Search "nas+life+is+good" 3181 Items

12" | 2022 | EU | Original (Turbo)

Release: 2022 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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When British Airways got privatized and listed on the London Stock Exchange, somewhere in Canada the first Starbucks outside of the US opened, and the Walt Disney Company signed an agreement with the French Prime Minister to construct Disneyland Paris. In the sky above southern Argentina, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, Sudan, Ethiopia, Djibouti, northern Somalia, and the Atlantic Ocean a hybrid solar eclipse materialized for 7.57 seconds, whilst Margaret Thatcher performed for 45-minutes on Soviet television. Some days later, The Simpsons cartoon first appears as a series of shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show, Diego Maradona wins his first Italian soccer championship with Napoli, and Eighteen-year-old West German pilot Mathias Rust lands a private plane on Red Square in Moscow. In the mists of the world's first conference on artificial life at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the first Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Mainland China opens in Beijing, and Prozac gets approved for use as an antidepressant in the United States. Much give way for the future, down there in 1987, the year that marks the title of Benedikt Frey’s freshest mini album, out into the world on R.i.O., the label he runs with some pals in the North of Berlin. It’s a dubby melancholic conqueror, wistfully, repetitive, drilling, absorbing, spooking. It makes you dream. Not particular of the year 1987. But it’s all there: The Red Square, the untouched land of the Val d'Europe, Diego on fuego. Six dark-ish tracks in trance, melancholic dub, downbeat heaven, journey music depths, all full of light and yet so dark. Futuristic dramas linked to a speculative past. In our dreams all might look different. The eclipse may last 27- minutes. You meet Neuromancer cyberpunks and blade running Ghost dogs, all taught to hack by Phrack. Cristal clear melodies, sampled voices, and veiled basslines, analogue scopes, and digital ropes, longing for a past that storm into the future. A time where deep listening widens the acoustics into infinity, while neon glows charm the light smog. Benedikt Frey been down there. Or maybe not. His latest music tells stories from the bygone, vested with the forthcoming. Come in and look out. There is nothing to see, yet so much to hear.

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Tiga

Easy Remixes

14,99 €*

The Observatory & Koichi Shimizu

Release: 2022 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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We are proud to present he latest from Turbo Recordings Executive Honcho Tiga, a massive ode to passive-aggressive income remixed by Héctor Oaks, Der Zyklus, and Decius. “No one wants to work their body anymore,” says the Montreal merrymaker from atop a throne in the exact shape of a digital wallet. “I get it. Who wants their surplus sweat equity vacuumed up off the dance floor by corporate parasites when the real future’s in decentralized skanking? But that’s why people in my position - the top one-percent in terms of nightlife and hospitality take-home pay - have to offer real benefits to risking it all in the clubs. I’m talking dance-move insurance, competitive drink ticket packages, and - most of all - the kind of brick-and-mortar bangers Rhythm Nation was founded upon back in 1814.” While gratingly content with the original version, Tiga has nonetheless chosen to flood the Marketplace of Ideas with a plurality (3) of voices he feels will optimally position this release in today’s unforgiving Neo-Centrist landscape. This stunning grassfed vinyl 12” opens with a remix by Berlin-based vinyl-only DJ Héctor Oaks, who has been described as “operating at the absolute vanguard of rave.” Please remember that describing people this way is basically injecting them with Imposter Syndrome. The release also features a remix by Der Zyklus, an alias of Gerald Donald, the epochal genius from Drexciya, Dopplereffekt, Japanese Telecom, Abstract Thought, Zerkalo, Zwischenwelt, and many other fantastic projects. Finally, Decius closes out the EP with all the British Mischief you might expect from UK luminaries from Trashmouth Records, Fat White Family, and Paranoid London. "I’ve designed my entire life around the concept of ease,” adds Tiga. "I never wanted to work for a law firm. I wanted to make beats for a law firm. I’ve always been selfemployed, and that why my street cred’s off the street charts. And I’ve let as much of that freedom trickle down to the audience as I can. Because when it comes to music, there’s no such thing as an acceptable minimum wage. You gotta know that you gotta give it all you got or you’re gonna get got.”

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Demon State

LP | 2022 | EU | Original (Midnight Shift)

Release: 2022 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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“There was something extra-political, extra-social, almost extra-human about it; it smacked of tidal waves, of natural forces . . . These emotions are my instruments.” — Richard Wright, The Color Curtain: A Report on the Bandung Conference (1956)

The Observatory is one of those last few bands that can change and become your life. Stuck in Singapore, the wilful outlier of Southeast Asia, this ever-shifting group stubbornly evolves past its roots, most recently in an more improvisational, instrumental, and noise-adjacent territories in an EP with collaborator Haino Keiji.

In Demon State, Dharma and Cheryl Ong plus Yuen Chee Wai continue The Observatory’s bold partnerships, this time with electronic musician Koichi Shimizu (imprint). Together, they finally reach this long-gestating, total (yet I’m sure temporary), and rhythm-focused, electronic reinvention of The Obs—while briefly nodding to their past. The road is long; Demon State is one pit stop in glorious hell.

Partly stemming from a casual, improv studio session with Koichi in early 2020, the eight tracks on Demon State—their first release on the Midnight Shift label—were formed from a gradual accumulation of sonic layers; they were foraged, recycled, and pieced together remotely also from solo bedroom recordings, a historical sample, nonhuman beats and effects, as well as journals and junk.

