Downbeat | Electronica | Leftfield 218 Items

Since 2012 Erased Tapes peers Ólafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm have spent many hours together in their studios across Berlin and Reykjavik, freely improvising and occasionally capturing the music for their fans. The duo's sound is an astoundingly rich, tonally pure example of synth-driven experimentation, conceived and performed by two prolific collaborators.

During a session at Nils's Durton Studio in Berlin last summer the two specially invited photographer Alexander Schneider to capture one of their unique improvised sessions. Lasting long into the night, the pair gradually and organically formed several individual songs – each contributing to the narrative of a larger, transformative piece of music. Recorded in eight hours with no overdubs or edits, 'Trance Frendz' is a captivating journey through grand soundscapes and droning crescendos which crash and recede back, making way for delicate piano notes and swirling synthesizers.

Last copies, re-imported from the US.

Otto’s Bangalore Whispers gets finally repressed. The psychedelic track which he recorded together with the Indian singer MD Pallavi in 2016 has become a hit in the downtempo scene around the globe (“Saaaa - resa nisa”). Pingipung press a new edition of the much sought after single on the occasion of their 20th label anniversary. In this 2022 edition the original track is paired with the Peter Power remix which has not seen the light of day on vinyl before.The Brazil-based producer slows the track down a notch and adds even more space. A perfect tune both for the dancefloor or meditation.

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.

Finders Keepers invite you to witness these incredible earl Buchla synthesiser concerts/demonstrations providing a distinctive feminine alternative to The Silver Apples Of The Moon if they had ever been presented in phonographic form. This is history in the remaking. This spring Finders Keepers Records are proud to release an archival project that not only redefines musical history but boasts genuine claim to the overused buzzwords such as pioneering, maverick, experimental, groundbreaking and esoteric, while questioning social politics and the evolution of music technology as we’ve come to understand it. To describe this records as a game-changer is an understatement. This record represents a musical revolution, a scientific benchmark and a trophy in the cabinet of counter culture creativity. This record is a triumphant yardstick in the synthesiser space race and the untold story of the first woman on the proverbial moon. While pondering the early accolades of this record it’s daunting to learn that this record was in fact not a record at all… It was a manifesto and a gateway to a new world, that somehow never quite opened. If the unfamiliar, modernistic, melodic, pulses, tones and harmonics found on this 1975 live presentation/grant application/educational demonstration had been placed in a phonographic context alongside the promoted work of Morton Subotnick, Walter Carlos or Tomita then the name Suzanne Ciani and her influence would have already radically changed the shape, sound and gender of our record collections. Hopefully there is still chance. In short, Suzanne was a self-imposed twenty-year-old employee of the Buchla modular synthesiser company, San Francisco’s neck and neck contender to New York’s Moog. Buchla was run by a community of festival freaks and academic acid eaters whose roots in new age lifestyles and the reinvention of art and music replaced the business acumen enjoyed by its likeminded East Coasters. In the eyes of the consumer the creative refusal to adopt rudimentary facets like a piano keyboard controller rendered the Buchla synthesiser the more obscure stubborn sister of the synth marathon, steering these incredible units away from the mainstream into the homes and studios of free music aficionados, art house composers and die-hard revolutionaries. Championed and semi-showcased by composer Morton Subotnick on his albums The Bull and Silver Apples Of The Moon, Buchla’s versatility began to open the minds of a new generation, but the high-end design features and no-compromise modus operandi was often confused with incompatibility and, in the pulsating shadow of Moog’s marketing, the revolution would not be televised nor patronised. Suzanne Ciani, as one of the very few female composers on the frontline (and also providing the back line) did not lose faith. These “concerts” are the epitome of rare music technology historic documents, performed by a real musician whose skills and academic education in classical composition already outweighed her male synthesiser contemporaries of twice her age. At the very start of her fragile career these recordings are nothing short of sacrificial ode to her mentor and machine, sonic pickets of the revolution and love letters to an absolutely genuine vision of and ‘alternative’ musical future. In denouncing her own precocious polymathmatic past in a bid to persuade the world to sing from a new hymn sheet, Suzanne Ciani created a bi-product of never before heard music that would render the pigeon holes “ambient” and “futuristic” utterly inadequate. Providing nothing short of an entirely different feminine take on the experimental “records” of Morton Subotnick and proving to a small, judgmental audience and jury the true versatility of one of the most radical and idiosyncratic musical instruments of the 20th century. These recordings have not been heard since then. The importance of these genuinely lost pieces of electronic musics puzzle almost eclipses the glaring detail of Suzanne’s gender as a distinct minority in an almost exclusively male dominated, faceless, coldly scientific landscape. Those familiar with Suzanne’s work, a vast vault of previously unpublished “nonrecords”, will already know how the creative politics in her art of “being” simultaneously reshaped the worlds of synth design, advertising and film composition before anyone had even dropped a stylus in her groove. Needless to say this record, finally commanding the archival format of choice, courtesy of the Ciani and Finders Keepers longstanding unison, was not the last “first” with which this hugely important composer would gift society, and the future of a wide range of exciting evolving creative disciplines. You have found a holy grail of electronic music and a female musical pioneer who was too proactive to take the trophies. With the light of Buchla and Ciani’s initial flame Finders Keepers continues to take a torch through the vaults of this lesser-celebrated music legacy shining a beam on these “non-records” that evaded the limelight for almost half a century. You can’t write history when you are too busy making it. With fresh ink in the bottomless well, let’s start at the beginning. Again. You, are invited!

