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After a long hiatus, Romain Azzaro is reactivating his Rouge Mécanique Musique imprint with an exciting collaborative project, exploring new musical territories.

As the world started to flip on its head early in 2020, a quintet of musicians formed in Berlin : Paul Behnam (guitar), Sacha Hladiy (grand piano), Nicolai Johannsen (vibrating metal plates), Ruth Mogrovejo (viola), and Azzaro himself (zither) recorded their first album over 3 months in Azzaro’s living room, studio and basement. In Hladiy’s words, “a magical musical circus”. The collision of these different personalities and sensibilities makes Colours Of Now a singular, spontaneous and inimitable object, exploring neoclassical, ambient and experimental music.

“Romain had a wide open vision for a brand new project, connecting musicians from different horizons,” says Paul Benham, “a lot of different processes and beautiful vibrations were shared at this moment in his place.”

Nicolai Johannsen adds: “Colours Of Now is a portrait of a time which was and wasn’t; an alternation between existence and its opposite. The album is a collective formation, realized through different energies drawn to the same centre.”

“This album has become a compilation of people,situations and emotions to me,” explains Ruth Mogrojevo. “2020, the year in which we all met, has been an orderly metamorphosis from which we cannot exclude our professional activities. We all met playing music and deep down we knew that the whole project could be something great and actually meaningful.”

« Colours of Now » is a quintet that formed in early 2020 during quarantine in Berlin. The self-titled album, produced and mixed by Romain Azzaro, explores the different shades of sound in a time where uncertainty leads to the present moment.

A1. A1. Sacha Hladiy & Paul Behnam – Abyss A2. Romain Azzaro – Chloe's Dream Machine I A3. Romain Azzaro – Chloe's Dream Machine II A4. Romain Azzaro – Chloe's Dream Machine III A5. Paul Behnam – Strat my Love A6. Sacha Hladiy – Solstice D´hivert

B1. Nicolai Johansen & Ruth Mogrovejo – Catharsis B2. Sacha Hladiy – GrassHopper B3. Paul Behnam , Joao Comazzi, Sacha Hladiy – From Carnival to Quarantine B4. Ruth Mogrovejo – The Black Curtain. B5. Paul Behnam & Sacha Hladiy – Tente Natalie

La Monte Young was born in Bern, Idaho in 1935. He began his music studies in Los Angeles and later Berkeley, California before relocating to New York City in 1960, where he became a primary influence on Minimalism, the Fluxus movement and performance art through his legendary compositions of extended time durations and the development of just intonation and rational number based tuning systems. With wife and collaborator, artist Marian Zazeela, they would formulate the composite sound environments of the Dream House, which continues to this day. Seeing reissue for the first time since its initial 1969 release, Young and Zazeela's first full-length album is often referred to as "The Black Record" due to Zazeela's stunning cover design, complete with the composer's liner notes in elegant hand-lettered script. Side one was recorded in 1969 (on the date and time indicated by the title) at the gallery of Heiner Friedrich in Munich, where Young and Zazeela premiered their Dream House sound and light installation. Featuring Young and Zazeela's voices against a sine wave drone, the recording is a section of the longer composition Map of 49's Dream the Two Systems of Eleven Sets of Galactic Intervals Ornamental Lightyears Tracery (begun in 1966 as a sub-section of the even larger work The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys, which was begun in 1964 with Young group The Theatre of Eternal Music). According to Young, the raga-like melodic phrases of his voice were heavily influenced by his future teacher, the Hindustani singer Pandit Pran Nath. Side two, recorded in Young and Zazeela's NYC studio in 1964, is a section of the longer composition Studies in the Bowed Disc. This composition is an extended, highly abstract noise piece for bowed gong (gifted by sculptor Robert Morris). The liner notes explain that the live performance can be heard at 33 and 1/3 RPM, but may also be played at any slower speed down to 8 and 1/3 RPM for turntables with this capacity.

New Lp-edition of an obscure un-released library of the early ‘70s.
Together with Florian Fricke, Peter Michael Hamel and Stephan Micus, Deuter is certainly the main responsible of a fruitful encounter between European sensibility and Eastern aesthetics in the German music of the 1970s. Soundtrack was originally produced by Kuckuck in 1973 not for an official and public release, but as a “library” to be used for films, TV and radio. As a library it respects the canonical and typological structure of the genre with 26 short sonic fragments, sequences imagined and conceived like fulminating illuminations. There's still a solid electronic vocation that, however, has put aside the most disruptive effluvia of D (1971) of pure “kraut” ancestry. In fact, the album is more like an ideal passing bridge between some ritual instances of the previous Aum (1972) and the following successful phase of Deuter during the period when he stays in the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh's ashram in Poona realizing, in parallel to a renewed inner life, masterpieces like Celebration, Haleakala, Ecstasy and Silence is the Answer. Musically speaking, Soundtrack presents itself as a heterogeneous work with nocturnal, cinematic, galactic and atmospheric-environmental implications. Electronics remains the predominant factor but can vary from mantra drones of more ceremonial and meditative “space-relax” tones of some tracks (Triad, Deep Sea, Gothic Velvet or Evening) to the most amused formulations of pulsating analog synths that in the hands of Deuter become “toy-equipement” to modulate and explore (Desert Rock, Synth Effect, Flea Dance or Laser). There is no lack of acoustic moments more ethnically inspired with Arabian and Indian (Reed, Arabia) or devotionally solar themes (Tom Bombaddils Dance), so evoking an air of diffuse peace then completely conquered in the beloved India.

180G "Pearl / Sunrise" Colour Vinyl

We are thrilled to announce the highly anticipated re-issue of Ash Ra Tempel's legendary 5th Studio Album "Starring Rosi" in our "50th Anniversary Edition". Originally released in 1973, this seminal work remains a cornerstone of the Krautrock and "Kosmische" movement, blending psychedelic rock, ambient soundscapes, and early electronics into a transcendent auditory experience.
The Album has been recorded by Manuel Göttsching in it´s entity, with additional help to come from Producer Dieter Diercks playing bass, percussion, Drummer Harald Grosskopf and of course Rosemarie "Rosi" Müller.
"Starring Rosi" is an essential piece of their continuation of blending cosmic psychedelia, ambient textures, and avant-garde electronic experimentation. Originally released in 1973, this album marked a significant departure for the band, featuring Rosi Müller, who added a lyrical and vocal dimension to the band's typically instrumental soundscapes & Manuel Göttsching background singing.
To many technically Ash Ra Tempel last, yet most accessible, release, although there was the soundtrack to Philippe Garrel´s movie "Le Berceau de Cristal" and there might be some further previously unreleased, music to come out later.

Album Background:
*Starring Rosi* stands out in Ash Ra Tempel's discography for its lighter, more accessible sound, balancing the band's signature cosmic explorations with melodic structures and poetic lyrics.
It marks an unique chapter in Ash Ra Tempel's discography, featuring the ethereal vocals of Rosi Müller alongside Manuel Göttsching's visionary guitar work. The album is a sonic journey that takes listeners through seven distinct tracks, each showcasing Manuel Göttschings pioneering approach to music.
From the dreamy opening track "Laughter Loving" to the meditative "Day-Dream" and the atmospheric "Interplay of Forces," songs that illustrate the band's evolution from their earlier, more intense and improvisational albums, showcasing a more reflective and introspective side .
"The Fairy Dance" is delving into the mystical and meditative, transporting listeners to a dreamlike state.
While "Schizo" sounds like a continuation of the best moments of the previous Ash Ra Tempel records, is the last track "Bring Me Up" an Up-tempo Song that features Manuel as well on vocals.
"Starring Rosi" captivates with its blend of cosmic improvisation and melodic beauty.

Reissue Details:
This reissue of *Starring Rosi* has been introduced and overseen by Manuel Göttsching still, and finalised by his Family exactly to his standards, in which the meticulous approach to his work lives on.
An updated 2024 recut carefully commissioned by Schnittselle in Berlin (who also signs responsible for the previous ART Reissues, likewise, the 2016 E2 E4 Anniversary Edition ensure the warm depth sound while bringing out the rich textures and nuances, all of the original recordings. The reissue is available on 180-gram Black vinyl and a Limited Edition in transparent Pearl Sunrise Vinyl.
Both vinyl editions comes with a replica of the original Vinyl Artwork including it´s original Backside.
The Limited Edition also includes a Poster of the alternate Backside, used later on the CD Editions showing Rosi and Manuel improvising during studio sessions. Also included are prints of previously unreleased Original "The Fairy Dance" Music and "Schizo" Composition Sheets handwritten by Manuel

We are thrilled to announce the highly anticipated re-issue of Ash Ra Tempel's legendary 5th Studio Album "Starring Rosi" in our "50th Anniversary Edition". Originally released in 1973, this seminal work remains a cornerstone of the Krautrock and "Kosmische" movement, blending psychedelic rock, ambient soundscapes, and early electronics into a transcendent auditory experience.
The Album has been recorded by Manuel Göttsching in it´s entity, with additional help to come from Producer Dieter Diercks playing bass, percussion, Drummer Harald Grosskopf and of course Rosemarie "Rosi" Müller.
"Starring Rosi" is an essential piece of their continuation of blending cosmic psychedelia, ambient textures, and avant-garde electronic experimentation. Originally released in 1973, this album marked a significant departure for the band, featuring Rosi Müller, who added a lyrical and vocal dimension to the band's typically instrumental soundscapes & Manuel Göttsching background singing.
To many technically Ash Ra Tempel last, yet most accessible, release, although there was the soundtrack to Philippe Garrel´s movie "Le Berceau de Cristal" and there might be some further previously unreleased, music to come out later.

Album Background:
*Starring Rosi* stands out in Ash Ra Tempel's discography for its lighter, more accessible sound, balancing the band's signature cosmic explorations with melodic structures and poetic lyrics.
It marks an unique chapter in Ash Ra Tempel's discography, featuring the ethereal vocals of Rosi Müller alongside Manuel Göttsching's visionary guitar work. The album is a sonic journey that takes listeners through seven distinct tracks, each showcasing Manuel Göttschings pioneering approach to music.
From the dreamy opening track "Laughter Loving" to the meditative "Day-Dream" and the atmospheric "Interplay of Forces," songs that illustrate the band's evolution from their earlier, more intense and improvisational albums, showcasing a more reflective and introspective side .
"The Fairy Dance" is delving into the mystical and meditative, transporting listeners to a dreamlike state.
While "Schizo" sounds like a continuation of the best moments of the previous Ash Ra Tempel records, is the last track "Bring Me Up" an Up-tempo Song that features Manuel as well on vocals.
"Starring Rosi" captivates with its blend of cosmic improvisation and melodic beauty.

Reissue Details:
This reissue of *Starring Rosi* has been introduced and overseen by Manuel Göttsching still, and finalised by his Family exactly to his standards, in which the meticulous approach to his work lives on.
An updated 2024 recut carefully commissioned by Schnittselle in Berlin (who also signs responsible for the previous ART Reissues, likewise, the 2016 E2 E4 Anniversary Edition ensure the warm depth sound while bringing out the rich textures and nuances, all of the original recordings. The reissue is available on 180-gram Black vinyl and a Limited Edition in transparent Pearl Sunrise Vinyl.
Both vinyl editions comes with a replica of the original Vinyl Artwork including it´s original Backside.
The Limited Edition also includes a Poster of the alternate Backside, used later on the CD Editions showing Rosi and Manuel improvising during studio sessions. Also included are prints of previously unreleased Original "The Fairy Dance" Music and "Schizo" Composition Sheets handwritten by Manuel

Tracklisting:
1. Laughter Loving
2. Day-Dream
3. Schizo
4. Cosmic Tango
5. Interplay of Forces
6. The Fairy Dance
7. Bring Me Up

Rediscover the magic of Ash Ra Tempel with this definitive reissue of *Starring Rosi*-a timeless journey through sound that continues to inspire and captivate listeners over five decades later.

Martin Davorin Jagodić (1935 – 2020) was a Croatian contemporary music composer and educator. His work includes theatre music, graphic scores, instructions for performances, multimedia installation art, radio art, electroacoustic music on tape as well as experimental film soundtracks. Despite a very long series of performances during the years, only one single LP has officially been released under his name, named Tempo Furioso (Tolles Wetter), a collage of electronic and ‘found sounds’ divided in two long movements (one for each side of the LP). Originally released on the Italian Cramps Records label as the 8th volume of the Nova Musicha series dedicated to contemporary avant-garde composers, Tempo Furioso is now made available again on Dialogo in a faithful reproduction of the original gatefold cover artwork, including also an inner sleeve with the English translation of the liner notes. From the original liner notes of “Tempo Furioso”: My first thought was to state that ‘Tempo Furioso’ is a version of the song entitled ‘Tolles Wetter’. But things are not so straight-forward (after all, what is a version?), so I prefer to talk a bit about ‘Tolles Wetter’. This way, I am sure that I will be able to avoid illustrating the relationships existing between the ‘version’ of ‘Tempo Furioso’ and the ‘original’, namely the music of ‘Tolles Wetter’. Reading the diagram of ‘Tolles Wetter’ will help in listening to the record. It will also explain why I am forced to avoid the terms ‘version’ or ‘variation’. These expressions, for several years now, have become faithful counterparts to certain compositions featuring ‘multiple possible versions’; they make us almost automatically think of any ‘Third Sonata’, ‘Klavierstück XI’ or other open works of this kind. Because all of this is very far from my work, I do not want to use any of these terms. They would inevitably mislead the listener [...]. I’m saying all this in order to reassure the listener, who might otherwise think they are in front of a second-hand work (a minor version) and would therefore feel deprived, almost robbed, of the original. So, what is ‘Tolles Wetter’? The actualisation of a (musical) situation – a place, an action – in which we are at home, well warmed up, in our room, while outside there is a storm. The disturbing elements – atmospheric or otherwise – are already there and will eventually find their way into our space. (Have you ever noticed that there are places, whole cities, that are penetrated by frequencies that create a particular kind of sound – oscillations that are in the air?). They can be fire, or some annoying ‘Tafelmusik’ (“what’s going on under my table?”), wood creaking, wind blowing, as well as lines connecting us with the outside world, far away as it might be (radio stations, for instance). Now, little by little, our situation becomes more complex. It is no longer a question of one story but of several. Bad weather has definitively stabilised (this does not mean that the action always has to be actualised in a violent way; not all possible actualisations are like ‘Tempo Furioso’). Weather and time-duration are confused, we are invaded by memories, by projects... The different situations appear more and more like crystallised and superimposed objects/images, as if one wanted to be everywhere at the same time. Zigzagging through time, stumbling, enlarging the picture... reading makes its way into this picture. Of course, not all actions can be performed at the same time. The overall actualisation/hearing will depend on the organisation of the connections. In sight of a global actualisation/hearing, roles are distributed, and the scripts of the different versions of the same story are written. At this point, we can already better understand the sense in which - regarding the relationship between ‘Tolles Wetter’ and ‘Tempo Furioso’ - the term ‘version’ has little meaning. Let’s say, therefore, that ‘Tempo Furioso’ is a possible actualisation that came to be because of its recording. This also explains why – and perhaps helps instigate – different and diverse possibilities of overlapping sides and records are proposed.