A vinyl and digital release, Demon State features the cover-art illustration of Enka Komariah (Senyawa, Raja Kirik). As they describe it, the “sense of wretchedness in this, the waste of capitalism, the evils of racial discrimination, the ever-spiralling mess, the awakenism of control” are confronted, head on in the band’s pattern, to disturb, comfort, confuse, worship, dance, rest, and resist. Ultimately, the singular form of Demon State refers to our personal, individual, and ineffable states of demonic possession. Demon State embraces us in the independent space of The Obs, where we can be alone together. It offers its listener some type of solace, if not an exorcism. For when the devil has been in us for this long, who’s to say who’s possessing who, who’s whispering sibilant sounds in our ears, who’s wearing the mask, who’s not yet dead and who’s still alive? Who’s still fighting for a just world?

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12" | 2022 | EU | Original (Red Laser)

Peraceamid Part 1

LP | 2022 | EU | Original (Space Echo)

Release: 2022 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Emerging when humanity needs him most, and currently adopting the body of a 60 odd-year old carpenter with a penchant for animation and Red Stripe; Terry Perace teams up with Red Laser's own Pharaoh Brunson to form a new perpetual EP series. The Peraceamid project begins with EP 1. 4 x Hyper-ancient, super-hi-tek audio tools for us Earth dwellers to utilise, corrupting RL's standard "Manctalo" vigour with abandan.

(A1 - Terry Perace - Trip Pop 2020) Perace himself, ditching the Carpenter attire and hardwiring himself straight into basic circuitry, conjures up skeletal, repetitive reduxes, born outta the oldest primordial gloop, churning together into embryonic life form rhythms that have now existed since the earliest signals of dual-cell organisms on our planet.

(A2 - Kid Machine S.D.M (Terry Perace's InSlaved mix) Terry sparkles his Martian magic across Kid Machine's S.D.M from the 2020 'Magico' LP. An already high Manctalo watermark now given further accreditation by the highest Elders of Ancient Egypt which Terry confers with on the regular. Welcome to the top of the pyramid gee!

(B1 - Marcus Paulson - Wrecked in Utrecht) The elusive Marcus Paulson we so far know very little about other than that he's an unconfirmed UFO enthusiast from Warrington...Terry received 'Wrecked In Utrecht' when he accidentally plugged a random USB drive into his earhole (he's not that up on our basic tech yet) in Pharaoh's studio at Hidden. An otherworldly Manctalo vortex and a holographic, plasma-soaked acid track designed to provide a cross-planetary bridge to raves and free parties on Cygnus.

(B2 - Ste Spandex - Examples of You) Terry's been warmly applying his cosmic voodoo on Red Laser veteran Ste Spandex, nudging him further into the inter dimensional discipline of sonic energy manipulation, the fruits of which are a hyper-driven re-vamp of a '98, Earth-based club classic which he blasts into 5D thru the galvanised circuitry of his palladium-boosted studio.

Licensed and published by Red Laser Records here on Earth. First volume in a perpetual series

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Agosta

25,99 €*

LP | 2021 | UK | Original (Pan)

Release: 2022 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Roberto Agosta, or just Agosta as he likes to be called, is a Sicilian DJ and producer from Catania active all along the eastern coast of Sicily, a place that proved to be a soulful place and a training ground for a long career, making him an excellent music selector and a reference point in the spread of alternative music. A soundtrack music enthusiast since he was a child, now a vinyl "serial gathere", Agosta has always put his vast knowledge at the service of a very personal sound that sums many different music styles and contaminations, simple and profound but straightforward and direct at the same time. Agosta’s eponymous album, released on LP, CD and digital formats, was conceived during the Covid-19 lockdown, thanks to the precious collaboration of friend DJ and producer Massimo Napoli aka Galathea, with whom Roberto has already started another project called An-an that will produce a new record for Space Echo at the end of 2022. This record highlights a typical chill-out aesthetic, thanks to its trip-hop and ambient rhythms and atmospheres, while a deeper exploration reveals the psychedelic essence of the entire work, a daring and exciting journey in the most primitive Sicily, and the energy that sustains all of its ten tracks. Much of their author and his lifestyle - mainly based on meditation, the search for spiritual elevation, the relationship with nature and the regaining of contact with those particular places and with the people who live there - is revealed by those tracks that constitute a soundtrack for this spiritual but also extremely physical journey. The song titles are, in fact, intrinsically linked to Roberto’s real life: the Gorna and Ilice mountains at the foot of Etna, the Carricante vineyard and its excellent wine, Unna, Three Chestnuts, Varanni, Don Alfio, Lady G. Each of them represents a pleasant and dreamlike narration and the escape from the complex dynamics of a city like Catania, among echoes of the most dreamy Pink Floyd, the softer side of ’70s krautrock, but also the Massive Attack and Tricky’s Bristol scene. There’s also an excellent choice of synthesizers and overdubbed guitars, thanks to the talent of the multifaceted musician and producer Salvo Bruno Dub, and of Manuela Amalfitano, Loredana Poidomani and Deran Obika’s voices. Agosta is an introspective, deep work with a cinematic vocation, perfectly rooted in the territory where it took shape, among sunny landscapes, lush with vegetation but also deserted and arid lands. From Sicily to the cosmos... enjoy!

