Downbeat | Electronica | Leftfield 232 Items

Cover and vinyl are close to NM.

A download code is included. Cello player and electronic artist martina bertoni‘s new album „music for empty flats“ delivers masterfully crafted experimental ambient / drone for fans of hildur guðnadóttir, giulio aldinucci or lawrence english. Martina Bertoni is a berlin based cellist and composer. she started playing the cello at a very young age. Classically trained, bertoni‘s career soon developed around experimental and film music where her cello has been featured in numerous records, soundtracks for awarded movies and tv series and collaborations, among others with blixa bargeld and teho teardo with whom she recorded several albums and performed at many prestigious festivals all around the globe.

Dreams are made and displaced on Mark Fell & Rian Treanor’s oneiric electro-acoustic inception ‘Last Exit’,
borne from long days in the family garden, and assembled into a mesmerising masterpiece of minimalist
modal rhythm and atmospheric exploration, into rapt smallsound detailing in breathtaking form. It’s a bit like
listening to Virginia Astley’s ‘From Gardens Where We Feel Secure’, with washes of Autechre seeping into the
mix from outside.
‘Last Exit...’ originally appeared in a different form as a cassette release for our Documenting Sound series
in 2021, and was edited this year by Mark and Rian for this new expanded and altered edition, mastered by
Rashad Becker. It renders a painterly,psychedelic, and diaristic depiction of sublime atmospheric tension,
occasionally ruptured by their typical, asymmetric rhythm impulses in a form that rudely transcends their
respective aesthetics. Across four parts, they kern, juxtapose and diffract synthesised percussion and field
recordings into polymetric arrangements riddled with timbral nuance of a highly unpredictable nature.
While patently inflected with nods to Indonesian gamelan, Ugandan folk, Indian Carnatic classical, Morton
Feldman-esque minimalism, free jazz improvisation and a sort of rhythmic cubism that speaks to their
mutual, voracious listening habits and tastes, the results are arguably without direct compare. Attentive
listeners will recognise, however, that ‘Last Exit’ effortlessly transcends their respective styles, achieving a
new high watermark of imaginary future-hyperfolk expressed in a sort of personalised but highly relatable
meta-musical language.
Seriously, they’re working beyond known conventions here; opening to a sublime frisson of Feldman-esque
keys, birdsong and distant car engines, and closing to a combo of just-intoned drone and wafts of distant
ballroom music. The 80 minutes in between feel like returning to a dream, with flashes of FM strings dabbed
to sloshing rhythms and domestic detritus, tilting into a nervously tentative tension ruptured with abstract
dance dynamism and angular free jazz ballistics.
The rejigged recordings also reflect the fidelity of memory recall, expressing an altered perspective on
their time spent in the multigenerational family’s Rotherham garden during spring/summer 2020, replete
with their mum/grandmother on piano and overheard singing and in convo, but now fraught with a more
melancholic, distempered quality that makes for a genuinely unforgettable listening experience. A long-
form isolationist fantasy, consider it crucial listening if yr into Robert Ashley’s ‘Automatic Writing’, Graham
Lambkin, Autechre or Nuno Canavarro.

La Luna 001 is back with a limited repress on 180gram vinyl and a hand stamped outer sleeve!

La Luna is a Berlin based record label that focuses on merging music and art. Belfast based producer, Maricopa, starts of the label with his first release in over three years. This is his first mini LP and consists of 7 tracks, with three deep melodic tracks on the A side and 4 downtempo tracks on the B side. This record also features artist, Exit 47. The art work was done by Berlin based artist, Memo Vithana and is printed on the highest quality mat sleeve and pressed on 180 gram vinyl.

Cover (Something Newly Missing) by Lucas Odahara with music by Lucas' father Luiz Monteiro is a sonic exhibition catalog. The release coincides with the exhibition "Read Before the Fire", where Odahara developed a multimedia site-specific installation for the Kunstverein Grafschaft Bentheim that discusses language in times of loss: loss of memories, of social and political rights or laws. He reflects on the political turmoil in Brazil and the disappearance of large parts of the Amazon rainforest.

Captivating, cinematic, side-long Electronica & leftfield House extravaganza

"oacl" is a collaborative album by "Local Visions," which questions new pop music after Vaporwave, and Yuka Nagase, who is active in both the two-dimensional (digital) and three-dimensional (physical) fields. A limited edition vinyl record (lp) will finally be released!! Nine artists with proven ability, such as Tsudio Studio, Aotq, and upusen, who are closely associated with Local Visions label, have come together to create a new album of nostalgic and contemporary pop music, which combines a pleasant floating sound with a wistful sentiment. This is a highly anticipated collaboration between these two label / artists, who continue to radiate their one-of-a-kind worldview!!