This single LP reissue of the 1978 double album is a limited edition of 400!

The comparable Piero Umiliani (under his mysterious Moggi moniker) weighs in with another AWOL library gem of 1979. Maestro goes resolutely left field and off track with an intra-personal exploration of the disturbed inner psyche within the human condition. Distressed electro beacons are unleashed as de-tuned predatory Carpenter-esque synth patterns come to the fore (check Clavinet Suspence for primal audio blastings to a lost unnamed 80’s slasher movie). With the electric eighties buzzing on the horizon, Umiliani was quick to capitalise on this cultural shift utilising his Moog synthesisers to tap in to changing musical zeitgeists via cost cutting experimentations for TV, adverts and documentaries. Followers of the esoteric and strange can finally dig in here, lavishly created reissue featuring original artwork, master tape Laquer cutting and Umiliani’s autograph notes on the project. Viva l’uomo!

The eclectic sensitivity of the composer Roberto Laneri (Prima Materia) looks unparalleled in the Italian avant-garde context. Anadyomene, published for the first time in 1987, shows the myth of Venus in a dystopian and dreamlike world. Laneri conceives a sound poem that opens up to the archetypal dimension of the water creation, through the symbol of bivalve conch, the myth of the feminine power is narrated thanks to the verses of the renaissance poet Angelo Poliziano. Creating a daring connection between western and eastern music, travelling on the Mediterranean sea, the contemporary technologies and techniques revive and re-read ancient musical practices: contrapuntal structures and minimal electronic procedures venture into exotic analogies, strange Renaissance allusions, Middle Eastern and Mediterranean repertoires. Among otherworldly fairy voices, symphonic wandering pathos, aquatic disturbances, Indian Hindustani echoes or psychedelic radiances. A special relationship between space and time, architecture and music, the manipulation of sounds conceived as the art of memory in its various meanings of preservation, transformation and distortion.

DsorDNE (pronounced Disordine) is a project from Torino, Italy that evolved as group out of the electronic experimental post punk project Novostj in 1987. At the core of DsorDNE is Marco Milanesio, musical engineer and co-founder of the HAX record label, joined by a revolving cast of musicians. Their spectrum ranged from experimental to structured electro-poetry and Soundtrack like instrumental electronic music. In 1987 they released their first track on a split-single with The Legendary Pink Dots. Between 1987 and 1994 they released 6 full length albums, 3 split-EPs and appeared on various cassette compilations.


È Un Sole (It’s a Sun) was the group’s only vinyl full length originally released in 1990 on HAX. It’s 8 tracks of electro-beat poetry and experimentation recorded between July 1989 and January 1990 by Marco Milanesio (music) and Roberta Ongaro (vocals) with guests Claudio Burdese (guitar), Danilo Beltrame (guitar) and Cristiana Bauducco (vocals). The album is broken up into two distinct halves. Side A contains four chunks of hard hitting, percussive patterns and rushing bass sequences. Dark, moody female vocals force their monologues through the machinery in their native Italian tongue. The traditional song structure is carefully avoided by giving lyrics equal opportunities be they recited, half-sung, whispered or spoken. Side B displays moodier moments, less savage attacks and subtler sensuality, veering towards the more melodic and existential. All songs have been remastered by George Horn at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. The record is housed in an exact replica of the original jacket featuring a black and white drawing with silver metallic spot color housed in a clear PVC plastic cover with a three color screen-printed design. Each copy includes a 11x11” double-sided lyrics sheet with English translations as well an 8x11” sheet with original press notes from 1990 by Marco Pustianaz. Limited to 800 copies.

Are you sitting comfortably? Artificial Intelligence is for long journeys, quiet nights and club drowsy dawns. Listen with an open mind.

Back in 1992 when Warp released the Artificial Intelligence compilation it almost instantly changed both the course of Warp as a label and arguably what many would consider club music as an entity to be. Artificial Intelligence came housed inside a prog rock styled gatefold sleeve depicting a cover image of a robot blowing smoke rings whilst reclining on an armchair. Its extra long rolling papers and tin of tobacco just out of reach, whilst a high-end stereo plays out the sounds of Kraftwerk's Autobahn and Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon, their LP sleeves lay strewn across the floor. This image along with the above text that as printed on the sleeve acted as a guide for the listener on how to best experience this new mode of techno music, one that was designed for those nights when your body stays in but your mind steps out.

Having been in operation for three years by the time they compiled and released the Artificial Intelligence compilation, Warp had already proved itself as a worthy force within the world of quickfire 12 singles of acid house and the emerging hardcore scene. Starting as a predominant pusher of the new bleep 'n' bass sounds of their hometown Sheffield, Warp had enjoyed success with early anthemic singles from artists such as Nightmares on Wax, LFO & Richard H. Kirk's Sweet Exorcist project. These building blocks laid the foundations for what many would go on to define as the Warp sound but it was 1992's Artificial Intelligence compilation that cemented their place in music history.

Artificial Intelligence was notable for early appearances by people who went on to become pioneers of the hypnotic groove for both Warp and electronic music in its entirety. Artists such as The Black Dog/Plaid whose melancholic contribution The Clan (produced under the alias I.A.O.) bears long drawn out strings combine perfectly with the tear-drenched techno of Carl Craig with the trend for looped breakbeats to create a track that still resonates deeply every time it is played. Looking further out than most, B12's Telefone 529 with its recording of an automated incorrect phone number message carries an air of nostalgic puzzlement, while Preminition transports a diva vocal and hardcore piano roll into a zero-gravity soundtrack of space. Autechre's Crystel and The Egg offers the first steps towards the path of abstract oblivion that they would go on to travel throughout the post-AI years. Both pieces focus an acidic gurgle around some cut up vocals, its timeframe existing perfectly within a distinct hip-hop cylinder that brilliantly displays their roots within b-boy culture.

Aphex Twin appears under his alias The Dice Man, opening up the operation with a track that would become an alias in itself, Polygon Window in many ways formed the core sound of the Artificial Intelligence compilation and subsequent album series that followed it. Rolling post-acid dynamics, a strong knowledge of breakbeat techno and some serious subs keep the track in a full forward motion, Polygon Window still stands out as one of the most unbeatable techno tracks within Warp's discography. Elsewhere, chief ambient technologist Dr Alex Paterson put forward a four-minute cosmic ambient piece akin to his work as the central figure of which The Orb revolves around. Whilst Richie Hawtin made an appearance with his euphoric almost gabba track Spiritual High, produced under the name Up! his fellow Plus 8 producer Speedy J stepped in with De-Orbit, a track that you could say on reflection, almost helped shape the early steps towards what would turn into the deeper recesses of liquid drum & bass.

Warp co-founder Steve Beckett was quoted around the time of the Artificial Intelligence compilations release in 1992 as saying you started to hear tracks by B12 and Plaid and Speedy J that just didn't fit into any category, B-sides and last tracks on EPs. We just realised that they weren't meant for 12-inches, it was just that this was the only outlet for that kind of music. We realised you could make a really good album out of it. You could sit down and listen to it like you would a Kraftwerk or Pink Floyd album. That's why we put those sleeves on the cover of Artificial Intelligence - to get it into people's heads that you weren't supposed to dance to it!. This train of thought led to Warp putting together one of the most forward-thinking compilations to appear within the early 90s post-acid explosion, and many others tried to copy the formula but arguably no imprint ever came close to topping or even releasing anything that stands tall alongside Artificial Intelligence for its undeniably experimental, yet sheer futuristic scope and vision.

Listening back now, 30 years since its original release, it's striking how contemporary and fresh the music of Artificial Intelligence still sounds. While many tracks from those days still and will forever sound brilliant, many AI contemporary compilations have taken on the sheen of a more retro and throwback feel. When digested with a knowledge of what has been made within the last quarter of a century, the tracks that form Artificial Intelligence still carry a strong, almost outside of time feeling that's influence shines as strongly today as it did 30 years ago. A timeless record that will continue to point the way forward for electronic music for many years yet to come.

On textstar+ Jan Jelinek brings together the material from the Cmyk series, four EPs he released between 1999 and 2002 under the pseudonym farben (the German word for both colours and paints), on a vinyl double LP for the first time. The selection of tracks has been remastered from the original tapes, joined by two additional pieces that appeared on compilations during the same period. ________________________________________ A Polaroid. Still life with tangled leads and consumer electronics, late twentieth century. Black and various shades of dirty white are the dominant non-colours. The image’s spatial depth remains diffuse, the links between its elements speculative. A note stuck to the wall (a legend, perhaps, or an all-explaining blueprint in text form?) is impossible to decipher. You can’t see what connects the picture’s signs. You have to hear it. farben says: Every sound is a text. A bearer of meaning in search of a reader. Hoping the ideas inscribed in its autonomous existence will be understood as intended. While its beauty lies precisely in misunderstanding, in reading the coded message a new way every time. A thousand colours of sound, a thousand different ways to hear, to see, to understand. On textstar+ Jan Jelinek brings together the material from the Cmyk series, four EPs he released between 1999 and 2002 under the pseudonym farben (the German word for both colours and paints), on a vinyl double LP for the first time. The selection of tracks has been remastered from the original tapes, joined by two additional pieces that appeared on compilations during the same period. Another new element is the Polaroid, showing the origins of a world: Jelinek’s home studio in Berlin at the time. farben says: Move your body! The project has its roots in Jelinek’s love of house as a reductionist vision of soul. Of four to the floor as a proposition that can be accessed anywhere. Of electronic dance music as a realm of possibility that can be continually expanded. farben was written as contemporary house music. As a text about excitement and euphoria. The arrangements were made directly while recording to DAT, on a twelve-channel mixing desk. Several track titles suggest a link to live concerts, coupled with the context of machine music and bedroom recording. Others affirm pop music’s most extravagant stock phrases about various states of love. Jelinek produced the tracks with the aim of making music for dancefloors. An idea that failed very productively. In the locations to which it was originally addressed, the project barely figured. But people did listen, and they listened all the more closely to this music that opened up new acoustic and associative scope for house. farben is the opposite of genre: a music spawning new terms (clicks & cuts, micro-house) that never manage to fully capture it. farben says: Signifiers. The four Cmyk EPs are designed as a network of references that cannot be missed but that can also never be precisely deciphered. The vectors of sound, word and image point to Isaac Hayes and Ornette Coleman, to Detroit and the first generation of the Red Army Faction, to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. So multifarious that they are distorted to the point of recognition. Overall we hear sonic docufictions whose appealing vagueness derives precisely from this oscillation between clarity and ambiguity, which is also the source of their poetry: the lyricism of the pure circulation of signs. The artwork is based on photographs of former Red Army Faction members, broken down into the four colours of the Cmyk model. The motifs dissolve into individual dots of a single colour, so close to the faces that their expressions are only hinted at. Taken together, the individual colours compose a new whole out of fragmentary material, defying definition and thus maintaining their vibrancy. The same occurs on the level of sound. The sampler Jelinek used for these tracks had to be fed with floppy disks, imposing a memory limit of 1.44 megabytes per audio quotation from soul or jazz records. As a necessary consequence of this, the individual references, like the dots of colour, are dissolved into details and abstractions. They appear as splinters that recombine in new ways to create new meanings. The joy of collapsing metaphors. farben says: New departures. Even two decades after its original release, textstar+ does not come across as an epitaph to the modern era. Instead, it appears as a euphoric affirmation of the utopias of the twentieth century, translated into new sound texts via the aesthetic strategies of abstraction, collage, networking and speculation. 1.44 megabytes of history, one thousand signifiers, one album. From “Live ...” to “... Love”. Arno Raffeiner, 2021

Ekkehard Ehlers' seminal plays series was originally released on three 12inches (Staubgold) and two 7inches (Bottrop-Boy) in very limited runs. The entire series was previously only available as a CD compilation or digitally. Keplar finally presents it on double vinyl for the first time, featuring a new cover artwork. Domestic ethnology: Ekkehard Ehlers plays. ‘Play’ is a word in English with many meanings attached. Each one sends you down a different cognitive pathway. When I think of ‘playing’, in the sense of a game, I think of an activity involving more than one person. When Ekkehard Ehlers plays, he is very much on his own. Or, at least, alone but at the same time keeping intimate company with the artistic innovators named in his titles. Robert Johnson. John Cassavetes. Albert Ayler. Cornelius Cardew. Hubert Fichte. Is he playing with them, against them, about them, for them, to them? This can never be known. It is certainly a mistake to try to hear the ‘work’ of these originals in the sounds played by Ekkehard. They’re not cover versions. They’re hardly tributes in the conventional sense. Cassavetes and Fichte are not even musicians, although music played an important part in both their careers. Sure, there are little nods and flashes of recognition – tiny guitar licks among the minimal beats of ‘Robert Johnson 2’; rich bowed instruments in ‘Albert Ayler’, recalling the violin, cello and double bass arrangements on Ayler’s 1967 Live in Greenwich Village LP; the elongated organ lines of ‘Cornelius Cardew 1’ gesturing towards passages in Paragraph 1 of the British composer’s 1971 Marxist monolith, The Great Learning. Ekkehard is not so much playing these figures as allowing himself to be played by them. Playing as an activity also suggests freedom. Maybe the only thing all five named persons have in common is that they were all quiet radicals. In music, literature and cinema, they all stepped, without self-promotion or fanfare, into unmapped territories. Once there they found it necessary to invent new languages in order to survive. Necessity was the mother of their inventiveness. They were also uncomfortable avant gardists. Lonely types, fighting their corners out on the margins, with little reward, often misunderstood, ridiculed or ignored. All died unfairly young. Fichte a victim of Hiv/aids, Cassavetes of cirrhosis of the liver. (‘Cassavetes 2’ sounds like a tender farewell played across the 59 year old alcoholic director’s death bed.) The deaths of Johnson, Ayler and Cardew have never been satisfactorily explained, and remain shrouded in myths and conspiracy theories. The pioneering expeditions of all five began in that spirit of playful freedom, but inexorably drew them towards the heart of darkness. So these ‘plays’ are micro-dramas, sonic soliloquies, monolog-ins to the private accounts of various geniuses in Ekkehard’s ‘follow’ list. Hacked sensibilities. Artistic manifestos boiled down and distilled, skinned and dried in the digital smokehouse. (Ekkehard Ehlers Flays.) Each of these plays was originally floated out into the world alone on its own disc. The collected works play well as a team – a tranquil, introspective experience where each artist has his own identifiably unique sound character. As an album, Plays is a ‘Plattenragout’ – a ‘record stew’ – which was the title of Hubert Fichte’s LP review column in the leftist culture magazine konkret in the 1960s. The novelist’s work investigating the cultures of South America and the Caribbean islands has been called ‘domestic ethnology’. The writer himself referred to his ‘ethnopoesie’. Ekkehard Ehlers’s intuitive electronic portraits are a form of domestic ethnology in themselves. Invoking another of Ekkehard’s musical aliases, they are portraits of cultural ‘autopoiesies’ – creators whose works were strong enough to have their own self-regenerating life force. (by Rob Young)