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Pan Daijing

Jade White Vinyl Edition

12" | 2021 | EU | Original (KNTXT)

Release: 2021 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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What if a song was not a culmination but a singe, an imprint, or a crater left in the wake of creative process? On her new record "Jade", Pan Daijing composes at a different scale than that we've come to know. Since the release of her groundbreaking LP "Lack" in 2017, Daijing has expanded her operatic vision into a series of major commissioned exhibition-performances at institutions including the Tate Modern, Martin Gropius Bau, and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Developed for full casts of opera singers and dancers, and reaching for an all-encompassing durational experience of intensity for both performer and audience, the development of these works was for Daijing as emotionally disarming as it was thrilling. In order to continue accessing her own limits, Daijing had to develop a place of sanctuary within her own practice. Its nine tracks written and recorded over the last three years, "Jade" is the sound of solitary release and refuge, of creative self-sustenance. Written without the imperatives of direct address to performers or audience, "Jade" speaks inward, while inviting a kind of rhetorical listening. The artist draws on materials familiar from her previous work: namely, ascetic electronic textures that rumble and pierce, and voice bent in irreverent directions. In place of catharsis, however, her arrangements here linger in tension, extending curiosity towards the delicate void that nourishes extremes. They toy with the minor capacities of song: repetition, chant, observations that conclude without resolving. "Jade" comes from a vulnerable place, tender as in an undressed wound caught in the midst of healing over. Vocals, mostly Daijing's own, arrive as wordless sequences of notes soaring alongside a drone, or plain laughter, or in a few places spoken word. What is said or sung provides fragments of experience and reflection. In the process of piecing together these fragments, the listener is confronted with the tender parts of her own. "Solitude is like an immense lake you're swimming through," says Daijing of these songs. "Sometimes you dip your head in and sometimes you lift it above. On album centerpiece "Let," she speaks to us over the sound of rippling water, returning between anxious scenes to a refrain: "I take my bath in the ocean." We are not just consuming Daijing's story; we are being invited to join her in the water. The album is mixed and mastered by Rashad Becker, featuring artwork by Pan Daijing, cinematography by Dzhovani Gospodinov & design by NMR.

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Onyvaa

Lost Angeles EP

LP | 2021 | EU | Original (Editions Mego)

Release: 2021 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Kntxt kicks off 2021 by welcoming exciting new talent Onyvaa to its ranks. The much vaunted DJ and producer debuts with her Lost Angeles EP, a superbly powerful four tracker that is perfectly at home on this agenda setting label.Onyvaa is an LA based artist who has been on a swift rise up through the global techno ranks in the last couple of years. She brings classy Detroit, melodic and dub influences to her music, and her raw analog aesthetic always helps ensure her stylish tracks bring plenty of atmosphere to go alongside her strong modular live-sets. Now, she steps up with a much anticipated debut on Charlotte de Witte's Kntxt label having struck up a personal friendship with the influential artist.

Says Onyvaa, "Lost Angeles was inspired by my time back home in LA and things feeling a bit foreign to my everyday life pre-covid. I’m super grateful for all of Charlotte’s support and really proud to be a part of the Kntxt family. Hoping to play these tracks out on the dance floor soon!"

Opener 'The Way It Is' wastes no time in laying down a heavyweight techno groove that is run through with edgy, laser-like synth riffs. It's an all consuming wall rattler that will blow clubs away. 'Lucid' is a darkened techno roller again lit up with expertly designed synths that are bright yet menacing as distant vocal sounds add another layer of tension. It's an all out acid attack on 'lxd' which places you at the heart of a rave, strobe lights flashing, smoke in the air, darkness enveloping you. The title track closes out at hyper speed, with turbocharged drum programming, interwoven bass and clanking industrial motifs all getting you thoroughly in the zone.

Says Charlotte, "I met Shelby for the first time after a show in Athens. We visited the city the day after and instantly became friends. Whenever the opportunity would arise, we’d spend time together. I love being around the ball of energy that is Shelby and I’m beyond excited to have her and her music on my label. Expecting big things from her!”

This is a fantastic new signing for Kntxt and surely the start of even bigger things for Onyvaa.

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Caterina Barbieri

Fantas Variations

LP | 2021 | UK | Original (Marionette)

Release: 2021 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance, Classical Music

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Fantas is the epic opening track on Caterina Barbieri’s acclaimed 2019 release Ecstatic Computation. The original Fantas laid out a magical path of patterns leading the listener on a journey into the sound itself. Fantas Variations maps out eight new potentials sprung from this initial path as constructed by a diverse mix of artists lending to a wide spectrum of new works extrapolated from the original work. For this project Barbieri invited friends and long time collaborators from a variety of musical backgrounds to create a more sustainable and inclusive landscape in terms of stylistic, geographical, gender and generational balance. The results are a diverse array of approaches and instrumentation which blur the boundaries between the acoustic and electronic.

Fantas Variations embraces a platform for mutual exchange and support between like-minded artists, where active and collective re-imagination is prioritised over the traditional model of remixes, which is often strategic, functional and more passive.

