Downbeat | Electronica | Leftfield 345 Items

Produced by Brian Eno and Fred Gibson

4th April 2020 - 23rd December 2022

Mastered by Kieran Hebden

Lacquer cut by Bernie Grundman

Artwork by loose

Gatefold photograph by Brian Eno

"In 1978 I started making experimental home recordings with my old schoolfriend Alan Clark. We both had Akai 4000ds reel-to-reels, which made for easy swapping of locations and ideas. We would meet most evenings to record – for the best part of two years. Much of the music on this tape comes from those experiments.

Some of my solo pieces on this cassette were on a compilation cassette I made for my friend Brad Day, who in 1979 was working at Beggars Banquet record shop in Earl's Court. He happened to be playing it in the shop when co-manager Peter Kent walked in and asked who it was. From that I was offered a 7" release on the Axis label Peter was starting with his colleague Ivo Watts-Russell, and my first gig was organised at Mayhem Studio in Battersea, supporting Vice Versa. With another schoolfriend, Steve Player on guitar and Stylophone 350s, my 16-year-old brother Peter Knight on backing tapes and backing vocals, and me on Vcs3 and vocals, we put a set together within a week. The filmmaker John Maybury projected Super-8 films over us at the gig, and suggested we call ourselves The Fast Set – as all three of us were rooted static to the spot with nerves. The name stuck, and it now seems appropriate to retrospectively apply that name to our previous untitled endeavours.

This cassette release is a 'patchwork' I constructed back in 1980 of the late-70s home recordings – both solo or with Alan. There were two projects back then – the experimental pieces, and the electronic 'pop' songs. This release consists of the former, which I feel age has been kinder to. The tapes had remained untouched for over 40 years until I baked and transferred them recently, so please excuse the hiss, distortion, pops, crackles, and wobbles, as I wish to maintain the integrity and home-made feel of the original recordings." – David Knight, London, 10 January 2024.

London-based musician David Knight has been a member of/worked with: The Fast Set, Five Or Six, Shock Headed Peters, Left Hand Right Hand, Arkkon, The Amal Gamal Ensemble, The Stargazer's Assistant, and Lydia Lunch. He wrote and recorded with Danielle Dax throughout the 1980s, and currently works with Stephen Thrower (Coil, Cyclobe) in UnicaZürn.

Recorded between 1978 and 1980 in Battersea, London on an Akai 4000ds and later a Teac 3300sx. Instruments used: EMS Vcs3, Roland System 100, Hohner K4 String Machine, Dubreq 350s, Piano, Guitar, Percussion, Roland Re201 Space Echo, Colorsound Ring Modulator, EHX Small Stone Phaser, Ibanez Standard Fuzz. Written, recorded and performed by David Knight and Alan Clark. Compiled and mastered by David Knight.

Artwork by Danielle Dax.

The fourth album by Vilnius-based composer Aleksandra Evseeva aka Andra Ljos is as runic and ritualistic as the Bronze Age monoliths for which it’s named: Megalithic Statues of Vishapakar. Found mainly in the Armenian Highlands, vishaps are cigar-shaped slabs of stone carved with fish heads or snakes, depicting a sacred serpent of Armenian folklore thought to protect sources of water from drought and ruin. The music evokes a similarly arcane and devotional air, between raga, séance, and 4th world hallucination.

The track titles allude to significant vishap discovery sites, spanning lakes, bays, mountains, and temples. Wood block percussion wobbles beneath lattices of looped keys, golden organ, synthetic strings and flutes, distant birds, muffled voices, and the soft wash of restless waters. Evseeva’s muse may be mined from her Armenian heritage but the songs conjure a mood more elusive and expansive – pensive pastorals for a land of long shadows and ancient fears, strewn with cryptic relics swiftly dissipating into myth.

The mysterious Polish duo digs out a new collection of degraded echoes, salvaged from authority. Galvanised as if lost to the shock of formal experiments. Ubek III revises the present and takes us back to other versions of actuality.