* 'The Ape of Naples' is a deeply emotional and uniquely rewarding album * The Infinite Fog version is the third Coil record receiving the fully remastered and enhanced 3lp/2cd treatment supervised by Danny Hyde * Includes 9 additional rare or unreleased tracks * All of the original material has again been carefully and sympathetically remastered by Grammy-nominated engineer Jessica Thompson who has been previously lauded for her splendid job on its sister release 'The New Backwards' * The 3LP comes in heavy trifold cover, CDs in 6-sided Digpaks with booklet and posters * 1st Edition CD comes with original CD cover art (Red Ape Image), 2nd Edition CD comes with original vinyl cover art (Black Abstract Image) * Limited 555 copies 185g Picture Disc 3LP Edition packaged in hotfoil embossed cover * Picture Disc 3LP showing in images #3, #4, and #5 belowThe Ape of Naples' is a deeply emotional and uniquely rewarding album. In its immediate accessibility it is somewhat reminiscent of Coil's mid-1980s classic 'Horse Rotorvator' sharing that album's wild variety of sounds and styles as well as its overriding sombre mood. Originally released in 2005 and in many ways the band's ultimate swan song, it is now considered one of the go-to albums for introducing new listeners to the unparalleled magick of Coil. Compiled and released by Peter Christopherson and Danny Hyde one year after Jhonn Balance's tragic deadly fall, it includes reworkings of the live favorite 'Amethyst Deceivers' and 'Love Secret's Domain's' 'Teenage Lightning' as well as several songs originally intended for the ill-fated 'Backwards' album like the haunting and reminiscent 'Fire of the Mind' and the superb 'Amber Rain'. Other tracks were created using unfinished song ideas from around 'Backwards', sampling tiny bits of Balance's live vocals from songs only ever performed in concert once like 'Triple Sun'. Using the lyrics of the theme tune for the 1970s BBC sit com series 'Are you being served?' for the unbelievably haunting 'Going up', this album's final track and the last song Coil ever performed live, is maybe the most poignant example of Balance's and Christopherson's method of turning base matter into pure sound gold, and like the title of the album, derived from an imaginary adult video an equally fine example of the often underappreciated humor of the boys. Christopherson with the help of long-term sound wizard Danny Hyde and using some of the talent of Coil touring members managed to craft an album which feels and flows like a true Coil classic. The Infinite Fog version is the third Coil record receiving the fully remastered and enhanced 3lp/2cd treatment supervised by Danny Hyde. All of the original material has again been carefully and sympathetically remastered by Grammy-nominated engineer Jessica Thompson who has been previously lauded for her splendid job on its sister release 'The New Backwards'. Coil fans old and new will be thrilled over the inclusion of more than an hour's worth of 9 rare and largely unheard bonus tracks from Danny's vaults completing the set. The astounding design of the original box-set release is restored for the gatefold 3LP sleeve using the fully-licensed artwork by Ian Johnstone (making it easy to differentiate this new vinyl version from previous un-sanctioned LP releases using poor reproductions of the original CD art for the front cover), the CD will be available in two versions with the original and well-loved original CD cover art and for the first time using the former vinyl-only cover art. If you do not yet own a physical copy of the 'Ape of Naples', or if you always wanted an enhanced version of this masterpiece, there has never been a better time to make that wish come true.

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).

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.

Marc Richter aka Black To Comm released his debut record 20 years ago. In 2023 he is still busy releasing music under various disguises and is currently signed to the Thrill Jockey label. To celebrate this anniversary his own Cellule 75 label is re-releasing some classic out-of-print vinyl albums that originally came out on the defunct Type and De Stijl labels. The LP will feature a full-colour lyric sheet / poster exclusive to this edition. After releasing the critically acclaimed Alphabet 1968 on the seminal Type label (Grouper, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Yellow Swans), Richter chose De Stijl for this 2012 album, an American label that had just put out future classics by the likes of Circuit Des Yeux, Hype Williams and Wolf Eyes. Earth is a 2009 silent film by Ho Tzu Nyen, one of Singapore's foremost visual artists. After hearing Black To Comm's Alphabet 1968 Ho Tzu Nyen invited Richter to accompany the film at Berlin's Asian Film Festival, Unsound in Krakow and several other art biennals and music festivals around the world. In his own words: "Most of the music was composed under the influence of heavy pain killers while recovering from a broken leg (the recordings literally took place in bed). The music (like the film) is about slowness and decay, states of unconsciousness, sleeping and waking up, dying and being reborn. The film is a post-apocalyptic collage based on paintings by classical European painters (Caravaggio, Delacroix, Rembrandt, Gericault) -- the music translates this concept employing corresponding collage-based sampling techniques using loops made from vintage vinyl and shellac records combined with acoustic and electronic instrumentation and voice." From the original De Stijl one-sheet: "Richter’s already formidable expressive power stretches over all of Earth. Reflecting the countless cyclical forces that make up, oh, more or less everything we know and are, the music on Earth is bracing, lovely, bustling and still, and at times bittersweet, a commingling of sensations and emotions that can’t be neatly separated from one another. (Earth is complex, as you know.) Guests on Earth include David Aird, a.k.a Vindicatrix (on the Mordant Music label), contributing startling vocal work; Renate Nikolaus on an array of instruments and noise devices; Rutger Zuydervelt (singing bowls); and Christopher Kline (singing saw). Earth is Black to Comm’s seventh album and his debut for De Stijl, following the acclaimed Alphabet 1968 (on Type) and last year’s vinyl-only collaboration with Mike Kelley of Destroy All Monsters (on the En/Of label)." Alex Neilson in The Wire: "The most marked aspect of Earth is the voice of David Aird, aka Vindicatrix. Imperious and dolorous, he has the gravity of post-Climate Of Hunter Scott Walker, David Sylvain or Klaus Nomi stripped of the pathetic ritz. This is something that's easy to do badly, but Aird pulls it off with aplomb. On "The Children" he breaks into a morose yodel, rolling the words around his palate and colouring each syllable black before gifting them to the air. The meaning isn't understood verbally as much as viscerally. Beneath Aird's ululations, Richter casts handfuls of angelic debris from keyboards and digital devices, generating a celestial electronic tapestry reminiscent of Japanese musician Nobukazu Takemura. Sounds vie and twist at frequencies you can't so much hear as feel in the bridge of your nose, and the variety and full-bloodedness of the accompaniment is what prevents Aird's vocal from occassionally lapsing into shtick."

Project: Mooncircle & Finest Ego have teamed up to establish a fresh new 12” producer series, entitled “Faces”. On every edition, you will find two different producers. Respectively, each producer will have their own record-side and unique cover artwork by the aspiring Bioniq, known for his surrealistic portraits, blending humans and technology.

On our fourth “Faces” edition we are featuring the two ascending artists Lomovolokno and Sieren, presumably the two most unknown so far. Originally hailing from Krasnodar, Russia and Bielefeld, Germany, one was inspired by naive childhood memories of imaginative creatures seen floating in the nighttime sky, while the other looks into an uncertain future that holds the anxiety of a fresh start but also the ever present risk of failure. The artwork takes these motifs and implements them in a vision of technological enhancements of human capacities and evolvement, forming a futuristic symbiosis that enables for synaesthetic senses heightened to an subatomic degree. But it is unsure, however, if these augmentations can actually expand our human experience or rather amplify our solitary existence and emotional void while traveling across fantastic worlds and the universal vacuum filling the space between.

Krasnodar, Russia: In the midst of grey soviet housing projects, a young boy enjoys playing and improvising his first little melodies on his parents piano. Always being inspired by the nature nearby the city - memories of peaceful springtime swimming sessions in the Black Sea come to mind – Lomovolokno grows up fascinated by machinery like samplers and the rapidly increasing possibilities of modern computers. Delving deeply into twisting melodies, building sounds and crossing notes leads his way to first field recordings resulting in an influx of elements ranging from waves of the sea, the wind, sand, crackling noises, banging and rustling becoming a part of his sound.

Sieren is the maiden name of Matthias Frick’s mother and also his current alias under which he started to release his first free tracks in 2011. Rumor has it that he has a dark secret history of producing experimental techno, albeit his love for UK influenced bass music existed for more than one handful of years. It was not until recently that he began to make the most of his love for field recording and experimental soundscaping and is now throwing his full force into music, while simultaneously finishing a university degree in computer science and design before moving from small town to métropole to follow a new set of challenges and advance to the next stage of his life.

Bioniq is an artwork designer, DJ and producer from St. Petersburg in cold Russia and Project: Mooncircle's special KGB agent. With his drawings he aims to create new horizons on paper and draws inspiration from historic tales, events of the present age but also possibilities the future might hold.

In celebration of the label's 15th year anniversary Sacred Bones is now repressing this legendary debut on Colored Vinyl for the very first time. The vinyl colour is a mix of black, white & orange! Margaret Chardiet was born and raised in New York City. As a founding member of the Red Light District collective in Far Rockaway, NY she has been a figurehead in the underground experimental scene since the age of seventeen. She describes her drive to make noise music as something akin to an exorcism where she is able to express, her "deep-seated need/drive/urge/possession to reach other people and make them Feel something [specifically] in uncomfortable/confrontational ways." Engineered by Sean Ragon of Cult of Youth, Abandon is Pharmakon's first proper studio album and also her first widely distributed release. The songs on this album were all written and recorded during a turbulent three month time period during which several fundamental life changes forced her to begin living in a completely new way and in a new space. She describes the lyrical themes of this album as being about "Loss. Losing everything. Relinquishing control. Complete psychic abandon. Blind leaps of faith into the fire, walking out unscathed. Crawling out of the pit."

500 copies on black vinyl & download link for digital edition.

Barcelona's Ciudad Lineal finally deliver the follow up to their fantastic demo from 2013. A full length album of dark minimal wave heavily influenced by El Aviador Dro y Sus Obreros Especializados, The Normal or Cabaret Voltaire. Armed with a bass guitar, drum pad, a keyboard and two synths Ciudad Lineal manage to create a conceptual piece around the idea of progress and industry as opossing forces. 'El Nuevo Hombre' is divided in two parts each one comprising one side of the album. The A side being 'The Splendor' and the B side 'The Fall' joined by a speech symbolizing mankind's awakening. While the Ciudad Lineal sound is certainly rooted in the early 80's synth explosion the band remains fresh due to their lyric approach as well as their DIY ethos.

Don't be mislead from the name, the enigmatic M. Zalla, is one of the numerous alter ego of the italian maestro Piero Umiliani. Umiliani, during his period of fascination for psychedelic and electronic atmospheres, starts to compose a good number of musical portraits dedicated, as the title reveals, to the problems of his time. We are at the beginning of '70 and italians are worried by mafia, terrorism and social conflicts: so it has sense that the music choosen to represent this anxious problems has a sperimental nature; dark and disturbing a sort of unicum in the long and extremly productive Umiliani career.And if, in 2015, titles as “Mondo in Crisi”, “Problemi Sociali”, “Azione Sindacale” and “Mafia Oggi” sounds still sadly actual, it's even more surprising find that the music of “Problemi d'Oggi” (Today Problems) is projected on the future, sounding still alien and uniques.
The record presents various styles: from Pink Floyd atmospheres (or Braen's Machine if you prefer...) to compositions characterized by a great use of drum machines and synthetizer (MOOG and Sinthy). We just have to listen the begginning of the opening track “Produzione” to give sense to the words of Sean Canty (Demdike Stare) that defines the music the first techno/trance track of the history; but between the grooves of this vinyl it's easy to find intuitions that many other artist and musicians – from Residents to Aphex Twin and Four Tet – will be able to catch during their carrers.

At first glance, Carpenter Brut's influences are '80s TV shows amd B-movies, loaded with synthesizer music. Listening to his home made EP's, however, one would rather bet on a black metal background, a crush for Dario Argento and a force-fed religious education. This would explain his satanic mood, his passion for kitsch sounds and his adoration for all kinds of enjoyment. Whatever his influences may be, Carpenter Brut does not lack the talent to create in-your-face vintage killer tracks. This is the long-awaited reissue of Carpenter Brut's self released EP trilogy, presented as a luxurious 3LP.

Through the course of time, DSR Lines (David Edren) never loses his intimate and profound connection to the universe of modular synths. These recordings made during 2014 in a residence at the Cem/Worm studio in Rotterdam, represent a further magical compendium of his Organic Electronic Music. In particular, here he draws from his expressive arsenal the cosmic and galactic potential of the Arp 2500, which happily floating throughout. A rigorous magician of vaporous, oscillating patterns, sidereal frequencies, nebulous dust; an explorer of inter-zonal paths, he unveils new dreamlike dimensions en route to unfold planets. Between Kraut-Kosmische accelerations and a personal approach of gentle minimalism, he always forges rare atmospheres of rhythmic pulsation, full of enveloping, spherical and spiralling sounds, luminous and radiant in their hypnotic aura, or magnificently ecstatic and ascending. Originally released by Ultra Eczema.

The recent rediscovery of J.D. Emmanuel by critics and audience, and his comeback to underground scene from 2010 was crucial to reweave the development of electronic music in the early Eighties. This new publication cast new light on his first activity of composing and performing electronic music during 1979-83, experiments totally unreleased and never before published on vinyl.

After the exploit of Osmose in 1978, Kalma returns into the studio in 1980 with Interfrequence a library record on space ambients. A continuation of his personal research based on the combination of electronic machines with natural sounds and acoustic instrumentation. The french musician fully wears the robe of master of ceremonies of the synths. However, the path taken is not that symphonic of the minimalist and galactic suites composed by other standard bearers like Richard Pinas and Klaus Schulze. Here, we find 18 short pictures sound (few of them in collaboration of M. Saclays) that emanate a variety of ideas and ethno-cultural influences unparalleled. A distinctive compositional style always returns an crescendo of ecstatic emotions, a reflection on the hidden and secret aspects of the micro and macro cosmos. If in Osmose the sampling sound from the mother Gaia was more explicit, here the Nature is investigated not only in terms of pure tones, but especially in the dynamics of flows and movements dictated by the frequency of moogs and organs and embellished with hyper-space flutes trumpets and clarinets. Kalma so writes yet another chapter of his personal saga of a new world of sound imagery.

Peder Mannerfelt and soundtrack composer Malcolm Pardon reprise their acclaimed cinematic duo, Roll The Dice for a 4th album of moving, widescreen electro-acoustic sound design, ambient and rhythmic noise themes. Huge recommendation if you're into Peder's solo material or indeed Colin Stetson, The Haxan Cloak, John Carpenter, Deathprod, Willie Burns...

It's an intensely physical yet starkly spacious suite of stone cut electronics and frozen instrumental timbres that in the space of ten sensually riveting and often punishing tracks wrest a poignant, timely sense of emotion from oblique, shadowy structures and burning tonal textures.