Longtime friend and collaborator Kali Malone rearranged Fantas to a slowed-down, austere and eerie version for two Organs. Evelyn Saylor created a piece for a vocal ensemble consisting of her, Lyra Pramuk, Stine Janvin and Annie Garlid, joining forces to express the choral, psychedelic and vitalistic nature of the piece. Barbieri’s former guitar professor at the Conservatory in Bologna, Walter Zanetti, composes Fantas for electric guitar, by translating every single gesture of the original electronic piece into a personal, nuanced and detailed interpretation. Bendik Giske’s reinterpretation for Saxophone and Voice captures the atmospheric essence of Fantas and its psychic meteorology. Longtime collaborator and along with Barbieri the other half of the outfit Punctum, Carlo Maria, resynthesizes Fantas for Tr808 and Mc202, bringing a more club-oriented dimension of the piece to life whilst unveiling the sonic continuum between rhythm and pitch through a sensitive timbral approach. Jay Mitta’s Singeli reinterpretation of Fantas transpires with pitched-up percussion and turbo-fast polyrhythmic patterns unleashing the frenetic, shifting, transformative matter within the piece to a higher plain of euphoric dance. Baseck’s variation is a rave fantasia, where the prismatic trance of the original is channeled into fierce, uncompromising hardcore, whilst Kara-Lis Coverdale’s take is a phantasmagoria for piano that gently, yet inexorably, captures the relentlessness chimerical qualities of the original, unveiling its spectral backbone.

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David Fenech & Klimperei

Rainbow De Nuit

Nerve Bumps (A Queer Divine Disappointment)

Release: 2021 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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“Maestro melodist Christophe Petchanatz (aka Klimperei) and all around music fanatic David Fenech engage remotely in a repetitive exchange of recordings and overdubs on their debut album titled ‘Rainbow de Nuit’, sporadically spanning over the last decade. Evocations of experimental and improvised jazz, chansonesque songs, bluesy folk, and outsider music undulate harmoniously across the record. From music boxes and walkie-talkies down to plastic straws, plucking various stringed instruments such as the charrango and banjo, kazoos and snake-charmer ocarina and flutes, all the way through the sweet accordion and melodica, found and traditional tuned percussion - there is far from a shortage of sound sources on this freakishly inviting record. What germinates as an imaginative and emotional chord progression played by Klimperei, evolves with Fenech layering additional recordings, which would then find their way back home to Klimperei yet again, and so on, and so forth. This recursive compositional and improvisational loop, combined with Fenech’s musique-concrete-like mixing and editing techniques, transforms the acoustic recordings by way of compression, saturation, and reverberation or simple pitch changes - resulting in the duo’s recordings seemingly sound like they may very well be an octet in real time. While the majority of the recordings have been ping-ponged remotely, David and Christophe unite under one roof to record the closing track of the album.

The pieces presented on ‘Rainbow de Nuit’ treat the ears to a carousel ride waltzing through a multiverse made up of surrealist puppet theaters, dramatic film noir act changes, and a mosaic of polyphonic instruments and toys alike. In other words, a score to a fable brought to life with haunting yet charming melodies and occasional hallucinatory voices reminiscent of laughter and infantile epiphanies which we hear on Tarzan en Tasmanie and Madrigal for Lola. This is taken a step further by Fenech, to a brief libretto of incomprehensible tongues on Pocarina. Amid the mysterious and dark (Septième Ciel and Rugit Le Coeur) also lies tender and simple compositions (Rainbow de Nuit and Chevalier Gambette), murky suspenseful melancholy (Levy Attend and Eno Ennio), and casually slipping into pensive psychedelic backdrops (Un Cercueil à Deux Places) - forming a colorful blend of sounds. A world of echoes. A tale of tales. One persistent earworm that you’ll likely be whistling and humming along to on a first listen.”

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Dax Pierson

LP | 2021 | US | Original (Dark Entries)

21,99 €*

LP | 2020 | EU | Original (South Of North)

Release: 2021 / US – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Dax Pierson’s debut solo LP is coming via San Francisco’s Electronic powerhouse imprint Dark Entries Records and Oakland’s Ratskin Records collective. Pierson, an Oakland-based underground legend, has pushed the boundaries of experimental electronic music with his soul-moving opus Nerve Bumps; A Queer Divine Dissatisfaction, an endeavor two long years in the making. On Nerve Bumps, Pierson blends hip hop, jazz, John Carpenter-esque arpeggios, trap/anti trap-influenced percussion, and musique concrete-informed experiments. Futuristic synthesizers cut through layers of fog as Pierson’s bombastic drum programming forges new worlds within themselves. Pierson tells a complicated and inspiring story on Nerve Bumps, which is both a privilege and a gift to experience. Tracks such as “I Slay The Pain” reiterate that although Pierson has to live his life as a quadriplegic, this does not define him as an artist or as a person. The cinematic “For The Angels” plays as a masterclass in heart and body-moving rhythms and undulating synthesizers. Pierson directly confronts the listener on “Snap”, an act of solidarity with the disabled community. Sputtering orchestral swells become encapsulated by splintering shards of Pierson’s voice, evoking his relentless determination to learn new music production methods as well as share his experience with losing certain physical abilities. The album’s closing track, “nthng FKS U Hrdr THN TM”, is a perfect distillation of the varied emotions explored on the album. Warm, heavy synths masterfully guide us down a psychedelic slope through the track’s twelve minutes. On Nerve Bumps, honesty, empathy, and humanity bleed through the speakers like a dark liquid just beneath the skin’s surface. For Pierson, music is his lifeblood, both as a creator and a listener. Nerve Bumps was mastered by George Horn at Fantasy Studios. The front cover features a painting of pink and green horizontal stripes by Pierson’s partner, artist Chuck Nanney. A photograph of Pierson’s wheelchair by Lenny Gonzalez graces the back sleeve. Dax’s guiding mantra throughout this journey has been a quote from choreographer Martha Graham: “No artist is pleased… There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”

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Lyckle De Jong

Bij Annie Op Bezoek

Salt And Sugar Look The Same (With Seamsplit)

Release: 2020 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Lyckle de Jong’s debut LP ‘bij Annie op bezoek’ captures moments of his encounter with Annie. An elderly lady in her mid 80’s, who has been living in quarantine for almost a decade.