Robert Sotelo is a bedroom pop songsmith who lives in Glasgow. Sotelo has released six albums since 2017, three of which came out on Upset The Rhythm. He also performs in Order of the Toad, Dancer and Nightshift. Mary Currie is best known as half of touchstone DIY experimentalists Flaming Tunes, alongside Gareth Williams (of This Heat). Currie also performed in Officer! with Mick Hobbs amongst others.

Tokyo visionist Soshi Takeda’s second album took shape across eight months of the winter and spring, inspired by an iconic mid-80’s photography book of Chinese landscapes. Scenes of lantern-lit fishing boats on misty mountain lakes seeded a mood of hidden paradise, ancient waterways snaking secret paths into the past.

Recorded at his home studio using exclusively hardware synths and samplers from the 1990’s, the six songs of Floating Mountains (plus digital-only bonus cut, “Deep Breath,” from the recent 2nd Life Silk compilation) evoke shrouded cinematic vistas of liquid skies and shining lakes, like some Li River twist on Balearic half-light house. Shades of cosmic drift and crystalline electronica ebb and flow within the nocturnal pulse, pagodas and pearls reflecting the waning moon: “I hope you can feel the cool and exotic atmosphere.”

Based in the South Moravian city of Brno, Finnish multi-instrumentalist Simo Hakalisto aka Shakali crafts surreal terrariums of strings, synthetics, wood, and wind, teeming with bio-electronic synchronicities. Rihmastossa further finesses the project’s eclectic lexicon of electro-acoustic world-building, utilizing a gallery of instruments both ancient and advanced: solar-powered sine wave generators, singing bowls, metallophones, microtonal synths wired into tree slabs, lap harps, amplified found objects, percussion filters, flutes.

This is world music in the most naturalistic sense – subtle spatial ecosystems of climate, vibration, landscape, and species, as alluded to in the track titles about fungal colonies, extinct birds, rare worms, and pine forests. Hakalisto’s work in various exploratory duos (Gnäw, Lunar Horns, Thistle) has honed his instincts for atmospheric improvisation, but when alone he embeds even deeper into the terrain, acting as conduit as much as creator. Across seven free-flowing fugue states of texture and resonance, his touch simmers beneath the surface, guided by shifting light and hidden hands.

The London-based electronic musician Luke J Murray aka Stonecirclesampler and the award-winning writer Travis Elborough have combined forces on a new collaboration to be released on The Tapeworm label under the title 'Memorex'.

Luke J Murray is a man of many musical aliases, releasing and performing variously as: Superior Grime London Blue DNB-like South Sand Dynamics Luke Marblex The In 2.5G Label White Dark Rainfall J Escape NCR London The From Cracks In Concrete 900Cold Liquid DJ Pulp Grime Murray The endorphin Old 0161 Conflicting 2 Solo Widens Damage Ambient Glow Electronics and Stonecirclesampler.

Described by The Guardian as 'one of the country's finest pop culture historians', Travis Elborough's books include 'Wish You Were Here: England on Sea', 'The Long-Player Goodbye', a hymn to vinyl records that inspired the Bbc4 documentary 'When Albums Ruled the World', in which he also appeared, 'Through the Looking Glasses: The Spectacular Life of Spectacles' and 'Atlas of Vanishing Places', winner of Edward Stanford Travel Book Award in 2020.

Carla Boregas is a Brazilian musician, composer and sound artist. By merging synthetic and acoustic instrumentation and techniques, Boregas builds up sonic scenarios driven by an invisible force, where the sensation of presence and discovery lies between density and delicacy. Her work spans composition, improvisation, performance, sound installation and radio art, and aims to transport the listener to different subjective perspectives of time and space, to invoke memories and to reflect about the nature-human relationship.
Carla Boregas writes: "Using a Tascam Portastudio 4-track cassette recorder, I invited three musicians to improvise alone with the sound recording of the sea that I did in Massaguaçu, the place where I used to live in Brasil. The recorder that I used had a defect in one of its tracks, therefore I could only invite two musicians – Vinicius Cajado (double bass) and Réka Csiszér (cello), plus the sea in another track. While listening to the tracks together, I felt a deep sense of absence ("ausência" in Portuguese). Perhaps due to their sonorous answers surrounded by the tape hiss? Because that's one of the symbolic meanings of the ocean? Maybe "saudades do mar, de estar ao seu outro lado"? Who knows – listening can be something very mysterious. Afterwards I played with and interweaved them all: the sonorous sea, Vinicius Cajado, Réka Csiszér and the absence - "Absência Tape" is the final result." – Carla Boregas, Berlin, 8 August 2024.