Issued on the duo’s newly minted label, The New Black, and incorporating the vital input of Per ‘Ruskträsk’ Johansson’s beastly saxophone animations, the results pursue Roll The Dice’s two soundtrack contributions - for the Blanck Mass-curated score to Belgian horror movie The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears [2013], and their score/end credits for The Last Panthers - into more visceral psychoacoustic space where there’s scant chance of escaping their gloaming tonal apparitions and tensile, bony percussions.

The set is less a mannered symphony, like Until Silence, and more an urgent, angry clash of duelling jazz noise cyborgs, rendering their sound in sharply angular, convulsive spasms of vacuum-packed wind, wood-on-skin, and black cloud palls whose semi-organic nature is belied by the dry punch of air-tight studio production. The results are more pummelling and angered than anyone has previously heard in their music, forging a much harder nosed, anxious aesthetic whose intent resonates with contemporary political pressures.

In between the muzzled grind and bark of album opener The Derailed and the depressive grip of it’s closing statement, Broken In Time, Mannerfelt and Pardon’s dissected instrumentation is tweaked to aching levels of tension, sometimes a sublime tension as with the wilting keys and weightless bass jabs that support Under The Arches and The Kronos Quartet-like pits of Coffin & Nails, or equally with a death-drive fury in the condensed Faust-meets-Tony Conrad impact of Cannonball, the nerve-biting burnout of Bright Lights, Dark Hearts, and yoked tight into Locked Hands’ breathless escalation of arid white noise and thorny pulse.

By straying from the lighter sensual relief conveyed in their earlier releases, Born To Ruin manifests Roll The Dice’s riskiest but arguably most successful move in ten years of producing together, one which pays off with deeply bittersweet appeal though intimate investment and focussed reception.

Novo Line reprises the meter-messing genius of his Movements album with the Dyad mini LP - a brilliantly uncompromising follow-up for Ecstatic. Exclusively using the tools of ’88/’89 professional recording set-ups - namely the Atari ST, but with a slight algorithmic alteration. While it’s increasingly hard to find new tricks in old gear, especially with the resurgence of hardware fetishism and the ubiquity of DAWs, that’s exactly what Nat Fowler has been doing for the best part of a decade as Novo Line. By, in his own words, “misusing one algorithmic composition program (not, by a longshot, a professional music production tool of any epoch) contained in 208kb of data on a 3.5” floppy disk”, He generates and explores new permutations of old music which, ironically enough, sound fresher or at least more innovative than a lot of new music in circulation right now.Inputting ever-changing parameters of melody, and 29 year old algorithms, the machine’s voice is live-mixed and presented un-rendered as maxed-out waveforms via 1MB RAM, resulting in a severely compressed and combusting effect that leave mastering and sound engineers the world over scratching their heads in puzzlement. However, the effect is equally enthralling to anyone whose ears have become overly accustomed to contemporary emulations of ‘space’ in electronic music, and genuinely sound unique in relief of the contemporary field.The release poses a playful question: can a record be ambivalent as to which speed it should be played? Celebrating vinyl and futhermore physical media, the listener is encouraged to find their exact speed of preference with the RPM toggle and pitch slider, that nearly forgotten joy in modifying speed in real time without a CPU mediating between the listener and sound; some tracks stumble heavily at 33rpm like boulders in the tumble dry, while others flash by at 45. In the taut, recoiling thud of Monad, thru the frenetic pop edit of Ennead to the ‘floor-curdling prong of Dyad Marcia on the front, to the forceful New Beat mutation Tetrad, and the mind bending Melpomenean Dyad which closes the LP, its some heavily challenging but deeply satisfying gear that seriously yet playfully messes with convention.Essentially Novo Line is revelling in the pure spirit of computer music and the sonification of dance music as we know it - born in the ’88/’89 phenomenon of techno-house music, including its Industrial/EBM precedents, and its New Beat/Euro House offshoots. And like John McCusker’s delectable artwork of a beige room and monitors interwoven with tubular, computer generated follies, Novo Line provides a captivating perspective that shortcircuits nostalgia’s illness to result in a killer vaccine against/for convention.

Limited edition of 300 copies on colored vinyl!

Created at the footstep of Mount Victoria, Groeni wanted to challenge themselves compositionally and sonically with Nihx. Nihx explores the characteristics of points of conflict between opposing forces. As in the past, and as with many electronic outfits, the music had been written ‘in the box’, so to speak. To counter this technique the three members of Groeni (Al, Mike, and James) each wrote numerous compositional sketches that were more or less complete as frameworks before entering them into the digital realm. With similar inspiration the band wanted to create unique and personalised sounds away from the computer to sample and use with most of the sonic treatment happening also away from the computer. The vast majority of the drum sounds are made from samples of Mike’s ever expanding synth collection, numerous sounds are manipulated feedback from guitars or vocals among other things. The entire record was written and recorded across three home studios in Wellington, NZ and has been almost 2 years in the making.

‘Nihx’ comes out worldwide on limited (only 300 copies) black, white marbled vinyl (including download code) & digital.

Within LOK Recordings’ sixth release, we introduce LOKin to you.

We're coming up with something to break boundaries and strengthen the spirit of artistic freedom."The Fall" by the Belgian-born Berlin-based singer, songwriter and producer Cook Strummer - aka Maxime Donnet - is an evocative ode to lost love and forgotten spirituality.

Channeling the post-punk synth sound of his home country's Cold Wave movement of the late '70s and early '80s, Donnet has absorbed the sounds of his adopted home in Germany, taking that all-pervasive electronic music that is all around him and morphing it into something new.

The result is "The Fall".

Recorded in a cell located in the basement of an old Stasi Prison (Studio K61 in Berlin), it's an album with one eye on the dancefloor, but one that works just as well when the party is over. It's an album that blends the organic with the synthetic, mixing guitars and synths with post-dubstep flourishes and drum machines. It's an album about something.

The name of the album has been chosen in reference to first single Fallen, the idea of falling in life and waking up again. It's also about the fact that it's not the fall that kills you. A fall can be graceful. A fall can improve a life perspective and create new paths. It can and does make you strong.

The main metaphor in there is one of reincarnation. Indeed, it's the story of a soul negotiating with God to not reincarnate on earth again, but being forced to do it anyways.

Experience something different!

Composed, written and produced by Maxime Donnet
Recorded and Mixed by Mario Engelter at Studio K61 Berlin
Mastered by Sasse Lindblad at BlackHead Studios

At the beginning of 2015 I approached Victor Greetham at The Agile Rabbit Pizzeria about programming a series of concerts at his spot in Brixton Village, an open air marketplace in the heart of Brixton (London, UK).

The premise being that I would bring a selection of great, strictly one hour long concerts every Thursday night, some of which would be completely improvised free form music. These performances came to be named “Agile Experiments”, paying homage to Victor & his venue for allowing us to expose the market's passing trade audiences to something they may well have never had an opportunity to hear before or ever again for that matter.

We implemented two simple rules for the performances:
1. We wouldn't discuss or plan anything around what we were going to play.
2. We would play for an hour straight with no breaks.

After a year of concerts in the market place, I organised 8 one hour long recording sessions in a studio with 8 different combinations of musicians I had had the honor of performing with over this period and we applied the same rules as we did for the live performances in order to document these happenings.

Two further years down the line, after sitting on these recordings trying to find a way for them to be heard, I am extremely pleased to announce a sequential release of two limited edition vinyls featuring 12 extracts from these raw & unpredictable performances.

I hope that you will truly enjoy these minutes of off-the-cuff cooperative creativity.

In good faith and love for people and music,

Dave De Rose

Fire-Toolz is one musical moniker used by a consciousness that has taken the physical form of a transfemme non-binary human named Angel Marcloid. Though her work fits under the wide umbrella of beat-focused electronic production, Fire-Toolz sculpts her tracks from warped signifiers of genres including jazz fusion, electro-industrial, new age, black metal, vaporwave, and noise improv. Far from a passing tourist cherry-picking the juiciest chunks of each of these traditions, Angel has worked through an improbably rigorous musical self-education that seems to compress several entire discrete lives into one: a teenage student of prog and metal, tracing the linear compositions of Rush and Dream Theater on drums, then guitar and bass, then keyboards; touring the country at the front of multiple emo bands before touring the country for years again under myriad monikers in the harsh noise circuit; falling headfirst into the internet abyss of mangled smooth jazz samples and ultra high-resolution sound design. Each of these skillsets and memories collide in the production of Skinless X-1, as sketches of knotty fusion complexity untangle themselves before our ears, only to melt seconds later into hard-panning clouds of alien texture or pads of angelic synth.

Here at Death & Leisure we are on a continuing mission to surprise and experiment, and so with our new release we present something very special, Blackmoon1348 and The Tibetan Monks of The Tashi Lhunpo Monastary. This project sounds like nothing else, it fuses heavy drone guitar sounds with traditional tibetan throat singing and live instrumentation. BlackMoon1348 in collaboration with the Tibetan Monks of the Tashi Lhunpo Monastery (Tibet/ India). 2017 BlackMoon1348 embarked on a cultural experimentation of cultural diversity in the arts, forming a collaboration of ancient Tibetan ceremonial practises and instrumentation with sub-harmonic drones and industrial soundscapes. The music amalgamates sacred mantras that date back to the early teachings of Tibetan Buddhism practised in the Tashi Lhunpo Monastery, with heavy detuned western instruments, synths, and electronic music for the first time in recorded history. The Tashi Lhunpo monastery was once home to the Panchen Lama who subsequently “disappeared” under the oppressive Chinese rule of Tibet. A handful of the Tashi Lhunpo monks were fortunate to escape into exile and have since re-built the monastery in Mysore, South India – now flourishing with over 400 monks practising within the monastery. Tibetan Buddhism is an outlawed ancient tradition within Tibet – monks, nuns, and Tibetans cannot openly practise their heritage and traditions, forcing Tibetans to inhabitable plateaus, with such areas are now under “Chinese Re-development”, the land being stripped of natural resources for China’s ever growing economy and totalitarian rule. Tibetans face persecution for as little as owning a Tibetan flag, or picture of the Dali Lama, with such actions landing you in jail, tortured, poised, and/or being released just before the point of death. It is important for us to remember and celebrate the traditions of the Himalayas and its sacred, peaceful practises. The music was recorded live in one take at Flesh and Bone studio in Hackney for NTS Radio’s Black Impulse show. Engineered, mixed, and mastered by Oliver and Owen at Flesh and Bone, capturing the raw, ethereal essence of the collaboration and ceremonial sounds buried deep within the Himalayas. This was the first time in history for such collaboration of tradition, ideology from Adeline Rozario and orchestrated by David Kerry of BlackMoon1348 who created this music to diversify and bring together ceremonial instruments, diversifying the metaphysics of transcendence through ceremonial Tibetan practises. It is important to understand that BlackMoon1348 are not attempting to change the fundamental meaning or belief of the Tashi Lhunpo Monks, or assume to have a deep-rooted understanding of the ancient traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, This is our understanding of Tibetan culture and practices as truly and honestly as we see and feel it, and our attempt to spread this beautiful, sacred, culture, and keep it alive within today’s society. Liberation through hearing.

Terence Fixmer’s path through the changing techno landscape of the past 20 years has been anything but direct. Indeed, the French born producer, musician and Planete Rouge label founder has long been influenced by the periphery of continental European dance music subgenres from electronic body music, new beat and acid, before combining them into his own pioneering hybrid of futuristic, EBM-inflected techno with classic releases such as 2001’s Muscle Machine or the collaborative Between The Devil LP with Nitzer Ebb’s Douglas McCarthy as Fixmer/McCarthy. While the sound in recent years has been rediscovered and recast in diverse contexts by a new generation of producers, Through The Cortex sees Fixmer gravitating toward a different kind of industrial-tinged electronics, led as much (or more) by analogue sequencers, melodies and ultra-saturated sounds of synthesizers than drums and percussion. Across eight tracks at a compact but varied 40 minutes, the LP touches on an aesthetic hinted at in recent Ostgut Ton releases (2016’s Beneath The Skin EP and 2017’s Force EP), revealing a sonic narrative through noisy, screaming synth/vocal riffs with a jagged, guitar- like post-punk sensibility. Through The Cortex is techno with a voice – or rather multiple voices – guiding listeners through hypnotic, space- and social-themed terrain as a kind of dark soundtrack to darker days. The result ranges from the slow John Carpenter-inspired Escape From Precinct 13 funk of “Expedition” and the patient yet muscular stomp of “Fury” to the mesmerizing Suicide-like pop of single “Accelerate”, where Fixmer, using his voice as an instrument, chants the track’s ambiguous title in an invocation of systemic change/collapse. Elsewhere, the story is told with more abstract and wailing vocals like on “Shout in A Black Hole”, or in the warm, entrancing chords floating across the stereo image in ostensibly changing time-signatures on “A Halo Somewhere” – the LP’s uncharacteristically kosmische musik come-down. The track, and Through The Cortex as a whole, reflect what can be described as Fixmer’s idiosyncratic take on both techno subgenres as well as the larger pool of electronic music in general. This broad approach translates into a sound that is not only difficult to pin down, but also one that lends itself to multiple listens.

Repress of a Zanias’s Into The All On Fleisch Records.

300 Clear White Marble Zanias, has been hard at work over the years as part of many projects including the Dark Entries affiliated ‘Linea Aspera’ and minimal wave band ‘Keluar’ with Sid Lamar. Since then, she has been curating ‘Fleisch’, a club series and record label releasing music from the likes of Schwefelgelb, Forces and Kontravoid. As a solo artist, she has released her debut EP ‘To The Core’ in 2016 and has been collaborating with some of electronic music’s most respected figures. Appearing on Dax J’s critically acclaimed ‘Offending Public Morality’ LP, as well as providing vocals on Black Rain’s ‘Dark Pool’ album on Blackest Ever Black and working with Ancient Methods on last year’s ‘Andromeda’ which was released on Candela Rising. ‘Into The All’ is the culmination of extensive recording and experimentation. It charts a journey of psychospiritual evolution, from an unconscious state through to death and enlightenment. Inspired by the works of Ken Wilber and Yuval Noah Harari, it expresses both a personal journey and one that applies to all of humanity. Utilising field recordings of birds, gibbons and insects from Malaysia and Australia, and samples of instruments from Indonesia (a reference to her childhood spent there), Armenia and ancient Norway and Sumeria, alongside synthesisers and drum machines. credits Written and produced by Alison Lewis & Alex Akers. Mastered by Alain Paul. ‘Thanatos’ featuring vocals by Lynette Cerezo of Bestial Mouths. Cover photography by Andras Varga. With thanks to Eavan Derbyshire and Katrina Sjöstrand.

Sarah and Ariel blend their strong individual personalities in a single trip on the edge of time. Their kosmiche music is pure, magnificent and elegant, an intergalactic hypnosis that seems to tell of distant times, a millenary vortex of a lost Era. In the first phase of departure, the mysterious song of the sax winds in archaic echoes, supported by the electronic inlays of the synth (Arp Odissey). Flowing between space rumbles and astral progressions, we sight high celestial bodies. When the infinite drones of the tampura start, we take part in the night ceremonial, surrounded by the deep harmonium and the Tibetan bell chimes. This music releases a sort of mythological warmth, secret codes of a lost purity, which lets us dwell in the labyrinths of a pyramid or in the sacred space of a cosmic pagoda.