The album has a cinematic feel and inherents several interludes of Annie singing her favourite ‘Schlager’ songs, recorded live in her living room. It feels like entering a different world - Annie’s world…

About fifty years ago, Annie met her husband at The Camera, a movie theatre in Leiden. Both were working there at the time. One day Annie had to get something from the projection-room. It was dark, so she wasn’t able to see much. All of a sudden she felt a hand on hers, but strangely enough, she didn’t startle. She felt something very special, a feeling that has never left her, up to this day. It was the hand of her future husband. Exactly then he told her he loved her and had done so from the very first time he had seen her. This was somewhat remarkable; Annie liked the guy, Seban was his name, but didn’t really know him all that well, moreover she was a couple of years older and he was a Moroccan muslim living in the Netherlands of the 1960s. Nothing terrible, but regrettably the ’60’s was a different time. They still married and moved into a brand-new flat apartment in the Merenwijk in Leiden. A flat and neighbourhood that has since lost its glory. Annie and Seban often vacationed together in a caravan. They went to Morocco together, where Annie met his parents. She converted to Islam, but in her own way. She doesn’t wear a headscarf for example, but did stop eating pork. Annie and Seban were together for just ten years. Though the briefness of this period had nothing to do with their love for each other. This love is still present, despite the fact that Seban passed away years ago. In the living room she has a black-and-white picture showing him sitting next to their German Shepard Camar, on the footballfield down from the apartment. Both of them look proud. Every day Annie looks at it, at the happiest time of her life. “If it were possible, I would take them back immediately.

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Tim Koh & Sun An

LP | 2024 | EU | Original (Music From Memory)

12" | 2024 | UK | Original (Rave4evar)

Release: 2024 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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A few copies arrived with a seamsplit Cover. We're therefore selling it on a reduced price.

Music From Memory is pleased to announce the upcoming release of ‘Salt And Sugar Look The Same’, a collaborative album from Tim Koh and Sun An.

Tim Koh is an American multi-instrumentalist and visual artist born and raised in Los Angeles. He has been touring, releasing music and showing art works internationally for nearly two decades. Sun An is a Southern California-based graphic designer, art director, and sound designer who has self-released music since 2012.

‘Salt And Sugar Look The Same’ plays somewhat like a dreamlike collage; across 18 short compositions, finger-picked guitars melt with electronics and warped samples to create a form of American Primitivism bent and refracted through Tim and Sun’s unique lens.

Their collaborative journey unfolded gradually, exchanging snippets via email over the span of a year or so, Sun in LA and Tim in Berlin. Amidst personal struggles and uncertainties, the act of recording and composing became a refuge, a safe space where they could navigate life's complexities together. Though they didn't converse much, mostly just sending music, their musical dialogue spoke volumes, shaping a narrative that evolved naturally over time. As they shared their musical ideas, they discovered a profound sense of connection and understanding with one another. The music became a conduit for healing, bridging the gaps between them and offering comfort in times of need.

Their musical influences and backgrounds anchored them. From reminiscing about past scenes to exploring cultural intricacies of being Korean American in Los Angeles, infused with a natural sense of shared identity, their collaboration reflected a mergence of old and new memories into a hallucinatory, dream-like experience. Across the 18 compositions that make up the album, incense emerges as a poignant motif, symbolizing the passage of time. Each incense stick becomes a vessel carrying the essence of moments gone by, while the holder becomes the custodian of these ephemeral memories.

‘Salt And Sugar Look The Same’ invites the listener on a boundary-transcending journey of introspection, joy, and pain, creating an experience that lingers long after the last note fades.

Sleeve art by Brian DeGraw, design by David McFarline.

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Laskfar Vortok

Erbsat Esrhosc

Mama Calling Orange Transparent Vinyl Edition

Release: 2024 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Los Angeles-based video artist and producer Laskfar Vortok makes his first appearance in the Evar catalogue with "Erbsat Esrhosc." An unusual title that reflects the artist's interest in the bizarre, whether he's making music or producing videos and visuals, "Erbsat Esrhosc" bristles with erratic patterns, anarchic atmospheres and glitchy soundscapes. The Mexican-born talent explores ideas based on the hypothetical concept of a planetwide city, otherwise known as an ecumenopolis, weaving such ideas against a cinematic backdrop, nodding to his long-running love for cinema. Across the five-track EP, he also draws inspiration from the heated and hectic energy of L.A, where he's resided most of his life.

Produced in memoriam of Michael Gregory Harrison, aka Bad Timing, and following a period of introspection and creative and personal challenges, Laskfar Vortok began work on "Erbsat Esrhosc" in 2018. The EP honours Michael's brilliance as an artist and a friend;the title being an anagram of a phrase that they shared between them.