Contexture is another classic example of a true friends & family gathering. The Nijmegen based imprint, running for over 12 years was born out of a tight group of friends with the same passion. 12 years later, their strongest releases are still based on this exact same principle, collect and release music from the inner circle. Julien Fuentes, Dorcas label head, starts things easy with his Klaridub ambient mix. It's quickly followed by familiar Eshu faces Jocelyn and Yasin Engwer, classic dub techno beats from the Eshu vaults. There's also room for new faces, the recently launched collaborative project between Vand and Shoal as Voal dropping their 'Eight Ball' as their Eshu label debut. Flawless minimalistic grooves that make a perfect fit for their long awaited contribution. Label head Ivano Tetelepta teams up with Pirat Records own Christine Benz. After sharing the DJ booth together multiple times they also joined forces in the studio recently and crafted this squeeky techno drifter. There's also an additional 10", exclusive to the Eshu Bandcamp, includes two beats from Klaridub, bringing some excellent smoke ready, head steady dub-techno cuts.

Record Sounds Like: "Detroit electronics via Shudehill" (quote from review of C!H track in Flux magazine)

Byo-Jo Recordings presents "The Way Back Forward (Volume 2)" the final record by Caution!Horses, slated for release on Monday, September 16, 2024. The brainchild of Andrew Odia, also known as Caution!Horses, this album marks a pivotal moment in the artist's eclectic journey through electronic music. It seamlessly blends Detroit electronic sounds with the unique cultural flair of Manchester’s Shudehill.

This release follows the critically acclaimed first volume and delves deeper into the intersection of classical music influences and modern electronic experimentation. With a track list that includes the juxta positioned Funk of "Angelfun(k)" and "Renewal", and the contradictory "Summer Holiday", each piece is a testament to Odia’s unique take on Detroit's synthetic roots.

Caution!Horses, raised on classical music and Radio 3, has honed a unique sound through years of diverse musical influences. Early indie favourites like New Order and The Fall, and electronic pioneers such as Propaganda and Cabaret Voltaire, have all played a part in shaping his musical ethos. Odia’s journey from Manchester to Sheffield and back, along with pivotal experiences in electronic hubs like Berlin, has deeply influenced his creative output.

"The Way Back Forward (Volume 2)" marks not only the final release from Caution!Horses but a great record of his dedication to his craft and his ability to adapt and evolve. Drawing on his formative years of DJing and party organizing, and his extensive experience in music production, Odia pushes at the boundaries of electronic music. Paying homage to his influences, including Robert Gordon of Warp and Richard H. Kirk of Cabaret Voltaire, but also carving out a unique space in the modern electronic music landscape.

After marking their return following 15 years on ice, Out of Practice Volume 2 is an unflinching exposition of the duo’s omnivorous tastes and mettle for white hot psychedelia. In a typical style they assume versions of their early selves, circa roles in Portland’s burgeoning noise scene, around the turn of the millennium, when they would collapse myriad influences - noise, industrial, drone, hardcore, dub, free improv and modern composition - into a blistering maelstrom, and record an almost innumerable slew of releases until disbanding in 2008. Since their cheerio, Pete Swanson has issued occasional solo works and helped Jed Bindeman build the Freedom to Spend label into a notable showcase of their sprawling tastes, whilst Gabe has carved a solid path of drone works under his own name for the likes of Shelter Press and Miasmah. Reunited, they now remind us to the thrill of USA’s noise nexus in the ‘00s, when everyone from Wolf Eyes to Bill Kouligas and 0PN would emerge with wildly differing styles that could still be placed on the same page, and which felt like a big fuck off to preceding eras. That formative buzz fuels the YS cuts here, which both started out with playback samples of their respective influences, mutated and masticated by their overdriven onslaught. In ‘Oblivion Access 6-16-23’, recorded live in Austin on their first show in 15 years, they chew the hell out of 13th Floor Elevators - the psychedelic rock analog to their psych noise - murking a tape loop for nearly 10 minutes of pounding bass and wall-of-noise distortion, before the original sample is revealed in the vinegar strokes. Better yet, the B-side sees them rinse out Suicide into coruscating clouds of greyscale noise bliss that short circuits distinctions of late stage The Caretaker and Alberich, and almost feels like it could have come out via V/Vm Test Records’ in its heyday.