Originally released on tape by Sound Reporters in 1986. Ethnoelectronics is a further episode of pioneering fusion between ethnic and electronic music, involving dauntless explorers such as Walter Maioli, Nirodh Fortini, Fred Gales, Raffaele Serra, John Zandijk and the visionary sculptor Edward Luyken. As the soundtrack of an obscure science-fiction saga, the six parts of these recordings retain something profoundly osmotic and sidereal. In these hybridizations, it’s the heart of personal spiritual cosmos and stratospheric portals to pulse, but always remains the devotion to wild nature and ethnographic differences. In this way, the sinusoidal movements of electronic synthesizers and radiophonic frequencies interact with the pounding sounds of the jungle, with frogs, sea waves, buzz insects, leaves and rain. From flutes, rattles, steel sound sculptures or rustling idiophones, mysterious samples appeared like weird interferences, with rhythms and ritual voices from Tibet, West Papua, Burundi, Tahiti or the shamanic Japan of the Ainu.

And we used to be such a nice record label .... BKV 026 swells up from the Bristol swamp in the forms of post-human industrial duo Bad Tracking. Here they have assembled variously, one spacious black metal intro (with original screams), an industrial-pop earworm not unlike Depeche Mode imploding in a feedback tunnel, two itch-tek dancefloor riddims namecheking local venue bans and I just don't know what to call 'Wellspring' really, the end of days? Well you had it coming anyway…..
Known in town for upsetting local MPs and lisencees with their live performances as 'naked technology sex slaves' [think cassette-induced self harm, total nudity, blood from ears], Bad Tracking are the most visceral thing we've seen in this new wave of Avon experimental - a breath of life into the longstanding tradition of industrial performance art (and an antidote to idle BR club culture). Lyrically touching on censorship and tech // sonically they use feedback as a punishing instrument of anguish and expression.Widower EPis truly chewed nail sonics, more human than all your noise records, genuinely more scary than your edgelord power electronics nonsense, more forward than all yer government funded experimental think-records.
You may remember Bad Tracking from their remix of 90s soundsystem legends Bush Chemists on Bokeh last year. It sounded like they played the original through 1,000 knackered tape decks and added one kick drum. It was total sacrilege and we loved it. Bad Tracking is Gordon Apps aka reputed jungle/drumfunk producer Relapse (who also moonlights as Avon Terror Corp's Olivia Mutant John, buy his shit) and poet / VHS video artist Max Kelan (who has lent his visuals to MVs from Hodge, The Pop Group, OM Unit, Young Echo to name only 4). They've released on tRewdindForward family labels like Mechanical Reproductions and champions of bad taste and good music - Fuckpunk.
"Tell the widower, of the nanny state, to go and fuck himself….."

Microdosing is a series of compilation 12”s selected by Julienne Dessagne aka Fantastic Twins, and designed in collaboration with French visual artist Geff Pellet. Microdosing is a collective experiment aimed at helping you fighting back your modern obsession with happiness. You may deserve a nice day but the day does not need a nice you, nothing should be forced, everything is permitted. Microdosing will provide you with sonic healing weapons on regular basis and at irregular dosage. Those doses will favour psychedelic social techniques against self help tyranny, creation over soma, provoking over numbing, our outer-selves over our inner-selves. Microdosing refuses the fatality of the pleasure principle. Life is a struggle, time to embrace it. —— “The cure 4 pain is in the pain” The Microdosing community is an endless Tibetan geometric tattoo on a thousand backs, a black well opening on infinite space. Let us embrace the void in our lives as it is fruitful. Cooper Saver hails from L.A, a city of fallen angels. “Phase 0” is a demonic weapon of choice, its beauty rising from urban ashes. Borusiade’s “Worlds” is an industrial mantra, tribal rhythms driving you through the seven circles of agony, the voyage being the destination itself. Zillas On Acid’s “S-Test” slowly pours acid into your retina, its groove showing you that the blind are the true see-ers. Scott Fraser’s “Deliria” concludes this chapter with the serenity only known to true martyrs. This is not a soothing piece, just the realisation that peace comes from eternal damnation. Microdosing is happy to lead you through the dances that know no threshold. To the chant of “the only cure for pain is in the pain”, you will travel further through an empty eternity. (Ivan Smagghe)

Before his prolific activity in the field of music therapy, Agostino Nirodh Fortini also embarked on his own path in electronic music. In the early eighties he was a close collaborator of Walter Maioli and Fred Gales, at the time of the pioneering label Sound Reporters. “Suoni Immaginari”, released only privately on cassette in 1988, contains a wide range of keyboards and lots of ethnic field recordings assembled with an absolutely modern praxis ahead of its time. Nirodh imagines his planetary odysseys as a complex of harmonic devices, nebula storms, glassy explosions and gravity-free falls. His operational horizon reflects further cultural ideas and suggestions; not only the artifice between natural sounds and the programmed machine but also the intrusion of arabesque dreams and jungles contaminated by invading insects and mad pipers. These are spectral symphonies which can have analogies with the fourth world of Hassell and Eno.

"Black Devil Disco Club's story is as deep and strange as the music itself. His first album ‘Black Devil Disco Club’ is one of the most enigmatic electronic masterpieces ever made. So ahead of it’s time that no one could believe it was made in 1977 (released 1n 1978). Many thought it was a hoax and that the music was made by Aphex Twin or Luke Vibert but when Lo Recordings released the ‘28 After’ album in 2006, the truth was finally revealed.

Black Devil is the alter ego of Bernard Fevre, a French composer of electronic library music including the magnificent ‘Strange World Of Bernard Fevre’.

Bernard grew up and worked in Paris, and it was the African clubs and rhythms that inspired him to make the ‘Disco Club’ album. With only a small arsenal of electronic keyboards, a vocoder and looped conga drums he made music that transcends time.

Fast forward to 2020 and ‘Lucifer Is A Flower’ is every bit as enigmatic, inventive and inspiring as it’s title suggests. A kaleidoscopic ride into the mind of a musical master. Beautifully packaged with design by Non Format that includes pictures of the devil as a young man, it’s a fitting tribute to a career that has spanned over 40 years of divine and diabolical genius"

Producer, songwriter and director Sevdaliza releases her highly anticipated sophomore album 'Shabrang' in 2020. Produced entirely by herself together with long-time collaborator Mucky, the 14-track album is the long awaited follow-up to the 2017 debut album 'ISON'. In just a few years Sevdaliza established herself as an iconic, highly creative, versatile and independent artist who has landed on many celebrity moodboards. Her stunning visual for HUMAN of her debut album ISON has collected over 25 million YouTube views to date and masterpiece Shahmaran about mental slavery, won 2 UK Music Video Awards. Sevdaliza toured 35 countries in the last 2 years and amassed thousands of fans globally (Spotify 200,000, Youtube, 300,000, IG 230,000). In 2020 Sevdaliza returns with her follow up album 'Shabrang'. The word 'Shabrang' is mentioned In Persian mythology, although there is no direct translation to capture it's essence, the Farsi phrase Shabrang literally translates to colour-palette of the night. This 'palette' is visualised in the tones in Sevdaliza's black eye on the album cover. The black eye represents the years of physical and emotional turbulence. In Sevdaliza's words 'This album represents to me that the essence of it all to me is love. It is a deep letter to myself, my own bible I have to write in order to trust and believe in life. Trust in myself and my character as a human being'. Born in Iran and residing in the Netherlands, Sevdaliza has been a strong independent force in the creation of her art. She is a producer and engineer, an independent art director with critical eye for detail and storytelling and a unique songwriter. Her music has been described as 'genre-bending', drawing on various genres including alternative electronic, indie, triphop, alternative R&B and the avant-garde. 'Shabrang' is available on grey vinyl and the package contains a large poster and photograph ID-sheet.

German pianist and composer Hauschka returns to Sonic Pieces with music for the experimental film Upstream. Together with filmmaker Rob Petit and acclaimed writer Robert Macfarlane he has created a slow-moving dream-flight into wildness and winter through an eerie, hypnotic soundtrack of the Scottish highlands. The film, which is shot entirely from the air, follows the course of the River Dee in Scotland all the way to its source in the Cairngorm mountains, the highest of any river in Britain. The soundtrack to the film, seen here, is without doubt Hauschka´s most brooding, deep work and we find him in a much darker mood in contrast to his Oscar-nominated works for Hollywood films. The variation of cello, prepared piano, poems, sound effects and occasional synth create a ghostly sound as if a shadow was slowly moving through the Scottish winter. One can hear a faint echo of David Darling´s Dark Wood era in the empty, dark beauty of the bow - performed by Insa Schirmer. Hauschka sheds his more rhythmic, entertaining side to reveal something new. Together with Petit & Macfarlane he embraces the comfort and force of nature to truly mesmerising effect. The last and shortest piece of the album Uisge dhè as well as the digital bonus track Here the Heart Fills include prose poems written by Robert Macfarlane voiced in Gaelic and English by Niall Gordàn & Julie Fowlis. The naked words spoken over haunting sound recordings of the River Dee and its source, create a mystical atmosphere heightened only by sparse cello passages. A strange, beautiful and captivating album that stands alone as a truly transportive piece of work: close your eyes and travel... Upstream.

Exclucively available for mainland Europe except Scandinavia at HHV.

Blanck Mass - the project of musician Benjamin John Power - announces Mind Killer, out Friday, May 14th, via Power’s own Weirding Way label. Recorded in April 2020 at the beginning of the lockdown during the Covid-19 outbreak, Mind Killer is an improvised and original live-streamed performance by Blanck Mass. Using a core setup of the Korg Volca Series (beats, bass, sample & keys), the result is a 40+ minute long voyage into improvised techno and loop-work, warts and all. The only alteration is a slight edit in length so it fits onto a piece of vinyl. The release is extremely limited, one pressing only of 1,000 copies worldwide on black vinyl.

Mind Killer follows the recently released Blanck Mass album, In Ferneaux. The album is made of an archive of field recordings from a decade of global travels. Isolation gave Blanck Mass an opportunity to make connections in a moment when being together is impossible. The record is divided into two long-form journeys that gather the memories of being with now-distant others through the composition of a nostalgic travelogue.

Put together during the first lockdown of 2020, this record explores the eerie and the dreamlike - a moment in time when reality felt like fiction; a figurative void in real life. Translating as ‘from afar’ or ‘from a distance’, ‘Comme de Loin’ is derived from Clara de Asís’ recording; exploring the ambiguity between ‘the concrete space and the imaginary space’. This collection of music unites a diverse range of artists interconnected through an aesthetic quality, a freedom in exploring the void. It’s 4am and I’m standing on some grass. There’s a small stone at my feet - a perfect circle on all sides - so I pick it up and walk over to the canal. He steps out from the bushes and I throw the stone into the air with as much height and backspin as I can. His shiny eyeballs roll up to watch it spinning in the black. It slows, stops, then falls to earth. When the stone hits the water there is no splash, just a short, dull thud. He doesn’t reply and skulks back into the bushes on his toes. - Jacob Dwyer Mastered by Marco Pellegrino @ Analog Cut First run of 200

Black Truffle is pleased to announce the first-ever vinyl reissue of Remko Scha’s Guitar Mural 1 featuring The Machines, originally published as a rare cassette edition by Taal Beeld Geluid in 1982. A computational linguist by profession, Scha played an important role in the development of sound, installation, and digital art in the Netherlands from the late 1970s onward, co-founding the performance and exhibition space Het Appolohuis in Eindhoven in 1980. Alongside Paul Panhuysen and Jan Van Riet, Scha was a founding member of the radical improvisation group The Maciunas Ensemble, though he is best known for his work with mechanised electric guitars, documented on the legendary 1982 LP Machine Guitars.

Guitar Mural 1 documents an installation of Scha’s mechanical guitar ensemble The Machines held at a Groningen gallery space in 1982. Five electric guitars hang from the wall, their strings sounded by rotating rubber strings and a sabre saw controlled by a mechanical apparatus, as well as four ropes criss-crossing the five instruments on the wall. Once the mechanism was set up, Scha’s only intervention was to vary the speed at which it operated. Where Machine Guitars presents short excerpts clearly distinguished by rhythmic and timbral variation, here we are confronted with four enormous side-long slabs of percussive string attack and the resulting clouds of harmonics. Variation is minimal across the duration of each side, making for a sculptural listening experience, as if we are patiently examining each facet of a static object. But significant variety exists between the four sides, each of which shows off a different facet of what The Machines were capable of. The first two excerpts feature open strings sounded at rapid tempos, dissolving the percussive attack into a continuous stream of sound reminiscent of Charlemagne Palestine’s ‘strumming’ technique. On the third side, the strings are partly muted and the tempo slightly lowered, resulting in layers of relentlessly chugging rhythm somewhere between an ensemble of hand drums and an early Velvet Underground bootleg. On the fourth side, havoc breaks loose in percussive waves of asynchronous repetition that bring Scha’s sound world close to that of another pioneer experiment in musical mechanisation, the Solar Music of Joe Jones.

Presented as a limited edition 2LP set in a deluxe gatefold sleeve accompanied by stunning visual documentation of the original installation, remastered audio and new liner notes from Alan Licht and Van Lagestein, Guitar Mural 1 is an exhilarating document occupying a unique space between kinetic sculpture, hardcore minimalism and rock & roll.

Definitive career-spanning anthology
Includes previously unreleased tracks, inspired collaborations, and material from Leslie’s groundbreaking 1990 solo debut, Witch
Featuring musical contributions from Jon Hassell, Helen Terry, Jah Wobble, Renegade Soundwave’s Karl Bonnie, Christophe Van Huffel, Jay Glass Dubs, Mari G. Mooney, and Diamond Version, amongst others
Newly remastered by the GRAMMY®-nominated engineer John Baldwin
24-page booklet featuring a new, extensive interview with Leslie and liner notes by acclaimed author, critic and compilation co-producer Wyndham Wallace, along with an essay by award-winning writer and scholar Louis Chude-Sokei
Cover collage by renowned British artist Linder, featuring photography by Mondino, and design by designer Christopher Shannon
Picture shows a mock up. The actual records are unique and will differ.

“The definition of a hidden gem” – John Peel

“The world seems finally to be catching up to Leslie Winer, whose startling intelligence and singular vision shine through her copious recording life.” – Max Richter

“She might just be the coolest woman on the planet!” – Boy George

Light in the Attic is ecstatic to announce When I Hit You—You’ll Feel It: a 16-track anthology that celebrates the extraordinary work of musician, poet, and author, Leslie Winer. When I Hit You—You’ll Feel It spans Winer’s three-decade-long musical career: from her groundbreaking solo work in the early ‘90s to her latest inspired projects. Featuring musical contributions from Jon Hassell, Helen Terry, Jah Wobble, Renegade Soundwave’s Karl Bonnie, and others, the collection also spotlights Winer’s diverse collaborations, and unearths previously-unreleased recordings.