Fashion Flesh is a sort of bedroom version of "The Art of Noise." However instead of sampling, most of his sounds are birthed from the guts of hand built exotic electronics and audio devices. Fashion Flesh transcends genre. According to the man himself, "Easily Categorized is predictable. Predictable music is most often boring...Now is the time to illustrate the beauty of confusion and anxiety. Predictability will be used only when it's least expected..."

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.

A vinyl edition of Said's 2015 album. It can be said that without Rizan Said a good number of Syrian singers from the 1990s onward -most notably his collaborator for two decades, Omar Souleyman- might never have been heard. Where synthesizers can bring a certain artifice and death to the sound of music, Rizan's torrential speed and flair on the keys bring new life to Syrian and Kurdish sounds respectfully forcing the component sounds of folkloric dabke into the next level.. This is the updated sound of the ages, where hand drums and reed flutes are now emulated and pounded out on Korg keyboards.

Lucifer & Lust is a 10-inch mini album by Dmitry Distant, showcasing the diversity of his talent. The 6 tracks by the Russian-born artist who currently resides in Latvia reflect the atmosphere of the Baltic and the mystic sides of electronic music. Showing where his devotion lies, Dmitry experiments on the verge of techno, wave and industrial. On this mini album, he grasps our attention with minimalistic trance-like rhythms covered in fluctuating painful melodies, using wonderful analogue sounds and exotic instruments such as the electric violin.

Shackleton's most expansive, ecstatic and hallucinatory music to date. Four long form pieces developing the free-flowing compositional aesthetic of his recent Deliverance series and Powerplant performances: fiery rhythmic-melodic turbulence channeling Congotronics way to the east - with an aura of restrained mania reminiscent of the feral pomp and gallows humour of Coil's Moon-Musick phase - all earthed by dub wise bass. The pairing with Tomasini - the cult singer, performer and artist whose history spans experimental theatre, cabaret and collaborations with (among many others) Othon, Marc Almond, Sleazy, Julia Kent and David Tibet - is a match made in heaven. With his four-octave voice swooping from deep growl to piercing falsetto, Tomasini's presence both heightens the taste for the theatrical that’s always been integral to Shackleton’s music, and makes explicit the latter’s kinship to the occult energies of the UK’s post-industrial underground. As the record's title suggests, these are shadowy songs rich with allusions to bodily ritual and psychic exploration, with Tomasini’s lyrics framed by luminous whirls of hand-struck drums and synthetic gamelan, bells and tumbling organ melodies. You Are The One escalates from delicate choral chant to full-bore psychedelic organ freak out; Rinse Out All Contaminants is a slow incantation, to purge all negative thoughts; the melodies of Father You Have Left Me are smudged like early Steve Reich, then burned out by snarling subs; and the magnificent Twelve Shared Addictions balances elliptical melodies like spinning plates, gradually unfurling into a breakneck storm of voice and hammered keys. A remarkable collaboration that also, crucially, hints towards new emerging futures in the work of one of this decade’s pioneers in electronic sound and rhythm.