Billed as the first in a series of releases documenting the duo’s reunion last year, ‘Out of Practice I’ finds Pete Swanson and Gabriel Mindel Saloman raiding their archive to excavate a bunch of fragments now arranged into “verrrry loose” songs. The first side was recorded at Denver’s Glob in November last year, and leads in remarkably slowly, spluttering through a haze of garbled noise and close-miked madness before Saloman’s unmistakable sustained wails just about emerge thru the static. Their saturated gusts curl around choral fragments as their guitar slowly mutates into a shoegaze gloop of strangled harmonics. And still, they’re not quite done: when the smoke clears, acoustic twangs shuttle us into a different landscape entirely, flipping the piece on its head. Dubbed at Austin’s Oblivion Access in June, ‘Side B’ is a different rendering of the same basic principles. The duo sail into cacophony quicker, offsetting their pebble-dashed concrète with visceral squeals, and when the harmonic relief finally arrives, it’s blown into foghorn trails of blistered feedback. It’s YS at their most ferocious, spangling through a good few minutes of harsh noise before the feedback wilts into melancholy, leading us out with a slow hum as electrical sparks shimmer into the aether.

With their second album on Muzan Editions, Osaka’s DUP SYS delivers a sound that might be best described as an updated version of John Hassel’s idea of 4th world music. Put your headphones on and feel fully immersed in DUP Sys’ rich sounding combination of field recordings and evocative soundscapes.

Sontag Shogun’s Jesse Perslstein and Shinya Sugimoto join Muzan with a follow-up to 2019’s “I Confess”. A long-form piece broken into four parts, that tells a story of change, of love found and lost. Using soundscapes taken from travels, voicemails, conversations about loss and love, and adding lamenting vocals, noise and piano, this album encapsulates the distance between people, both geographic and emotionally, and the delicate passage of time.

Daarbuiten is Muzan Editions’ first collaboration with Belgian sound maestro David Edren. His gamelan-like rhythms and catchy melodies create a sound that feels dynamic and playful at the same time. Edren likes to think that the album offers an organic flow of sounds/ideas and evokes a 'live feel'. He envisions it as an ode to the outside world and its multifaceted reality. Its tracks hinting towards atmospheres, vibes and hidden stories.Daarbuiten is Muzan Editions’ first collaboration with Belgian sound maestro David Edren. His gamelan-like rhythms and catchy melodies create a sound that feels dynamic and playful at the same time. Edren likes to think that the album offers an organic flow of sounds/ideas and evokes a 'live feel'. He envisions it as an ode to the outside world and its multifaceted reality. Its tracks hinting towards atmospheres, vibes and hidden stories.

Tensor Norm is back. In this ocassion, we visit differents locations of the world geography to bring you an EP full of electro, breaks, acid and IDM.

Side A goes into the coordinates of dark electro in different ways. “Cell Reprogramming” by Clone Theory (one of its members is Heuristic Audio) is a spatial track with smooth percussion, a heavy, oscillating bassline and minimal melodic design. On “Automorphism”, Sigma_ALgebra resorts to smooth percussion and a drone-like oscillating bassline to generate a floating feel, over which choppy, lightning-like melodic profiles occur. Finally, north american LectrO cOd-E, speeds up the tempo to expose the military round bass, synth twitches and vocoder transmissions of “Morphology”.

Side B is incided in borderline spaces with the incorporation of acid sounds as main elements. After an opening that programs the rhythmic structure and adds pad atmosphere, “Amenacid” by Liðvarð aka DJ VLR ratchets up the tension through a brief acid line modified steadily but subtly. The EP closes with “Phanaire Luses”, a track with typical IDM resources with which, through the accumulation of bleep-like emissions, acid figures, sparks and amorphous sounds, Jaquarius builds a psychedelic track.