Newly remastered by the GRAMMY®-nominated engineer John Baldwin, When I Hit You—You’ll Feel It will be available in multiple special 2xLP editions, on CD, and across digital platforms. The album includes a new interview with Winer, captured by the compilation’s co-producer, acclaimed author and critic Wyndham Wallace. Rounding out the package is an insightful essay by the award-winning writer and scholar Louis Chude-Sokei and an original cover collage by the renowned British photographer and artist, Linder, featuring photography by Mondino, and design by designer Christopher Shannon.

MORE ABOUT LESLIE WINER….

Musician, poet, iconoclast, model, artist, enigma. Leslie Winer is many things.

Born to a teenage mother and sold for $10,000 in a black market adoption when she was just hours old, Winer has always lived an uncommon life. She grew up in Boston with a voracious appetite for music and the written word and embraced the city’s lively jazz and folk scene in the ‘70s. Moving to New York for art school, she gravitated towards a vibrant crowd of intellectuals, artists, and radical thinkers—or perhaps they gravitated towards her.

There, Winer formed an unlikely friendship with writer and artist William S. Burroughs and lived on-and-off with Jean-Michel Basquiat. In London, where Winer began her musical ventures in earnest, she was a regular at Leigh Bowery’s underground club Taboo, where she met many of her collaborators, including filmmaker John Maybury, Kevin Mooney (of Adam and the Ants), and Boy George, who once declared that Winer “might just be the coolest woman on the planet!”

Winer’s striking looks also attracted fashion designers and photographers. Throughout the early ‘80s, she was an in-demand model—appearing in campaigns for Valentino, Christian Dior, and Yohji Yamamoto, and serving as a muse for a young Jean-Paul Gaultier, who later dubbed Winer “the first androgynous model.” She posed for Helmut Newton, Irving Penn, and Pierre et Gilles, and graced the covers of The Face, French and Italian editions of Vogue, and Mademoiselle.

But music was Winer’s true passion and, at the turn of the ‘90s, she would unknowingly help invent the massively popular genre known today as trip-hop.

On her debut, Witch, Winer masterfully blended the uninhibited sampling of early hip-hop with dancehall basslines and programmed beats, while weaving mesmerizing—and coolly-detached—spoken-word vocals into her ambient tracks. It was unorthodox in the most delicious ways.

The album was a bold experiment by the self-taught artist, who enlisted a number of talented musicians in the sessions, including Culture Club’s Helen Terry, Karl Bonnie of Renegade Soundwave, former Public Image Ltd. bassist Jah Wobble, and Kevin Mooney, as well as Marco Pirroni and Matthew Ashman (both of Adam and the Ants, among other acts).

While Witch was finished in 1990, it wouldn’t be released for three years, due to the whims of Winer’s label. In the meantime, several tracks made their way out into the world as early as June 1990, thanks to BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, who later referred to Witch as “the definition of a hidden gem.”

Opening with the laid-back dub beats and soft, sing-songy chorus of “He Was,” Witch features such highlights as the up-tempo “Skin,” the hypnotic, bass-heavy “The Boy Who Used 2 Whistle,” and the album’s closer, “Dream 1,” in which waves of reverb-soaked vocals bounce from one ear the other.

While sonically, Winer was breaking new ground, she was also bringing a fresh, incendiary take on what it means to be a woman in the music business, as embodied by her composition “N1 Ear,” in which she delivers a scorching, feminist manifesto, borrowed from the Women’s Liberation Broadsheet: “If I get raped it must be my fault / And if get bashed I must’ve provoked it / And if I raise my voice I’m a nagging bitch / And if I like fucking I’m a whore…And if I ask my doctor too many questions I’m neurotic and need pills / Because I still can’t get a safe birth control while some fucker’s roaming the moon.”

Winer had every right to vent her frustrations as a woman in music. Despite her fierce demeanor and steadfast focus, she was consistently disregarded and typecast by the industry. Many of her early collaborators failed to credit her work, while others simply overlooked her influence. Witch, for example, was so delayed that by the time the album saw the light of day (released under the pseudonym “©”), trip-hop was gaining mainstream traction via acts like Portishead, Massive Attack, and Madonna. Although Winer eventually gained wider acknowledgment (prompting the NME to give her the dubious distinction of “The Grandmother of Trip-Hop”), Witch initially went sorely unnoticed.

Following the disappearance of Witch, Winer continued to record, undeterred by the elusive nature of mainstream success in the modern music business. Her network of inspired collaborators continued to grow and expand, yet her influence remained largely a secret except to those in the know, such as Grace Jones and Sinead O’Connor, who would cover her songs.

Today, Winer stays busy on new musical projects in the French countryside, where she has spent the past two decades raising her five daughters. A prolific writer, she has also published two collections of poetry and oversees the literary estate of Herbert Huncke, a defining member of the Beat Generation.

In the modern era, one is hard-pressed to find an artist who continues to push the creative envelope as much as Winer does. And yet, three decades after her revolutionary debut, her work remains just as startling and fresh.

Winer’s influence might best be summed by the award-winning composer Max Richter, who offered the following thoughts to Wyndham Wallace for his extensive liner notes: “The world seems finally to be catching up to Leslie Winer, whose startling intelligence and singular vision shine through her copious recording life. A visionary commentator on the relationship between individuals and society in the mould of Blake or Woolf, Leslie Winer knows things that the culture at large just doesn’t understand yet, and she has never been afraid to let us know that.”

Since 2016, Milkman has been a pioneer in India’s ever-evolving electronic music scene. From building the foundations of India’s warehouse-rave culture, to consistently curating international and local artists at the forefront of the electronic musical underground, Milkman has quickly become a formidable force. Both editions of its festival, ‘Terminal 1’ were highly well-received, and this year, Milkman brings its first ever release as a label to the world. Azu Hoyvoy’s music feels like it has a toehold in the world of left-field dance-floors, while also being comfortable in any post-apocalyptic sensorium you can dream up. This peculiar trait should not come as a surprise. The chaos, darkness, and simultaneous beauty of the city from which he hails all make for a hard cocktail of deep-uplifting-frightening-introspective fervor, spilling appropriately into this record. The twenty-three-year-old Mumbai-native’s previous music is largely dominated by RnB and Soul, and in some ways feels like the proverbial Jekyll to Future Literature’s Mr. Hyde. To the extent that Azu’s previous incarnation still resides in his darker counterpart, it shows in Future Literature’s multi-faceted grooves and syncopations that are relatively unique in this spectrum of electronic music. This collection of tunes finds a very suitable corner in the eclectic and forward-thinking home of Milkman, and the result is an enjoyably mind-expanding, if sometimes disconcerting record.

Jack Pattern Is Back With A Long Overdue Slab Of Industrial Strength Psychedelic Mind Bangers! Kosmische Kueche Is A 5 Track Ep Due For Release On Cosmic Pint Glass This Summer And Features 2 Rare Remix Appearances. Wax Stag's Remix Delivers A Beautiful And Intricate Take On Ufundab And Dane//Close Comes In With A Rampant And Mutant Work Up Of Paolo Santoz. It's Been 4 Years Since Jack Pattern's Last Ep. If This Was A Loaf Of Bread In The Oven, It Would Have Turned To Charcoal And Burned The Bakery To The Ground. As You'll Hear, It's Started To Crystallise Into Another Lifeform, Taking On Sounds From Industrial Slowmo Techno To Mutant Trip Hop This Release Is The Lsd Side Of Ebm. Kosmische Kueche Will Be Released On August 2nd On Limited Edition Vinyl - An Edition Of 220 X 3 Colour Screen Printed Sleeves With Thermochromic Ink And An Edition Of 80 X 1 Colour Screen Printed Sleeves. Both Editions Will Be Pressed To Black 12" Vinyl With Stickers.

October 10, 2021 Keeping his carbon footprint at a minimum, Santilli sails from Sydney to Hamburg via ten textured vignettes delicately drawn with guitar, bass and organic percussion. Relaxing, reflective and endlessly beautiful, ‘Tidal’ explores elemental inspiration through a humanistic gaze. Whether you know Max Santilli through Ken Oath duo Angophora, previous releases ‘Surface’ and ‘In Circles’, or this is your first time making his acquaintance, you’ll agree he’s right at home on the Growing Bin. The multi-instrumentalist crafts exquisite acoustic music in tune with the finer moments of Windham Hill and ECM; a perfect fusion of talent, balance and the emotion shared by each release on the Hamburg label. As befits its inspiration ‘Tidal’ is an organic affair, related through bright acoustic guitar, hazy chimes and hand played percussion. Where the Australian draws you in with hypnotic repetition, the subtlety, warmth and tonal variation serve as a welcome reminder we’re living off grid. Though expert fretwork often takes centre stage, especially on the delicate B1 ‘Warm You Give’, it’s the blend of kalimba, woodblock, hand drums and shaker which truly transport the listener through open waters; a rhythmic breeze carrying us through the maritime drones and bowed squall. At times the salt air is spiced with cardamom and cloves (’Sea’) or lemongrass and galangal (’Valleys’), as we skirt the Indian Ocean or the Java Sea. ‘Lapse’ provides subtle hints of fourth world jazz as mallets take the lead, leaving the guitar to provide its own shimmering texture. Clear your mind, clear your schedule and make some time for ‘Tidal’, an opportunity to breathe in time with the planet.

“Dust is the second vinyl outing from Nathan Roche & Paul Bonnet (aka, CIA Debutante) for Siltbreeze (aka, their label) following the estimable huff of The Landlord (aka, the 1st LP) after countless cassette releases (aka, too much backstory). Dust finds our heroes at the top of their game; the captivating Je ne sais quoi formed around vocal recitation & percolating electronics has been honed to perfection, moving them beyond whatever references were made in the past into a catagorization where they are known as ‘Themselves’. If I were to compare it to anything it would be that giant Zardoz head, flying around the French countryside, drolly enunciating-in English no less!-dystopian affirmations, predicting the future, rewriting the past, ordering off menu, all the while spitting forth a rain of Aperol, Pernod & Gitanes to their brutish followers below. Basically free drinks & smokes. What’s not to follow? You can Cabaret Voltaire this or Shadow Ring that all you want, but Dust puts CIA Debutante in the cat bird seat. And I don’t care what you say, the air really is more rarefied at the top. Listen & find out.”—Arthur Frayn (aka, Zardoz)

Following their recent solo releases Soniscope (Dauw) and Cells #5 (Important Records), Berlin-based multi-instrumentalist Midori Hirano and Tokyo based string experimentalist Atsuko Hatano have teamed up for their first collaborative full-length: Water Ladder. An intense, multilayered continuation of earlier collaborations (Atsuko was featured on Midori’s debut LP back in 2006), the foundation for this new collaborative album was laid when they shared stages in Berlin (Ausland) and Japan in 2019. Working remotely at first, they later recorded parts of the album in Nara’s snoihouse (using omnidirectional polyhedral speakers).

“As we rallied back and forth with our recordings in the process of creating this album, unanticipated fluctuations and irregularities emerged, coming together into a kind of music with a unique resilience and buoyancy that cannot be confined to existing molds. It was as though we had built a Water Ladder to bridge the gap between us,” explains prolific composer and viola player Atsuko Hatano, who’s been busy recording solo and with colleagues such as Jim O’Rourke, Eiko Ishibashi, Mocky, Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, Takeo Toyama, and Anzu Suhara (Asa-chang & Junrei).

Kyoto-born, Berlin-based Midori Hirano, who’s also been releasing music under her MimiCof moniker, adds multiple instruments to the ever-changing sonic landscapes of Water Ladder – an album defined by suspenseful and seemingly suspended compositions that often feel like floating in midair, a sensation the musicians compare to “that distinctive feeling you get from riding a high-speed elevator, where you can no longer tell whether you’re going up or down.”

Devoid of birdsong, the late summer air is nevertheless full of buzzing, whirring, hissing sounds on foreboding album opener “Summer Noise,” a cinematic intro with slow-moving piano chords and an ominous build-up over the course of its sprawling eight minutes. Elsewhere, sudden bursts of viola cut through nighttime peace (“Nocturnal Awakening”), followed by “Cotton Sphere” – which makes the sensation of floating in midair complete: harmonies and melodies rise and form to fall apart again, leaving only trails of previously defined space shimmering in their wake…

Whereas the title track truly explodes half-way in, the final “Cascade” brings closure to the electro-acoustic six-track collection: the floating continues, but the interlocking musical planes are no longer ruffled or rippling, no longer torn in many directions at once. Instead, the sonic streams merge and eventually disappear like ephemeral water falls after heavy rain or sudden snowmelt.

“Water cannot retain its form on its own, and can take any shape as effected by external forces. Its movements cannot be captured by eyesight alone: A body of water that appears to be crashing down into a deep, bottomless waterfall could actually be rising up very slowly into midair,” says Atsuko. “This is an invitation for you to cross the ever-transforming Water Ladder built between Midori and myself.”

Black Truffle is pleased to announce Live Hubris, documenting the hypnotic and electrifying live performance of Oren Ambarchi’s 2016 LP Hubris by a fifteen-strong band at London’s Café Oto. Over three days in May 2019, Oto toasted Oren Ambarchi at 50/Black Truffle at 10 with Ambarchi and a large group of close friends and collaborators in a series of performances that interspersed existing projects with new collective endeavours, culminating with this: fourteen members of the extended Black Truffle family together on stage, joined by one special virtual guest, to translate the intricately studio-constructed layers of Hubris into a muscular live band workout.

Operating with only the bare minimum of pre-gig preparation after the planned afternoon rehearsal had to be wrapped up prematurely due to noise complaints, the gargantuan group lurches into motion with a 21-minute rendition of ‘Hubris Part 1’, powered by the pulsating electronics of Konrad Sprenger (the ‘ringmaster’ at the ensemble’s core) and no less than seven electric guitars spinning a web of intricately interlocking palm-muted polyrhythms. The layers of closely related but metrically distinct lines create ripples of shifting accents, flickering changes in emphasis that ricochet along the endless central pulse. Gradually building in density, this motorik continuum becomes the backdrop for the haunting tones of Eiko Ishibashi’s processed flute and an extended feature from long-distance guest Jim O’Rourke on guitar synth.

After the brief interlude of the second part, where Albert Marcoeur-esque guitar arpeggios accompany a halting attempt at phone conversation, the full ensemble gears up for the epic side-long rendition of ‘Hubris Part 3’. Now joined by the astonishing triple drum line-up of Joe Talia, Will Guthrie and Andreas Werliin, the layered pulse of the opening piece becomes a burning funk-fusion groove. Beginning on a medium simmer, the ensemble initially stick to its pulsating one-note mantra, over which Ambarchi unfurls a beautiful example of his signature shimmering Leslie-toned guitar harmonics, eventually joined by Ishibashi’s flute and some brooding, distorted dissonance from Julia Reidy’s guitar. Building steadily for the first nine minutes, the heat then rises dramatically with a first, gloriously loose chord change: with the all drummers now rolling and tumbling like a twice-cloned Jack DeJohnette circa 1970, Mats Gustafsson enters on baritone, his tortured roars and shrieks driving the band to peaks of insane intensity. Finally, the exhausted ensemble drops out, leaving only the jagged, skittering fuzz of Ambarchi’s guitar, brought to an abrupt conclusion at the command of crys cole. Arriving on hot pink vinyl with artwork by Lasse Marhaug and an extensive selection of live photos by Ivan Weiss and Fabio Lugaro, Live Hubris brings this ambitious and outrageous evening of music to the safety of the home stereo.