"Eclipse" opens the EP on a haunting note. A spidery melody and chilling pads punctuate the witchy soundscape before syncopated sequences collide with snafued textures, signifying a sharp left turn into breakcore. With its nebulous atmosphere, this track offers the first glimpse into the concept of an ecumenopolis. On "Hyperdrive", frenetic percussion dominates while zappy noises and a doomsday melody slink in and out of earshot. Bursts of broken wub exacerbate the uneasy mood while cinematic, almost ethereal chords twinkle in the background.

"Base" offers a moment to recover one's brain cells after the nosedive into the near future. A lugging kickdrum and broken, woody percussions swirl around the troposphere while creepy pads convey a sinister aura. "Mutation" catapults us back into chaos with claustrophobic polyrhythmic structures, smatterings of kickdrums, and a sporadic mad-scientist-type synthline, adding a jittery layer. An unexpectedly orchestral outro completes the bizarre nature of the track.

Closing out on "Send Off", Laskfar Vortok blends freezing-cold chords with snaggy synth notes and a tangle of drum constellations tied up with a gossamer melody and splattered across an eerie terrain.

Using Bitwig Studio, orcλ, TidalCycles and Renoise as his modus operandi, Laskfar Vortok produces a trip that intrigues but disturbs, serving a shimmering yet terrifying squint into a technoid-led utopia. And we're only just getting started.

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Buika X Kiko Navarro

12" | 2024 | EU | Original (Afroterraneo)

12" | 2024 | EU | Original (Afroterraneo)

Release: 2024 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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The second release of the year on his Afroterraneo imprint, Kiko Navarro presents a brand new version of 'Mama Calling', his timeless collaboration with Buika, featuring a Tedd Patterson remix.

Originally issued in 2004, Kiko Navarro and Buika revisited the 'Mama Calling' while preparing for a live show in November 2023, and their new version of the song became a highlight of the concert. Apart from those distinctive horn stabs, this is a brand new update of the energetic and life-affirming song, perfect to help propel dancefloors into the New Year and beyond.

Around 2003 Kiko Navarro first met House legend Tedd Patterson while headlining together at Pacha Ibiza. Tedd was so enchanted by 'Mama Calling' that he asked for a pre-release copy then and there. Because it became a big staple for him in his sets a Cielo in NYC, Tedd then reached out for parts to create is own edited version of the song. A few years later Tedd had created a full on remix of the song that was only then released as part of a compilation in 2010. The remix found strong favor with a select few key underground DJs, including heavy rotation from DJs Honey
Dijon. We felt like it was the right time for a new mixdown and mastering for Tedd's classic remix which we present here in single form for the very first time.

About the artists:
Releasing on Colombia, Atlantic and Warner Music over her storied career, certified gold for album ‘Mi niña Lola’ and nominated for multiple Latin Grammy Awards (winning in 2010 for album ‘El Ultimo Trago’), Buika was named among the top 50 vocalists of all time by NPR, who described her as “the voice of freedom”.

Carving out an enviable reputation across the globe for his distinctive and highly personal brand of House music, Kiko Navarro’s voyage of sonic discovery has been going strong for almost three decades now. Born on Mallorca, Kiko’s sound reflects the sun-drenched, slow living atmosphere of the Balearic island he still calls home.
Obsessed from an early age with the more soulful side of US House music, Navarro’s DJ skills soon attracted the attention of nightlife behemoth Pacha who offered him club residencies both in Palma and in Ibiza. Next came a monthly gig at Space Ibiza and the rest, as they say, is history.

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Buika X Kiko Navarro

Mama Calling

12" | 2024 | EU | Original (Bite)

Release: 2024 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Soft Crash

NRG

Accidental Music 1987-1991

Release: 2024 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Hot wiring dancefloors with their immersive orchestration of uplifting sonic waves, Soft Crash sets out to soundtrack the unified, euphoric heartbeat of the crowds they foster with their mechanical yet fantastical, Italo Body Music. Presenting their highly anticipated EP ‘nrg’, the Berlin-based collaborative project of Berghain resident and Bite label head Hayden Payne (aka Phase Fatale) and French prolific producer Pablo Bozzi works to forge Soft Crash’s unique vocabulary of post-humanist production with the harmonic grandeur of their rhythmic, machine-made anthems.

Fresh off the back of their 2022 debut album ‘Your Last Everything’, Soft Crash present their latest 4 track EP ‘nrg’, chronicling their synonymous surrealist visuals infused with the contagious punch of Italo and Synth-wave. Geared towards the dancefloor from a fresh perspective, Bozzi and Payne pull from their respective wheelhouses to curate a sound additionally influenced by Wave-Pop, Acid House and Post-Punk sensibilities.

Procuring their cerebral yet zealous indentation of dance music, the EP features sanguine vocals from Kyiv-based singer and musician Ready in LED on the first single ‘Free Yourself’. She comments about the track “I became captivated instantly with the idea of the track that Hayden and Pablo sent me. At that moment, I was a bit tired of carefree disco and wanted to reveal my dark side in music. The demo sounded very daring. This track demands attention to itself from the first seconds. My sources of inspiration were glam rock and grunge. I had a blast in the studio, and I hope the people on the dance floors will feel that energy too.”