Three killers heralding the next phase of this dazzling expression of a dream Dakar-Berlin nexus. All instrumental - though the opener has snatches of singing - with the vocal versions held back for the new album, out in the autumn.The music just gets deadlier and deadlier - harder-boiled and deeper; more focused, confident and dub wise. Evoking the ancient cultural legacy of the griots, “Walo Walo” is also the name of the Sabar rhythm underlying the opener, which features Ibou Mbaye's percussive synth-work, Mangone Ndiaye Dieng's kit-drumming, and Bada Seck's rigorous jolts of lower-pitched Thiol drum. The “Groove” version is tough as nails; well and truly gnarly. A tribute to the Baye Fall leader, Ndiguel Groove is a sparse, mellow interpretation of the most traditional cut on the album, showcasing Assane Ndoye Cisse’s insinuating guitar lines, Laye Lo’s super-elasticated snare-drumming, and Bada Seck playing the Khine drums associated with the Baye Fall.

Electronic musician Ryan West's latest release as Rival Consoles has a level of warmth and humanity missing from his earlier records. This is his most expressive and emotional music yet. - pitchfork.com

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.

Incomparably prolific multi-instrumentalist, member of Tortoise, & piller of the Chicago expierimental & jazz music scenes offers new recordings conducted to capture composed passages as well as free playing that used PARKER's beats & sample suites as improvisational criterion

Filed neatly and undisturbed within the micro-genre of 1970s Italian artsploitation, amongst
films soundtracks such as Girl With The Crystal Plumage, A Quiet Place In The Country and
House With The Laughing Windows, this obscure library LP is one of the few fully formed
concept albums from the recently reappraised discography of Rome’s most versatile and
adventurous female production music composer Daniela Casa. Once destined for a shelf life
within the storage rooms of defunct TV studios and educational facilities Daniela’s previously
strictly commercially unavailable music has in recent years been given new focus at the
hands of open-minded disc detectives and sonic salvage hunters earning Casa’s distinctive
feminine take on experimental instrumental mood and movie compositions a place next to
her widely respected masculine counterparts such as Alessandro Alessandroni, AR Luciani,
Pierro Umiliani, Morricone and Nicolai.
Sharing tight studio space and strict syndication schedules with all of the aforementioned
artists (under commission from Romano Di Bari’s fervently independent Flipper music factory)
Daniela Casa embraced a liberating wind change in affordable music technology which opened
doors for uninhabited solo compositions in home studios taking advantage of communal
recording consoles and domestic synthesisers which nurtured a lesser-documented creative
family tree (or rather secret society) and paved the way for individualistic projects from the
likes of Magnetic System’s Fabio Frizzi and Goblin’s Claudio Simonetti. Here, on this repress
of the impossibly rare, one-time subscription-only album, Arte Moderna, we find Daniela at
her versatile best creating a wide thematic suite (based on paintings and sculptures in an
abstract art gallery) for which she would deploy mostly organic and acoustic instruments
to construct a set of unorthodox compositions straddling avant garde, free jazz and Giallo
tension (with some brief moments of brooding electronics and italian pop).
Veering from her stylistic pop interests (which clearly included a fondness for the music of
Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin) Daniela Casa’s Arte Moderna saw her adopt a less era
specific approach combining neo-classical elements and piano improvisations akin to the
likes of France’s Francois Tusques or Burton Greene, or America’s Mal Waldron without
compromising her strong narrative personality for this unique abstracted picture music.
Unintentionally but profoundly political in her prolific existence Daniela Casa’s contribution
to a predominantly male industry earned her a small clutch of inspired idiosyncratic Italian
female bedfellows such as Nora Orlandi, Giullia De Muittis (aka Kema), Fiorella Fratini, Emma
De Angelis and Maria Teresa Luciani, who, with faceless anti-celebrity as its essence, never
benefitted the wider critical focus that much of this music now duly commands on the
collectors circuit.
Finders Keepers Records, in continued collaboration with the Di Barri company, with the
Casa/Ducros family blessing, are now proud to shine new light on this sonic sculptures and
provide a fresh context where educated music listeners are ready to fill the gaps between
Delia Derbyshire, Ennio Morricone, Suzanne Ciani and Harry Partch and patronise a very
welcome considered alternative to the recent rise in popularity of Italian Giallo soundtracks
from a seldom savoured feminine creative vantage point. Daniela’s musical paintings can
now be unveiled to the public for the first time, with Modern Art sounding as contemporary
as it did when it was recorded forty years ago. The gallery is now open for limited sittings,
discerning ears and open minds.

