Nu Disco 10 Items

Devin Brahja Waldman is a New York saxophonist, drummer, synthesizer player and composer who leads the group Brahja. Waldman has accompanied his aunt, poet Anne Waldman, since the age of ten. Waldman is a co-founding member of Radical Reversal, Diva of Deva Loka, and Notable Deaths. He has performed with Patti Smith, William Parker, Nadah El Shazly, Malcolm Mooney, Thurston Moore, Godspeed! You Black Emperor, Charles Hayward, Luke Stewart and Yoshiko Chuma. Waldman is also a member of NYC's Heroes Are Gang Leaders (led by poet Thomas Sayers Ellis and saxophonist James Brandon Lewis), of Sam Shalabi's Land of Kush, and of the Norwegian hardcore group MoE.

As a youngster, Waldman was taken under the wing of avant-garde giant Paul Bley. Along with Anne Waldman and cousin Ambrose Bye, Waldman is a co-producer for Fast Speaking Music -a NYC poetry and music label which has released recordings with Amiri Baraka, Meredith Monk, William Parker, Laurie Anderson, Eileen Myles, CAConrad, Fred Moten, Daniel Carter, Clark Coolidge, Thurston Moore, Joanne Kyger and many others.

The modern classic is back!!! Oslo’s magic music maker Todd Terje has already gained a wunderkind like reputation for his gentle yet potent productions (we won’t mention the “E” word here) on labels like Full Pupp, Permanent Vacation and Running Back on top of being one of the best remixers money can buy (Shit Robot, Bryan Ferry, Dølle Jllle etc etc). What is there left for him to do? Establish a label of his own! “It’s The Arps” is the starting signal for Olsen. And what a splendid one it is. Created from scratch and solely on the mythical synthesizer ARP 2600 (check www.letsnerd.com for help), it features four tracks (reads instant classics) that couldn’t be a better followup to his 2011 super hit EP “Ragysh”. Towering over the assortment is the laser crime scene called “Inspector Norse”. Defying genres and blinkers, this is finest goose bumps dance music that makes you whistle along, laughing and crying all at the same time – but the rest isn’t half bad either. The short, but sweet “Myggsommer” gives away Terje’s secret love for quirky exotika, whereas “Swing Star Pt 1” and its brother have a (balearic) brilliance and witchery to them that is rarely found nowadays. Released on Olsen Records and housed in a beautiful sleeve courtesy of Bendik Kaltenborn (www.benkalt.no). 100% Arp 2600 and 200% Todd Terje.

Toby Tobias coming through with the fresh raw s**t for Delusions! Two original tracks here absolutely loaded full of old school analogue machine funk and crazy dub tricknology. It?s Burning builds around a beautiful chiming synth while a filtering acid bass line and 808 snares add a distinct bit of B-Boy to the mix. I Give You love heads for a more rugged house vibe complimenting the intense, loosely timed vocal hits perfectly. On the flip we have London Housing Trust bringing serious heat on their remix, jacking up the tempo but adding some decidedly tripped-out synth tweaks resulting in a show stopping reworking primed for freaking people out on the dancefloor. Finally we have that man Lauer working his magic on It?s Burning, building up the track around some beautifully euphoric synth stabs and bassline. The perfect close to an EP in which it?s very difficult to try and find words to justify. We think Toby Tobias has turned in some of his best ever work here and absolutely love this whole record so really hope you share the same admiration for the release as we do!

Benedek's debut LP for PPU!

When first I got to know that I was going to create the score for this short, I was pretty excited about the idea behind the film, and especially the story of the character Jens, who suffers from schizophrenia.I started inventing sounds to depict the character’s visions and hallucinations and I knew right away that I was going for a style more experimental than the two previous scores, Eastern Army and Mosaic, both written during the same year. The working process of the soundtrack for Hell is Other People (Helvede er de Andre) has perhaps been the most creative I have ever done. I just started recording sounds, effects and handmade percussion with no idea as to where I was heading, only the sense that I was going somewhere else, somewhere I had never been before. Somewhere where I felt very comfortable. All of the sounds are performed and recorded at night in my home studio Easy Beat Evil Bite and I used everything I could at home, everything I could get my hands on: wine glasses, chimes, shakers, African percussion instruments, angel harp, tambourine, sitar, hand drumming on a paper box or on naked skin, cymbals, synthesizer, effect pedals, the Rhodes, the piano and a lot of reverse recording from my old Revox tape recorder as well as electric and acoustic guitars. The title song “Every Missing Beat of Your Heart” and ”Falling Papers from a Staircase” are both very calm and reflecting tunes, characterized by a dreaming acoustic guitar arpeggio and a persuasive hypnotized tempo from an old metronome. On the track ”Metal Me” is a lot of psycho-blues; the strumming of an acoustic Yamaha is evident on three monotone chords and the 'sloppy' beat makes everything sound so heavy. I love the production of the song ”At the Clinic” where I chose to do a swing beat playing on the glasses to generate a more defined sound, like something you just can’t get rid of; like an annoying sound , and together with electric guitar playing in surf mood I really did something cool and easy there… I pictured the boy Jens walking up and down the corridors at the hospital and having trouble thinking clearly, or maybe seeing what other people couldn’t see. I think that all in all, I was most inspired by the sound of the 50’s in the making of this album; the warmth of the tremolo of in ”My Room” and the dark and psychotic mood of “Perspective” and ”Second Moon”. From time to time there is a touch of emptiness, death, agony and the feeling of loneliness behind those moments in tunes such as ”One of Us”, “No More Dead Flies” and ”She Suicide”. The second part of ”Every Missing Beat of Your Heart” I wrote on an acoustic guitar in Berlin during a short vacation. I remember having written the chords and the lyrics for the melody in half an hour and was very happy with the result. Signe Isager, who recently sang live with the band Alex Puddu and The Butterfly Collectors, sings in this song with me and I thought it would be a good choice to go with the end credits. For the making of the songs on this album I have been searching for the clinical, cold aesthetics of the rooms and corridors of a hospital and the warm sound of the sea from a house on the beach and I do believe this is what inspired me. It has been a great experience working on this album and the production, from the very start to the very end of the process, and being able to give what I felt was right for this picture at this moment.

The kind of track that makes you want to know what kind of morning routine Apiento has on a weekday, "The Orange Place" is simply an underground dancefloor classic of the 2010's that makes you realise something very special was going on with Paul Byrne's Astrological charts at the time. In his innocent words: "This was made in 2013 in a studio in East London. It was sort of made for like dark clubs that just have that glowing light which is why it was named ‘The Orange Place’. It’s fun to hear in the club as you know what it is from the first conga hits." A galloping chugger known to do serious damage on well oiled dancefloors like Pikes in Ibiza with DJ Harvey at the reins. Pure Sleazy Belgian Indiana Jones vibes, impossible to forget and very timeless, if you didn't get in on the first pressings, don't sleep on another chance. Now with full cover artwork and additional dubbed out afro cosmic remix by Castro.