Printed PVC sleeve. Close to NM.

There are places, they say, best left unexplored. Temples of darkness, ziggurats of gloom, resting places for those desperate souls whose essences have not fully departed this mortal plane...Who knows what awful secrets lurk there, deep in the black places of the Earth?

Lawa know. For their latest round of releases on the always forward-looking Cineploit label, the duo of Austrian mega-synthesists Alain Leonard and Alex Wank access realms as yet unseen by human eyes. Expanding on their previous records' diet of soundtrack-heavy electronics and percussive mayhem, "Manipulation" and sister album "Instrumentalization" dive headfirst into the deep end of techno darkness, taking the listener on a one-way trip into unknown dimensions of industrial, malevolent horror.

Listen. Listen closely.

Lair returns to Eotrax with a new 4-track EP. Following her 2017 self-titled debut EP, releases on Urban Legend and Rhod Records as well as collaborative projects in the visual arts and dance she returns to Eotrax to release I Hurt So I Cry this summer. Created using elements of sound healing and sacred sound I Hurt So I Cry can be engaged with from a purely musical perspective or listeners can take advantage of its sound healing qualities and use this EP as an active sound bath- active in that the listener intentionally uses the music to support them in going within and releasing, resting and restoring their body, nervous system and heart. As with all Lair’s work, the music is composed using only her voice with one exception, a sampled cello in the EPs first track Foreshadow. This brooding opener inhabits the dark ambient world we've come to expect of her music but as the EP unfolds ethereal vocal lines mix with her darker sound and a new, lighter sound world is revealed. In the artist’s words: “A shadow falls across our lives, we hurt so we cry, the feeling starts to shift and from that shift hope can spring." Both intimate and expansive, the tracks create a feeling of existing outside time. Lair’s profound connection to nature can be felt through all the tracks - at times in a deep cavern, at times moving through an elvish forest and at times in an Otherworld. Released on June 29th on red cassette & digital with artwork and design by Goldmoth Media. Mastered by Dominic at Declared Sound.

Two guitars heard, one played that listens to the second. Two superimposed timelines that are replayed through the disc. Libellule: One side with use of drone. Ébouli: a side where the guitar is detuned as the piece progresses. Guilhem Lacroux designed this disc so that it could be listened to in 45 rpm and 33 rpm. The 45 rpm, as a version of real time - I live - and the 33 rpm version that of the state of suspension, the invitation to slow time.

The newly established label Cat in the Room, created by Goodheart Productions, re-releases for the first time after almost fifty years the legendary work Smog by Kyriakos Sfetsas, one of the most important Greek contemporary composers. At the same time, in collaboration with the composer and The Hubsters, which is responsible for the digital distribution, it presents for the first time the majority of his discography in digital format.

Smog is an electro-acoustic work in five parts of equal duration (18 minutes) divided into several variable sequences. It was composed as the music score for the ballet Smog commissioned by the choreographer Michel Caserta. The work was premiered on October 18, 1974, by the Ensemble chorégraphique de Vitry at the Théâtre Jean-Vilar in Vitry-sur-Seine (Paris).

As a musical work, it has acquired over the years the scope of a legend in the electro-acoustic & avant-garde scene, for its richness and value as a composition, the composer's ingenious use of the means available at the time regarding the production of electric sounds, and their combination with natural sounds, as well as for the four-channel recording and live performance.

A new sound mastering and artwork was developed for this release in collaboration with the composer, whose liner notes are included on the cover.

Smog will be released on December 9, 2022, on a 180gr. double vinyl edition

Smokey coloured vinyl and cover are close to NM. Limited edition.

Kowton & Parris in deep concentration... In accordance with relativity, they are in some sense interchangeable, but we do know that they form co-equal parts of a larger 'thing' called space-time, and it is only within space-time that the most complete understanding of the motion and properties of natural objects and phenomena can be rigorously understood by physicists. Space and time are to space-time what arms and legs are to humans. In some sense they are interchangeable, but you cannot understand 10,000 years of human history without including both arms and legs as part of the basic human condition.