After the success of volume 1 (2020), the label run by Simona Faraone and the Roman collective Kuro Jam relaunch with Kimera Mendax Volume 2 Double EP, a limited edition double colored vinyl (300 copies) that consolidates the “disco-graphic” collaboration between the two realities (nim / Kuro Jam Recordings).

The record accompanies the release of the final chapter of the homonymous cyberpunk comics saga and represents its original soundtrack.

Kimera Mendax is the title of the debut graphic novel of the team Kuro Jam, composed by the artists Enrico Carnevale (Inkiostro, Markosia), Mattia De Iulis (Marvel), Giulia D'Ottavi(Manfont), Stefano Garau (Editions Glénat, Mondadori), and by the screenwriter Gianluca Pernafelli.

The comic tells the story of a group of rebels who, from the underground of an esoteric Rome of the future (2048), struggle to neutralize the KX bio-operative system, a sort of invasive and all-encompassing social network, to which humanity is connected through robotic appendages. Vinyl records are the instrument of struggle for the “disconnected”: they try using music to awaken the natural human vibrations, atrophied by the massive use of technology. The final battle is a spectacular and liberating “sonic tsunami” in the heart of the Eternal City, a journey for the eyes... and the ears!

On the pages of the two volumes, there are tributes and quotes to Gurdjieff, Aphex Twin, Giordano Bruno, Lory D, and the underground rave culture of the early 90s, with a particular reference to the London scene.

In continuity with the EP KM vol.1, eight Italian musicians with different sensibilities were involved to make their interpretation and sound reinforcement of the story. This time the tracklist is truly cinematic, spanning across the four sides of the two colored vinyl records - on the labels, we find the two alchemical principles of Salt and Sulfur, in addition to Mercury that was used for the label of the first EP - flowing in 8 acts without solution of continuity, enriched by a Prelude and 4 Interludes that draw on the noises, music, and voices of the city of Rome.

The A Side begins with the Prelude, where a robotic voice introduces us to the KX bio-operating system, but it's silenced by strange disturbing frequencies: the “antisystem” sonic journey can begin. The first track of the disc is Massimo Amato's rarefied and dreamy “Later That Night”, followed by the dissonant “Antimente” by visual artist Tiziano Lucci, preceded by the screech of seagulls flying over the city of Rome in the first Interlude.

The B Side opens with a track by Milan based producer Giona Vinti (Hyena), inspired by one of the key characters from the comic: “Talamo, o la Memoria”. The second Interlude transports us into the electro-futurist dimension of T / Error with the solid “kx2048”. The third Interlude closes the side with the announcements -partly sampled, partly reconstructed - of the roman subway, imagining that in 2048 there will be alternative routes, passing through the Colosseum station.

The C Side explodes with the massive “Cyb(Moth)er” by Mattia Trani, with his electro-alias 051 Destroyer, who gives us an electro-techno pearl with drexciyane shades inspired by the character of Falena. MA Spaventi dedicates his liquid and melancholic "Tevere (Somewhere in Rome)” to the river, an emblem of the Roman metropolis, which incorporates recordings of the tenuous city watercourse.

In the D Side, we reach the emotional climax of the soundtrack. The brothers Fabrizio and Marco D'Arcangelo, masters of the IDM / Braindance scene, are inspired by the epic and kaleidoscopic battle of the latest comic strips for their glowing "Dive Reverse Universe Edit". The fourth Interlude is dominated by the distant melody of an accordion - the magic touch, here as in the oud of Interlude II, is provided by Greek musician Maria Arampatzi - which anticipates the theme of the only proper "song" of the record, "Orizzonti Perfetti". The song, co-produced with Halfcastle and masterfully interpreted by the powerful and unmistakable voice of NicoNote, lends the definitive missing piece to an articulated, complex, ambitious..., and a little crazy musical and visual project: the first original soundtrack of a graphic novel!

The record is a new, colorful, unmissable collector's art object, made precious by the gatefold cover signed by international star Elena Casagrande, Marvel and DC Comics designer - 2021 Eisner Award winner for her “Black Widow”! - and conceived as a maxi comic composed of boards signed by the artists of the Kuro Jam collective.

Array expresses the experience of a remote Antarctic research station through the convergence of sound, site and performance. The result is an immersive and affective experience of the spaces, protocols and conditions comprising the bracing polar environment. Array is a companion piece to Polar Force, a performance-installation work by Philip Samartzis and Eugene Ughetti, presented by Speak Percussion.

Array features recordings of radar and scientific instrumentation used for upper atmospheric research and terrestrial communication. These sounds reveal the sophisticated technology and architecture used and heard within the Australian Antarctic Territory. Many of the recordings focus on the way the built environment is transformed through stress and fatigue caused by extreme climate and weather events including freezing temperatures and high velocity winds.

Together with the field recordings are layers of live performance using custom built instrumentation to produce a unique series of textures, rhythmic cycles, resonances and timbral phenomena. The application of tension and pressure upon the assorted instruments recalls the distressed state of highly specialised infrastructure found within the perimeters of a research station.

A polar research station comprises many types and volumes of prefabricated space. In dialogue with this are the unique spaces used to record the instrumental performance. By merging different spaces Array brings into focus various industrial resonances, spatial characteristics, timbres of metal and concrete, and sonic artefacts produced by hard and permeable materials and surfaces.

In three parts, Array presents Antarctica as a liminal space oscillating between representation and abstraction to challenge often repeated tropes. The intent is to blur the relationship between the recorded and performed to produce a hyper-realistic encounter of the powerful forces that operate at the margins of our planet. One hears the precariousness of a remote research station contorted by unrelenting stress, compressed air forced through waterborne fipples and the volatility of weather events.

Life on remote research stations is progressively resembling the broader contemporary experience, in which strict protocols are used to govern and preserve life. The resilient communities who live and work in these places have learnt how to co-exist with an increasingly hostile environment, along with its unknowns and necessity for hyper-vigilance. Rather than consider it as a place on the edge of elsewhere, Antarctica and its assemblage of durable, super modern colonies provides an archetype for an uncertain future in anticipation of the volatility that awaits.

Definitive career-spanning anthology
Includes previously unreleased tracks, inspired collaborations, and material from Leslie’s groundbreaking 1990 solo debut, Witch
Featuring musical contributions from Jon Hassell, Helen Terry, Jah Wobble, Renegade Soundwave’s Karl Bonnie, Christophe Van Huffel, Jay Glass Dubs, Mari G. Mooney, and Diamond Version, amongst others
Newly remastered by the GRAMMY®-nominated engineer John Baldwin
24-page booklet featuring a new, extensive interview with Leslie and liner notes by acclaimed author, critic and compilation co-producer Wyndham Wallace, along with an essay by award-winning writer and scholar Louis Chude-Sokei
Cover collage by renowned British artist Linder, featuring photography by Mondino, and design by designer Christopher Shannon

“The definition of a hidden gem” – John Peel

“The world seems finally to be catching up to Leslie Winer, whose startling intelligence and singular vision shine through her copious recording life.” – Max Richter

“She might just be the coolest woman on the planet!” – Boy George

Light in the Attic is ecstatic to announce When I Hit You—You’ll Feel It: a 16-track anthology that celebrates the extraordinary work of musician, poet, and author, Leslie Winer. When I Hit You—You’ll Feel It spans Winer’s three-decade-long musical career: from her groundbreaking solo work in the early ‘90s to her latest inspired projects. Featuring musical contributions from Jon Hassell, Helen Terry, Jah Wobble, Renegade Soundwave’s Karl Bonnie, and others, the collection also spotlights Winer’s diverse collaborations, and unearths previously-unreleased recordings.

Newly remastered by the GRAMMY®-nominated engineer John Baldwin, When I Hit You—You’ll Feel It will be available in multiple special 2xLP editions, on CD, and across digital platforms. The album includes a new interview with Winer, captured by the compilation’s co-producer, acclaimed author and critic Wyndham Wallace. Rounding out the package is an insightful essay by the award-winning writer and scholar Louis Chude-Sokei and an original cover collage by the renowned British photographer and artist, Linder, featuring photography by Mondino, and design by designer Christopher Shannon.

MORE ABOUT LESLIE WINER….

Musician, poet, iconoclast, model, artist, enigma. Leslie Winer is many things.

Born to a teenage mother and sold for $10,000 in a black market adoption when she was just hours old, Winer has always lived an uncommon life. She grew up in Boston with a voracious appetite for music and the written word and embraced the city’s lively jazz and folk scene in the ‘70s. Moving to New York for art school, she gravitated towards a vibrant crowd of intellectuals, artists, and radical thinkers—or perhaps they gravitated towards her.

There, Winer formed an unlikely friendship with writer and artist William S. Burroughs and lived on-and-off with Jean-Michel Basquiat. In London, where Winer began her musical ventures in earnest, she was a regular at Leigh Bowery’s underground club Taboo, where she met many of her collaborators, including filmmaker John Maybury, Kevin Mooney (of Adam and the Ants), and Boy George, who once declared that Winer “might just be the coolest woman on the planet!”

Winer’s striking looks also attracted fashion designers and photographers. Throughout the early ‘80s, she was an in-demand model—appearing in campaigns for Valentino, Christian Dior, and Yohji Yamamoto, and serving as a muse for a young Jean-Paul Gaultier, who later dubbed Winer “the first androgynous model.” She posed for Helmut Newton, Irving Penn, and Pierre et Gilles, and graced the covers of The Face, French and Italian editions of Vogue, and Mademoiselle.

But music was Winer’s true passion and, at the turn of the ‘90s, she would unknowingly help invent the massively popular genre known today as trip-hop.

On her debut, Witch, Winer masterfully blended the uninhibited sampling of early hip-hop with dancehall basslines and programmed beats, while weaving mesmerizing—and coolly-detached—spoken-word vocals into her ambient tracks. It was unorthodox in the most delicious ways.

The album was a bold experiment by the self-taught artist, who enlisted a number of talented musicians in the sessions, including Culture Club’s Helen Terry, Karl Bonnie of Renegade Soundwave, former Public Image Ltd. bassist Jah Wobble, and Kevin Mooney, as well as Marco Pirroni and Matthew Ashman (both of Adam and the Ants, among other acts).

While Witch was finished in 1990, it wouldn’t be released for three years, due to the whims of Winer’s label. In the meantime, several tracks made their way out into the world as early as June 1990, thanks to BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, who later referred to Witch as “the definition of a hidden gem.”

Opening with the laid-back dub beats and soft, sing-songy chorus of “He Was,” Witch features such highlights as the up-tempo “Skin,” the hypnotic, bass-heavy “The Boy Who Used 2 Whistle,” and the album’s closer, “Dream 1,” in which waves of reverb-soaked vocals bounce from one ear the other.

While sonically, Winer was breaking new ground, she was also bringing a fresh, incendiary take on what it means to be a woman in the music business, as embodied by her composition “N1 Ear,” in which she delivers a scorching, feminist manifesto, borrowed from the Women’s Liberation Broadsheet: “If I get raped it must be my fault / And if get bashed I must’ve provoked it / And if I raise my voice I’m a nagging bitch / And if I like fucking I’m a whore…And if I ask my doctor too many questions I’m neurotic and need pills / Because I still can’t get a safe birth control while some fucker’s roaming the moon.”

Winer had every right to vent her frustrations as a woman in music. Despite her fierce demeanor and steadfast focus, she was consistently disregarded and typecast by the industry. Many of her early collaborators failed to credit her work, while others simply overlooked her influence. Witch, for example, was so delayed that by the time the album saw the light of day (released under the pseudonym “©”), trip-hop was gaining mainstream traction via acts like Portishead, Massive Attack, and Madonna. Although Winer eventually gained wider acknowledgment (prompting the NME to give her the dubious distinction of “The Grandmother of Trip-Hop”), Witch initially went sorely unnoticed.

Following the disappearance of Witch, Winer continued to record, undeterred by the elusive nature of mainstream success in the modern music business. Her network of inspired collaborators continued to grow and expand, yet her influence remained largely a secret except to those in the know, such as Grace Jones and Sinead O’Connor, who would cover her songs.

Today, Winer stays busy on new musical projects in the French countryside, where she has spent the past two decades raising her five daughters. A prolific writer, she has also published two collections of poetry and oversees the literary estate of Herbert Huncke, a defining member of the Beat Generation.

In the modern era, one is hard-pressed to find an artist who continues to push the creative envelope as much as Winer does. And yet, three decades after her revolutionary debut, her work remains just as startling and fresh.

Winer’s influence might best be summed by the award-winning composer Max Richter, who offered the following thoughts to Wyndham Wallace for his extensive liner notes: “The world seems finally to be catching up to Leslie Winer, whose startling intelligence and singular vision shine through her copious recording life. A visionary commentator on the relationship between individuals and society in the mould of Blake or Woolf, Leslie Winer knows things that the culture at large just doesn’t understand yet, and she has never been afraid to let us know that.”

Portland, OR black-doom powerhouse, Mizmor has joined forces with multi-instrumentalist (and live musician for Mizmor) Andrew Black to create a masterful collaboration titled, Dialetheia. Two massive and introspective tracks fill space and time as we know it with undulating soundscapes - exploring bleak and beautiful isolation. Haunting and hypnotizing, the endless waves of sonic nostalgia, emerge triumphantly through sirens of solace and meditative winds.