Deepart, vétéran de la Techno bizarre Londonienne des années 90 et l’artiste inaugural du label Rush Hour, rencontra Remer Cier, debutant sur Youth, à Plastic People, lors de la soirée séminale CDR, un set improvisé de nouvelle musique électronique. Après presque 20 ans de dialogue erudite, de performances et expositions au Chelsea College of Art et au Royal College of Art, nous présentons leur collection d’improvisations afrofuturistes, enregistrée au Beaconsfield Gallery, Vauxhall, Londres en 2021.

Dédié à Søren Holm et tous amis absents

Merci à Joviale, collaboratice au dessin

Vibraphone Records re-issues the legendary Minimal Vision II from 1993. It's the first re-press since since 31 years on the original label! The record is re-mastered. Highy recommended!

The second outing by Hunter Thompson’s tribalist dub alias Tegu skews more spectral and simmering, a canopy of cascading keys, hand percussion, and swells of everglades bass: Owl Island. Recorded in early 2024 on the banks of a Floridian canal, the album’s 11 tracks roll in like shifting fog over an ancient marsh, swaying with low end and loops of humid synths.

Across 53 minutes, the music moves between séance and visitation, alternately transient and expectant, bathed in a sheen of starlight and streetlights. Fellow voyagers Wave Temples and X.Y.R. join for a pair of smoky, cosmic cameos, but otherwise this is a solitary affair – locked in, looking up, mapping new constellations in the expanding void.

Floridian synthesist John Touchton aka Severed+Said returns with his most cinematic suite yet of witching hour electronics, spidery rhythm, and macabre clockwork: End Time Loop. A 10-track panorama of “paradise and devastation,” the music moves between sinkholes of low-end, darkened room drones, and strobing percussion, tracing shadows of swamps and derelict blocks. Inspired by the possibilities of a newly acquired hardware sequencer, and composing on headphones, Touchton atomized and re-assembled each song until an “absolute form” revealed itself.

His tunnel focus recording method gives the pieces a hermetic precision, mutating and rippling across grid-mapped webs of smoke, mirror, and mirage. Touchton’s youth in a Pentecostal church informs the album’s conflicted themes, a crossroads of “atrocities and kindness,” reckonings and rapture, vestigial dread born of crosses covered in dust. What lurks is what lasts, looping beneath the surface, as unseen as an ill wind. All End Times have their beginning.

Marvellous showcase of new wave UK techno talent. This is what's really going on ... stacked CD!

"While playing Dear Ghod you will encounter themes of death, selfishness, erotic obsession, and predation. Your character may be injured, victimised, trapped, or killed. Your character will murder and victimise people of all sorts, possibly including children, animals, loved ones, marginalised people, or themselves. Characters might engage in self-harm or drug abuse. Illness, debilitation, and body horror may come into play. Your character may have their memories altered, they will certainly forget important things. Some of this will emerge from the prompts, some will emerge from the choices you make."https://objectstore.true.nl/rushhourrecords:files/styles/cover_large/storage-api-public/a4201530673_10.jpg?itok=D-TjV12g

Something special for the lovers of Chillsynth and dreamy vocals. Coleurs is here. Listen and enjoy his NRW debut.

Mara MacDonald is a musician and performer from Melbourne, Australia. She released her debut album 'I'm just One Person' as Marara on Jpeg Artefacts in January 2023. She has also self-released two EP's, has received the Signal Sound Commission grant for young artists, and is known for her chaotic, confessional live performances. Brad Rose of Foxy Digitales said of her debut: "it feels like I've uncovered some kind of hidden treasure… each word, each sound echoes into forever."

August and June will be available on streaming platforms and limited-edition cassette tape on 27/09/24. Guests include pillar of the Australian noise scene, Uboa, and prolific Portland producer, Kaho Matsui. For fans of: Claire Rousay, More Eaze, Katie Dey, Felicia Atkinson, Elaine Radigue.