Melissa Guion is Mj Guider. She lives and works in New Orleans and previously released the Green Plastic extended play cassette in early 2014 on the Constellation Tatsu label. Employing heavy washes of bass and a deft touch in mixing, she uses stark contrasts to construct a semi-surreal aural space. What results are songs that exist in a wholly contained sound environment, minimal yet lush, spare yet saturated, and most importantly, entirely compelling. Having recently expanded to a trio, the group will be making select live appearances following Precious Systems release.

Many of you will remember Manuel Göttsching by his Masterpiece “E2-E4? and know the fact it got sampled by far more than once. Think “Sueno Latino” to start with… and the plethora of further re-recordings by Derrick May, Joe Claussell, and a bootleg by Carl Craig that prove how “Now” and Iconic Manuel´s Work is. The 2006 edition “Joaquin Joe Claussell meets Manuel Göttsching” is the first attempt to bring these once illegal mixes finally to a broader and wider audience. It comes with 2 very rare and first time officially released tribute mixes of 1970´s Göttsching Classics, carefully remodeled by Joe Claussell (21.12 minute “Deeper Distance” plus 10.17 Minute “Ain´t No Time For Tears"). The last words, however, are left to MG himself, with “Shuttlecock", a final eighteen minute excursion, which has Manuel improvise over a soft carpet of delayed bell sounds, before the guitar fades away and the track deepens and thickens, like a dark river sweeping along ever more motives and harmonies.

Hailing from Osaka, Japan, and owner of the Daytripper label, seiho is a new producer set to join the Leaving Records family with his debut full-length release.

Pulsating reconstructions of fragmented piano compositions, melded with gritty peripheral field recordings. Transcending from flashbacks, lingering between natural and industrial landscapes. Broken left-field electronica by Maxim Wolzyn for the third Marionette issue.

Mild High Club founder Alexander Brettin grew up playing flute in the school band and majoring in jazz studies in Chicago. In 2012, a visit to Los Angeles allowed him to connect with the Stones Throw crew. Within a year, after passing the early demos of what would become Timeline onto Peanut Butter Wolf, Brettin made the move out west.

“The difference between Timeline and Skiptracing is detail,” Brettin said. “I was stubborn with the process for Timeline, it took almost three years to let go of it.” On Timeline, Brettin resorted to vague lyrics so as to highlight the music itself. But for Skiptracing there’s both a heightened thematic aspect as well as more complex musical arrangements encasing it. In Brettin’s estimation, the album’s story arc is that of a “private investigator attempting to trace the steps of the sound and the spirit of American music.”

And in investigating the spirit of American music, Mild High Club re-imagine AM radio hits as blasting in from a parallel universe, the sound of early 70s LA in a smog of sativa. If Todd Rundgren was the primary touchstone for Timeline, Brettin and band now look to the wry, trenchant wit of Steely Dan, gazing deep into the dark underbelly of sun-bright L.A. and coming away with catchy songs underpinned by slippery jazz phrasings.

Dig deeper into the lyrics and imagery and that detective story slowly emerges. But it’s no simple whodunit? Instead, think The Long Goodbye, The Late Show, Chinatown, Night Moves or any early 70s inversion of the detective noir genre, where the gumshoe protagonist ultimately winds up investigating himself, navel-gazing so as to solve the ultimate mystery. Skiptracing is Philip Marlowe driving around LA listening to Caetano Veloso or that deleted scene in John Cassavetes’s The Killing of a Chinese Bookie where Cosmo Vitelli reads Cosmic Trigger.

In crafting Skiptracing, Mild High Club have made an album that strikes a balance between the known and unknown aspects of art and creation. While Brettin sought to have complete control over the creation of the previous album, in opening up and allowing these creative variables in, he learned a valuable lesson that lies at the heart of Skiptracing itself: “When you wish upon the unknown, you might be surprised by the rewards.”

Travelling extensively across Asia and Africa from 1974-1985 to study music, Roberto made many field recordings and collected many instruments on his travels which he would then combine with synthesizers and electronics back in Italy. TIP!

