerd tech info: “Sombanova“ uses a 16 millisecond loop for all the instruments except the drums. The vocals of “Mamasita” have been improvised by Acid Terrorist.

/ TTB / Mahala / Raxa Remix ... Storming, squinty Shangaan Electro to herald the current European tour of Tiyiselani, the Tshetshas and producer Dog.

7” vinyl picture disc limited to 500 copies. Features two live tracks from the album ‘Milk Man’ performed
in New York in 2009.

Selten hat es in der neunjährigen Geschichte von Pingipung ein solch frenetisches Echo auf eine Ver- öffentlichung gegeben, wie auf das Album „The Ke- nya Sessions“ von Sven Kacirek (Pingipung 20). Die Kooperation des Hamburger Schlagzeugers mit ke- nianischen Musikern verbindet auf eine eigene, auf- regende Weise Electronica und afrikanische Klänge und wird deshalb in unterschiedlichsten Kontexten von der Techno- bis zur Weltmusik-Szene gefeiert. Demnächst erhält die CD den „Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik“ für das erste Quartal 2011 in der Kategorie „Nu and Extreme“. Auch mit dem Label befreundete Künstler zeigen sich ob der Qualität des Materials begeistert und Pingipung veröffentlicht deshalb Ende Mai die 10“ „The Kenya Reworks“ mit Neubearbei- tungen des Albums. Lawrence, melancholischer Hansestadt-Houser, Label-Mitbesitzer von Dial, Smallville und Laid sowie international hochgelobter DJ widmet sich dem Stück „Kayamba Tuc Tuc“. Für seinen auf die Essenz maximierten Edit klaut er dem Original viele Spuren und lässt dafür ein großes Herz zurück. Taprikk Sweezee ist neben Gizmog oder Fussel eine der viele Identitäten des Musikers Niko- lai von Sallwitz. Als Taprikk Sweezee bastelt er elektronische Soul-Beats schon zum Früh- stück. Für seinen Remix war ein einziges Original deshalb zu wenig. Zum dekonstruierten Funk von „Kayambriä“ würden wir ihn gerne zusammen mit den kenianischen Musiker der beiden Originale tanzen sehen. Außerdem auf der 10“: Eine Neubearbeitung von „Paperflowers“ von Sven Kacirek selbst, die zusammen mit dem Samy Deluxe Produzenten Sebastian Winkler entstanden ist. Und, weniger Bonus als heimlicher Höhepunkt der Platte: Das exklusive Sven Kacirek Stück „Takaye Village“.

On the heels of two volumes of the “Groove Sessions” compilations, the time had come for the three warriors of Zen mind to set their course
by the sun and create a real first album of Hip Hop, Dub, Electro and other sounds if compatible...

In glance of his highly appreciated new album "Bespoke". Tip!