While full throttle vitality and booming grooves on the title track ‘nrg’ showcase Soft Crash’s take on 90’s sample-filled techno. Closing the extended play with an updated cut of the bewitching ‘Your Last Everything’, featuring Canadian musician and producer Marie Davidson, Soft Crash breathe a new life into the namesake track from their preceding album, concluding with an additional remix of the track by cult favourite producer Alen Skanner. The intrinsic dance floor vigour emulated in NRG further fleshes-out the pair’s recognisable DNA of nurturing a revitalised techno sound, cementing them as pioneers of the Italo Body genre.

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Charles Esposito

LP | 2023 | UK | Original (Mid-Air Museum / chOOn!!)

39,99 €*

12" | 2023 | EU | Original (Amas_Studio)

Release: 2023 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Ultravillage is a collective and burgeoning community of new age music devotees, private press fanatics and underground ambient, minimal and progressive electronic aficionados. Their website at ultravillage.com is fast becoming the go to guide for the most obscure entries in the American new age and minimal music canon – a crucial hub for diggers, archivists and label runners recovering lost sounds from by-gone eras.

Mark Griffey, the man behind Ultravillage, has recently made the venture into releasing albums, with the intention of reissuing forgotten personal masterpieces of 1980s and 90s private press synth culture on new label Mid-Air Museum. MM’s first vinyl record release is a collaboration with Scottish reissue label chOOn!!.

Together, they present Accidental Music 1987-1991 by Charles Esposito, a career retrospective of the experimental composer from Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. The cinematic and the sacred swirl around on Accidental Music, which gives new life to intriguing self-released tapes that Esposito put out in the 1980s and 90s. Heard by few on its original release, the music featured on this compilation ranges from Palace of Lights percussive sonics to an almost minimal techno palette, a meeting of pop and twisted electronics with the hypnotic immediacy of ancient ritual.

Accidental Music 1987-1991 develops a series of resonant harmonic spaces, by adding layers of instruments and played objects. Rather than work as acoustic maps of specific locations, these pieces eddy and gather into positive physical presences. But Esposito’s real strength lies in creating depth of field. The foreground might be dominated by glassy chimes or resonant prayer bowl-like timbres, but beyond it a series of sonic veils seems to recede towards murky imperceptibility. There’s also a kind of surreal decorum at play, passages that sound like an immaculately laid dinner table being shaken by an earth tremor while the tinkling complaints of the silver, glass and muffling linen are scrupulously recorded.

Available for the first time on vinyl, Accidental Music 1987-1991 by Charles Esposito is an exploration into
many inner worlds and dreamscapes, an analogue mirage of avant-garde gems. Produced in cooperation with the artist for Mid-Air Museum and chOOn!!.

Mastered for vinyl and digital and featuring liner notes from Mark Griffey.

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Amas

Face II EP

Spirit Of Sundaze Ensemble

Release: 2023 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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The EP Face II is a continuation of the Faces EP series, of which the first EP was released in october 2022. The basis here is also a literary fixpoint with Kafkas Ver- Wandlung. the examination of the urban modern man has its origin in the album Jahre and is now explored in more detail here. What happens to us in a time of digital transparency as a glass human of the city and night. It starts with THE Void, which was originally intended as a poem about being lost. We go out into the night, some to search, some to forget and some to never come back as the same again. On our journey we often take substances that we expect to make this journey easier and faster. the escape from ourselves and from our relationships to the environment and humans can?t just be skipped. a fast way is always a dangerous way and often leads to an even bigger Emptiness. In THE Ghost something appears to us late at night, it is like a shadow of the pre- vious hours, something that has followed us on the streets and accompanied us un- discovered until we reached our home. We wake up and at first it is unclear whether we are dreaming. In half-sleep the dimensions blur together and the whole polyva- lence of the different existences gapes open. We blink into the Darkness and try to recognize something, the light remains far away and yet we hear this piercing sound, which in the end leaves us only with ourselves. we are the spirit of the night, trapped on an old tape in the chest of nothing. The next section THE Moon shows us the light in the darkness. The shadows and ghosts give way for a moment and the light flows through our veins and molecules. The poem describes our unspoken longing to follow the light, in the light our fears disappear and everything blurs into an unknown familiarity. We stagger back and forget the encounters with our inner Dawn. In the light the ghosts disappear like childhood memories left behind. The last chapter is written by THE Dawn, a stanza from the poem of the same name as a spoken reconciliation with the world. In spite of everything, we seek harmony and connectedness. No one wants to become an exile, even if we can?t always bring it about ourselves. We love Life and we hear and feel everything around us, if we let ourselves ... ALL Love Amas_dhe / Amas_phi

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12" | 2023 | UK | Original (Sose)

2LP | 2023 | EU | Original (House Of Reptile)

Release: 2023 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Spirit of Sundaze Ensemble (sose) is the latest evolution from London based DJ / producer, label and party series Secretsundaze. Sitting at the intersection of live music and electronic music innovation, leading contemporary musicians reimagine, record and perform a selection of tracks which have been foundational across Secretsundaze’s 20+ year history, embracing a myriad of influences from Balearic to synth pop to Brit funk.