Konstantin Schimanowskis debut E.P. Vague Pure Affection is a love letter to an island in the deep north of Europe. The little Shetland island of Vaila. It is a sprawling collection of lush and airy songs, showcasing the artist talent in both songwriting and production. The music seems to drift high above the ground and Schimanowski’s voice breaks out of every pattern introduced - liberating itself the most in the E.P’s forth track „Crossing the Bridge“, where it leaps with bold passion into another space. The artwork is created by renowned danish-ukranian artist Sergei Sviatchenko. Riyl: Burial, Dean Blunt, Sebastien Tellier, Serge Gainsbourg, John Maus, Conan Mockasin

A buoyant masterpiece from the early 90s, "The Water Garden" was created by Okinawa-born Kojun Kokuba under the inspiring image of a "happy Asia" thriving in the sea-based trading networks of the medieval to pre-modern era, with the concept that various types of music, as well as physical goods, were distributed and dispersed across the seas connecting various parts of east and southeast Asia. Fittingly, the music here has definite and distinctive Ryukyu island roots, but is informed by a number of other Asian musical traditions, layering phrases derived from numerous Asian scales, often altered by Kojun, eschewing typical Western chordal harmonic movement. Kojun uses the synths and multitrack recorders of the early 90s to, in his words, "pile up lines" in sweet and not at all overbearing melodic accumulations, with a desire to distribute and disperse a new energy from Okinawa to the rest of Asia and the world. Despite a pleasing and compelling rhythmic lilt and the use of synths and drum machines, this music was not created as a product for the dance floor; Kojun envisioned a type of electronic salon music, a "light music" made with contemporary technology. This is the first LP edition of the self-produced original 1993 CD release and includes bonus tracks and liner notes in English and Japanese.

Kinzua are Lucas Brell and Marvin Uhde (known as Qnete to some), great live band. “None Of The Above” is their debut album. Powerfully introvert and extrovert at the same time. Songs of glory, decay, rebuilding and hope that found Offen at the right moment. Many moons later the album withstood the test of time and can be enjoyed in its whole glory.

Written & produced in different spheres by Lucas Brell & Marvin Uhde at CSG Studios, Leipzig and M90 Remise, Berlin.

Voice on „The Dancing Snake“ by Giulia Fournier-Mercadante (Gigi FM) with words from „Les Fleurs de Mal“ by Charles Beaudelaire

Mastered by Vril Artwork by Himbeer Pepe Sleeve by Percy

Valance Drakes and Kero team up for their first collaborative endeavor. The EP, Abstract Thought is an evident fusion of both artist’s unique styles, bringing together elements of glitch, Hip hop, Detroit techno, and a whole lot of space vibes.
My hands float before my face, drifting in defiance of gravity, willfulness brought on by forces beyond my own. Things stop very abruptly with a crash the shakes my eyes in their very sockets, rattling reverberation pushing painfully through my skull.
One thousand days in space feels like nothing and everything all at once. Children grow, faces fill with wrinkles and I stay still.
Until my eyes begin to shake and everything turns to television static flashing somewhere inches behind vision. Is someone stepping on my throat?
I’ve crashed into something hard and barren. Is that electricity I see, clinging to my hands?
I spring across an earth or planet or meteorite that crumbles beneath my boots and sways in the air moving so swiftly about my body, dust flying up into the visor of the helmet that saves me, threatening cracks, ruckus.
I can hear my heartbeat in here. I wonder if this is what it sounds like in the womb. The rope connecting me to the ship is something like an umbilical cord. Is it not? Maybe it’s a vacuum. Maybe I’m not born yet after all.

We finally made it: Bewith100lp! And what better way for a re-issue label to celebrate such a landmark catalogue number than to give it to a record of new music. We couldn’t resist when the artist is Official Be With Family Member Kenny Dickenson and when the music is his lovely, lovely score to French-Vietnamese artist Mai Hua's 2020 documentary film “Les Rivières”. If you enjoy the more minimal, intimate piano of the likes of Nils Frahm or John Carroll Kirby’s solo work, you’re certain to fall for this beautiful album.

Taking six years to make, Mai’s film explores what happened when she brought her dying grandmother to France, pulling together four generations of women from the same family. Kenny’s score accompanies all the pretty things, sad things, dirty, beautiful, happy, broken and reborn moments of these women’s experiences.

Mad genius and longtime member of Urban Tribe, Kemetrix unleashes eight tracks of pure, raw, anthemic, futuristic techno from the streets of Detroit. A clinic in the sacred and profane, the horror and the beauty, that can only be brought to you by someone that has truly lived it.