Leon Vynehall’s beautiful ambient, cinematic race car track now reconstructed for the dancefloor. Comes with an unreleased beat version on the A-side and the original version taken from Gerd Janson's "Music For Autobahns 2" on the flip. Tip!

Reissue, in vinyl format only, of the last Androcell album released in 2014.

300 copies pressed in double 180 grams black vinyl, remastered for this special release.

Includes original inner sleeves.

With insert.

Light green Vinyl Edition des 2016 erschienenen Albums. Gold Pandas drittes Album wurde durch seine Besuche in Japan beeinflusst.

- “So pretty, so welcoming, so ridiculously clever.“ - The Skinny
- “It sounds quite unlike any of the electronic music being made in 2016, and is refreshingly unfashionable in that way.“ - Pitchfork
- “Bound to give you that warm, fuzzy feeling.“ - The Guardian

Heavyweight double gatefold vinyl with remastered audio and new and updated artwork reworked by the designer of the original sleeves

Second Woman is a collaborative project featuring Turk Dietrich of Belong and Joshua Eustis of the renowned Telefon Tel Aviv. As one would imagine, »Second Woman« is a nonpareil debut of futuristic electronic music fusing the coveted genetics of the duos respective previous endeavors into an alluring new enigma of ASMR-inducing kaleidoscopic dub. Second Woman is a fully realized entity; a well-crafted sound world and a refreshing shared effort which is inspiring in its purity and painstaking in its design.

The opening "100407jd7" wastes no time exhibiting mastery in both sound and structure, contorting the frequency spectrum into a psychoactive mirage with its mutating tectonics and vaporous tone clouds. Cuts like "200601je6" and "700358bc5" are bar-raising examples of veteran craftsmanship and vision, refining and reengineering the blue prints of their early works to create an original and dynamic album. The deliberation and control over every particle is obsessive, but the end results of each individual track unfold with an organic temperament unparalleled in a grid-locked world of DAW shaped musics and rat's-nest modular aleatory. Words fail where essential sonics are concerned, and this vital new creation speaks for itself.

First released in 2016, »EP 2« was the 2nd volume in Suction Records’ 4-part »EP series« by Rx-101, serving as an introduction to this elusive producer’s vast, mind-blowing archive of unreleased late ‘90s braindance, melodic techno, and IDM tracks. Rx-101 is a previously unknown producer from the Netherlands, Erik Jong, who recorded hundreds of tracks, live to cassette, in a feverish burst of creativity from 1997-1999. Riyl Bochum Welt or Aphex Twin’s »Selected Ambient Works Volume 1.«

Emotional Rescue looks back again with a 2022 repress, digging deep in to the early 80s Bristol post punk scene of Pig Pag, the Wild Bunch and the Dug Out club. A short lived project of just 3 releases, Mouth trail-blazed leftfield percussive jams in the rich vain of Liquid Liquid and ESG but in their own jazz-infused way. Centered round the cultural melting post of the St Paul's district, it's pubs, clubs and blues parties threw together young and old to the sounds of dub, funk, jazz and soul and took the spark lit by punk rock and new wave and spawned music that still resonates today. Consisting of a floating line up based around main members Andy Guy and Rob Merrill, alumina included a young Nellie Hooper before he would go on to be a founding member of the Wild Bunch and on to produce the likes of Bjork, U2 and Madonna. Based around a hard tribal drumming, mixing guitar, trumpet, shouted vocals and effects, the thrown in the mix nature was inspired as much by avant-jazz than punk's do it yourself attitude. Here then, on one EP are their complete recordings, including as the title cut, their best and deepest, Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea. Featured on a compilation LP from the legendary Y Records, its bottom heavy dub sound is augmented by female and toasted vocals riding a top a heavy stepper style riddim. This is followed by an increasingly dizzy array of percussion jams. Acab Part 2) is all skips and trumpets, while the versions of Take Your Coat Off perfect skat vocal / tom interplay, before the finale busts out the rockabilly influences in full effect with jagged guitar, skipping hats meets double bass punk style.

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.

Limited edition double LP on Cobalt Vapor Colored Vinyl in full colour gatefold jackets with OBI strip and shrink wrapped.

Comes in label sleeve.