Hot on the heels of his preliminary EP on Stroboscopic Artefacts, Embryo, which paved the way to the present album, and two years after the landing of his 2016-released inaugural LP, Montagne Trasparenti, Mannequin helmsman Alessandro Adriani returns with his highly anticipated full-length debut for SA, Morphic Dreams. Throughout eleven cuts painstakingly executed but lacking not an iota of the fresh, spontaneous oomph that made his sound stand out of the crowd of techno producers to have emerged over the past decade, Adriani lays the foundations to a suspended sound imaginarium, governed by its own rules and principles of gravity. Revolving around the notions of sublimation and quest for inner balance, Morphic Dreams is comprised of four distinct sequences, conceived and designed as reflections of four mental states, each of them linked to the four alchemical elements i.e. Water, Earth, Air and Fire here represented by the A, B, C and D-sides. Fluid and enveloping, the A-side bathes the listener in some zero-G uterine vortex, pitching and rolling from the slo-burning exotic sensuality and tribal spell of The Tropical Year to the trunk-bending, arpeggiated fast-track pulse of Storm Trees, through Raindances feverish electro swing. Entering a further abrasive, minerally rich phase, the B-side unleashes Adrianis dark side with optimum conviction. Deeply anchored in earthly materiality, this new evolution stage starts off to the frantic Italo bass of Dissolving Images, rushing headlong into a kaleidoscopic maelstrom of fractured reflections and nasty Giallo-like ambience. The delirious body stretch sequence then rather abruptly swerves onto a calmer flux with Dust/Mist, a much enticingly hip-swaying collaboration with Simon Crab, ex-member of the seminal 80s UK industrial-experimental band Bourbonese Qualk, before Casting The Runes engulfs us into a tormented world of swollen eeriness and disquieting esoterism. Back to a widescreen showcase of droney distortions, nasty acid swashes and other quirky drum programming, Hors De Combat opens a new chapter, shortly followed by the playful bass intricacies and modular jeu-de-piste of Invisible Seekers, featuring Avian affiliate and longtime friend Shawn OSullivan. A further mind-expanding piece, C-side closer Crow deploys its blackened wings wide and high as a chaos of martial percussions and liquefying synths slivers crash past the red-hot skyline. A fluttering melodic interlude, Things About To Disappear blazes a clean trail for Make Words Split And Crack to flourish, slowly but surely blooming into a nonstop grandiose twelve minute-shy finale geared up with the stirring cacophonic force of a Ligetian symphony and something of an epic-scale Kubrickian soundtrack.

Surface Air is the lovechild of a long relationship between Malka Tuti & Black Merlin. After remixing Tapan and Shari Vari for the label, as well as being part of Spectral Empire who released Iron Muscle with us on 2018, George has always been an inspiration for us, both sonically and spiritually. His new record, Surface Air, in which the A-side is accompanied with vocals from Dallas artist Aura Nox, is a slow burning deep record for the late emo hours of the night, for you trippy after hour or your late night drive. On the B-side you can also find a Remix from an artist we’ve been following for years here in MT, and that when his name came up in a conversation with George (bm) as a possible remixer, excitement levels went through the roof. The Remix Wata Igarashi delivered is a stripped down epic ambient track, ala late 90’s Pete Namlook endeavours with some 2022’s Wata Igarashi unique sonic aesthetics.

Incantations is a collection of sixteen visual and sonic experiments centred around the idea of score as spell,

A spell and its incantation are distinct, but conjoined by a symbolic, almost umbilical force. A spell is a totem text, a material call for change — a seed, a recipe, an instruction, a potential. The incantation of a spell gives it life, brings breath to body, raises hairs, moves minds. For this project, eight spell- scores were created by visual/text-based artists for a musician/composer to incant. Taking a wide interpretation of what can be considered a score, these works include concrete poetry, collage, painting, drawing, spell-poetry, instructional art, and recipe. The resulting sound works give voice to these evocative “texts”, residing in the liminal space between musical form and magical utterance.

Creating what became the cover artwork for this release, musician and artist Benjamin Kilchhofer conjured salt paintings reminiscent of ancient runes and salt circles — improvised talismans of protection. Translating these expressions into sound using a hydro harp (water drops hitting tuned water-filled porcelain bowls), musician and artist Tomoko Sauvage evokes an embryonic environment, the cleansing and purification of salt water oceans. Artist Mehrnaz Rohbakhsh created a piece that arose from a drawing ritual — a meditation on textile, pattern, and code. In response, Museum Of No Art (Mona Steinwidder) worked her composition by “weaving the piece, layer by layer”. She was “particularly interested in the state one achieves when one works repetitively, stoically and excessively towards a form. Which leads to trance or meditation and creates its own immaterial energy.”

Dani Spinosa, poet of digital and print media, created a typewriter poem that emerged after consulting Hesiod's “Works and Days and Theogony” to learn more about the witch goddess Hekate. Synchronously, interdisciplinary artist Gavilán Rayna Russom had recently returned to research on Hekate, teaching about the goddess in her class “Queering European Witchcraft Traditions”. Russom spent time with Spinosa’s spell, spoke to Hekate, and then unlocked the gate, seeking to “stir sonic emanations that were radiant, multiple and liminal.”

The side ends with a composition by musician and artist Felicia Atkinson via an instructional text from conceptual artist David Horvitz. What is it like to inhabit the mind of a crow? This simple gesture to befriend a crow, to be in relationship with something other than human implies much more, a re- orientation to our living environment and forms of intelligence.

The B-side opens with electronic composer C.R. Gillespie’s sonic manifestation of a score by bricolage artist Andrew Zukerman. Taking compositional inspiration from the Smiss stone, Zukerman created a collaged visual score on staff paper that hints at the formal aspects of occult symbols and sigils, while remaining obliquely secular. Creating an interlocking tapestry of “Roman gamelan”, Gillespie’s track dramatizes the negotiating power and structure of the abstract score

Over three days, iconic Canadian poet bill bissett created a jazz-scape painting filled with an ecstatic gathering of eidetic spirits, “connekting trembling xploring serching remote brooding grooving melodee solo lifting n refrain filling.” Immersing himself in the energy of the painting, musician and composer Idris Rahman overlaid three takes of bass clarinet and found that “melodies, textures and harmonies emerged without thought and the piece took on a life of its own.”

As a way to explore the connection between food and music, the curators commissioned a recipe from electronic producer and home chef, Yu Su. Her simple and wholesome pudding recipe lays out instructions for texture and taste that musician Scott Gailey stirs into a sonic caldron of field recordings and electronics. The closing chant, penned by writer and activist adrienne maree brown and incanted by musician Beverly Glenn-Copeland, was the result of a synergistic conversation between the two. The refrain, “surrender to the present moment / what’s coming now is all that’s left” is a mantra reminding us of the power of speech, repetition, and the evanescent nature of temporal experience.

he eight spell cards, inspired by the format of oracle and tarot cards, are invitations for further interpretation and play. To be under a spell is to be lost in a transformation, an alternate reality, to be in collaboration with an unknowable and powerful force. The works in this collection have created a spontaneous and ludic alchemy, courageous attempts to catalyze and spark in our present moment.

Curated by Seance Centre

A Collection of Sounds from the Studio Eksperymentalne Polskiego Radia (1959-2001) Art by Zofia Kulik

"Would it sound just as bad if you played it backwards?" assembles a collection of audio experiments created at the Polish Radio Experimental Studio (pres) from 1959 to the beginning of the millennium. These exceptional works are presented alongside images from the Polish artist Zofia Kulik, whose career reached its apogee between the late 1960s and early 70s. While Pres and Kulik remain important artifacts in the recent history of the Polish avant-garde, presenting them together in one release may not seem like an obvious choice. There are, of course, some historical intersections-he most notable being a shared interest in Polish artist and architectOskar Hansen's Open Form theory. Open Form promoted a modular theory of architecture that became a tool adapted by its users and inhabitants to ??????????????..Hansen's ideas influenced Kulik's early works and also manifested in the Pres's iconic "black room", a music studio designed by Hansen, himself, which was equipped with moveable sound panels that absorbed or reflected sounds to promote a greater, creative freedom from its users. And yet, as it usually goes, the most obvious connections are usually the most deceitful. Whereas Kulik initially followed Open Form, she later turned away from it. And as for the black room-it mostly worked in theory but not in practice. What is it then that makes the two work together?

Polish Radio Experimental Studio - Pres (Polish: Studio Eksperymentalne Polskiego Radia) was an experimental music studio in Warsaw, where electronic and utility pieces were recorded. The establishment of the Polish Radio Experimental Studio was conceived by W?odzimierz Sokorski, head of the Radio and Television Committee. Between 1952 and 1956 he was a Minister of Culture, and as a strong supporter of socialist realism he fought against any manifestations of modernity in music. The Polish Radio Experimental Studio was founded on the 15th of November 1957,[1] but only in the second half of the following year was it adapted for sound production.[2][3] It operated until 2004.[4] Until 1985, for 28 years the studio was headed by its founder - Józef Patkowski - musicologist, acoustician, and the chairman of the Polish Composers' Union. The second most important person in the Studio was Krzysztof Szlifirski, an electro-acoustics engineer. Before founding the studio Józef Patkowski visited similar hubs in Cologne, Paris, Gravesono and Milan.[5] Though the studio was a place where autonomous electronic pieces were recorded, this wasn't its main purpose. It was launched as a space for the creation of independent compositions, sounds illustrations for radio dramas, and soundtracks for theatre, film and dance.

A Collection of Sounds from the Studio Eksperymentalne Polskiego Radia (1959-2001) Art by Zofia Kulik

"Would it sound just as bad if you played it backwards?" assembles a collection of audio experiments created at the Polish Radio Experimental Studio (pres) from 1959 to the beginning of the millennium. These exceptional works are presented alongside images from the Polish artist Zofia Kulik, whose career reached its apogee between the late 1960s and early 70s. While Pres and Kulik remain important artifacts in the recent history of the Polish avant-garde, presenting them together in one release may not seem like an obvious choice. There are, of course, some historical intersections-he most notable being a shared interest in Polish artist and architectOskar Hansen's Open Form theory. Open Form promoted a modular theory of architecture that became a tool adapted by its users and inhabitants to ??????????????..Hansen's ideas influenced Kulik's early works and also manifested in the Pres's iconic "black room", a music studio designed by Hansen, himself, which was equipped with moveable sound panels that absorbed or reflected sounds to promote a greater, creative freedom from its users. And yet, as it usually goes, the most obvious connections are usually the most deceitful. Whereas Kulik initially followed Open Form, she later turned away from it. And as for the black room-it mostly worked in theory but not in practice. What is it then that makes the two work together?

Polish Radio Experimental Studio - Pres (Polish: Studio Eksperymentalne Polskiego Radia) was an experimental music studio in Warsaw, where electronic and utility pieces were recorded. The establishment of the Polish Radio Experimental Studio was conceived by W?odzimierz Sokorski, head of the Radio and Television Committee. Between 1952 and 1956 he was a Minister of Culture, and as a strong supporter of socialist realism he fought against any manifestations of modernity in music. The Polish Radio Experimental Studio was founded on the 15th of November 1957,[1] but only in the second half of the following year was it adapted for sound production.[2][3] It operated until 2004.[4] Until 1985, for 28 years the studio was headed by its founder - Józef Patkowski - musicologist, acoustician, and the chairman of the Polish Composers' Union. The second most important person in the Studio was Krzysztof Szlifirski, an electro-acoustics engineer. Before founding the studio Józef Patkowski visited similar hubs in Cologne, Paris, Gravesono and Milan.[5] Though the studio was a place where autonomous electronic pieces were recorded, this wasn't its main purpose. It was launched as a space for the creation of independent compositions, sounds illustrations for radio dramas, and soundtracks for theatre, film and dance.

Black Truffle is pleased to announce World in World, the latest solo offering from prolific Berlin-based guitarist-composer Julia Reidy. Where the recent trilogy of LP releases – brace, brace (Slip, 2019), In Real Life (Black Truffle, 2019), and Vanish (Editions Mego, 2020) – focussed on increasingly lush electronic settings for Reidy’s propulsive fingerpicking and auto-tuned vocals, arranged into wide-ranging side-long epics, World in World finds Reidy refocusing on the core elements of their approach while simultaneously pushing into challenging new areas. Comprising nine pieces ranging between two and seven minutes in length, the album’s opening title track promptly introduces the distinctive palette of just-intoned electric guitars, subtle electronic processing, and voice that is rigorously explored throughout. Where much of Reidy’s guitar work on previous recordings explored rapidly pulsed cycling figures, here notes often hang in the air in a more spacious, lyrical fashion. The elasticity of rhythm and non-linear repetition of pitches initially suggests improvisation until the listener becomes aware of the precise arrangements of spatialised lines. At times, World in World suggests classic bedroom electric guitar works of the 1990s such as Loren Connors’ Airs or Roy Montgomery’s Scenes from the South Island; like those works, Reidy’s possesses a wonderfully live ambience, with frequent pedal clicks adding to the music’s powerful sense of intimacy. In Reidy’s case, however, the yearning, melancholic mood of Connors or Montgomery is tempered by the unorthodox guitar tuning, which at points produces a unique and uncomfortable effect somewhere between the hyper-precision of Harry Partch or Lou Harrison and Jandek’s slack-stringed descent into the void. While World in World plots out its terrain with a bold single-mindedness that allows some pieces to appear almost as variations on a common theme, subtle changes in emphasis distinguish each track. Tactile percussive interjections skitter across the tremolo tones of ‘Paradise in Unrecognisable Colours’, while ‘Ajar’ ramps up the role played by the electronics, with glitching pitch-shifted and back-masked textures threaded through the guitars and thickly harmonised vocal layers. Ranging from autotuned melodic lines to buried murmurs, Reidy’s voice is a frequent presence throughout these nine pieces, at times creating the impression that a more conventional series of songs lurks underneath the chiming microtonal guitars. On the stunning ‘Poised’, whispers and distant, ghostly wails surround the layers of guitars, at times suggesting the foggiest outer reaches of Liz Harris’ Grouper. Both rigorously experimental and emotive, World in World is undoubtedly Julia Reidy’s finest work yet.

On their first official collaboration, Japanese noise pioneer Masami Akita aka Merzbow and Australian sound sculptor Lawrence English present a harrowing, surrealist portrait of nocturnal industrial activity, spawned by field recordings made in a sprawling factory complex seven hours north of English's home in Brisbane. He characterizes the area as "uneasy and unsettling," awash in the sickly glow of smelters and refinement machinery, somehow not of this world - a liminal quality vividly captured in Andrei Tarkovsky's sprawling purgatorial opus, Stalker, to which the title alludes. Akita, too, described early drafts of Eternal Stalker as feeling "like the soundtrack to a dystopian science fiction opera." A mood of mechanical dread and ruined futures permeates each of the album's seven potent compositions. Opener "The Long Dream" sets the stage with steady rain on sheet metal, punctured by thunder and metallic echoes, reverberating to the rafters in a collapsing warehouse. Quickly the tempest rises. "A Gate Of Light" and "Magnetic Traps" both convulse in churning furies of electric demolition and rattling chains, roaring and relentless. "The Visit" and "Black Thicket" operate more at a distance, surveying the topography of steam, rust, and liquid metal from above, their flickers of violence swallowed by blankets of darkness. This is noise at its most elemental and unknowable: brooding, bristling, and opaque, stalking forbidden peripheries of chaos and creation. Discussing Akita's music, English refers to its "intense substrata that is purely psychedelic; it consumes and confounds." The seasick swells of friction and fracture subsume the listener, forcing an auditory surrender: "this saturation of the senses can be a euphoria." Proof comes halfway through "The Golden Sphere," when the howling mayhem subtly recedes, revealing an eerie siren drone hovering in the void, like the resonance of a dead star galaxies away. Slowly a seething, venomous wall of volume returns, shredding the signal until its frequencies fray, whipping away into the eye of the storm. The combined effect merges obliteration and liberation, rapture and ravagement; it's the sound of dissolution as resolution, uprooted and unmoored, finally freed from form.