EP 1 opens with their first single, a re-imagination of Photek’s seminal ‘Mine to Give’. Featuring Wayne Snow on vocals and garnering wide support from the likes of BBC 6 Music heads Gilles Peterson and Nabihah Iqbal, through to NTS and Worldwide FM tastemakers including Zakia, Moxie and Colleen ‘Cosmo’ Murphy, the tempo is slowed and explored in a more synthy 80s production style.

Next is their take on Joyce Sims’ (rip) ‘Come into My Life’, moving the original Mantronix production into a more contemporary UK / Street Soul / Balearic territory.

The B-side sees them take on beloved Phil Asher (rip) production, Nathan Haines’ stunning ‘Earth is the Place’, a classic Secretsundaze record if ever there was one. Featuring the vocals of Cherise, the Sose version is a dance floor ready update which will appeal to all lovers of proper deep, soulful-leaning house music, one for the heads.

Closing the record is a flip of Wbeeza’s ‘Coast Spotting’. Featuring synths from the excellent Hinako Omori, this one goes in with an extended late night transcendental electronic / jazz rework with the original’s looped lead line modulating throughout the piece.

Leading musicians feature on the record including Myele Manzanza (Theo Parrish, Sound Signature), Lewis Moody (Zeitgeist Freedom Energy Exchange), Nikos Ziarkas (Theon Cross, Chelsea Carmichael), Oli Savill (Basement Jaxx), and Johnny Brierley (Fofoulah).

Following their debut sold out show at Southbank’s Centre Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Ensemble next take to the London stage at the iconic EartH Theatre, Dalston on September 21st for an EP launch party as well as a headline open-air concert at Las Dalias, Ibiza as part of Beat Hotel on September 30th.

All in all, an impressive debut showcasing the breadth and scope of this exciting new live project from Secretsundaze founder James Priestley, one to watch.

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Angel Attack

Divine Practicalities

30,99 €*

The Architecture Of The Mind

Release: 2023 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Angel Attack delivers his debut album Divine Practicalities on his label, House of Reptile. The Boston and London-based artist blends several sound palettes, sharing his most poignant body of work to date. The album includes two remixes by Univac and Blind Delon, respectively. The title track acts as a prelude to the album. A broken-beat, experimental number, it dips into cinematic soundscapes and warbling percussion, which Angel Attack describes as an “introduction to summarise the emotions we are about to experience on the album.” Tightening Tension follows suit. It’s a mutation of broken techno with electro flavours over a malicious Moog bassline, featuring the vocals of French producer IV Horsemen, whose lyrics conjure a smokey, bone-chilling atmosphere between skittery drums. Angel Attack dives into a metal-edged mood on Ankles, stitching distorted riffs between broken beats. The energy is visceral. Come To Me is straight-up Japanese Horror-inspired electro, combining eerie textures with thudding kickdrums and a gnarly scream — a freaky trip at just over five minutes. Franco-Spanish author, singer, DJ and musician Pedro Peñas Robles, aka Hiv+, features on Oblivion War. A sludgy, slow-burning soundscape ensues with a deluge of downtempo, hip-hop and EBM textures, complemented by Hiv+’s gravelly voice. Whipping up the pace, Wrists blurs the lines between sci-fi, electro and goth. A stinging melody snakes between staccato claps and ghostly pads — lethal energy of the highest order. Forgotten is the postlude-type track of the album, and this is where Angel Attack’s interdisciplinary approach comes to life. It’s the most piercing tune of the release, complete with a guitar melody, stripped-back drums and pagan throat chants provided by Angel Attack. An introspective offering, staying with the listener long after the record stops spinning. Angel Attack invites two of his favourite artists to remix Tightening Tension. Catalan producer Univac twists up the stems, serving a searing electro interpretation with a winding synthline and reverb-drenched vocals. On Blind Delon’s remix, the French synthwave and post-punk band seal the album with a dark and sultry 7-minute ride through noise. Potent synth notes and hair-raising vocals punctuate the soundscape, echoing the concept of the release: music as a mirror into the soul.

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Zentaskai

3LP | 2023 | Original (Mask)

53,99 €*

In Second Floor And Third Floor Story

Release: 2023 / Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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ZentaSkai unveils stunning, high-concept house album on Mask Records.
ZentaSkai undertook a period of research into the underlying structure and organisation of the human brain
before writing ‘The Architecture Of The Mind’. The Berlin-based artist then took what had been learned and
kept it in mind when writing the music that marks Mask's first album release. It comes with extensive
background notes on each track, and an operational manual of sorts - notes from the artists as to the effects
each piece will have on those who hear them.
"The message conveyed by this album is that life itself is filled with music, but our egos often prevent us from
being in harmony with this symphony. Inner chaos and silence can be challenging to bear, leading us to seek
solace in external noise. We have constructed a barrier between our inner and outer worlds, causing us to
lose touch with the rhythm of harmony. However, by embracing the illusion of separation and dancing to good
music, we can rediscover harmony with ourselves and our environment. To fully experience the essence of
the album, it should be played loudly on a proper sound system or high-quality headphones. By immersing
themselves in the music, individuals can engage with its transformative power and potentially find a deeper
connection with their own minds and surroundings." - ZentaSkai
The gorgeous 'Mind Mapping' opens up with deep and dubby drums and lush harmonies that soothe you to
your core, '030' then has more raw, heavy drums with many layers of glowing synths, glassy melodies and
organic found sounds. 'Fügung' keeps the deep and introspective moods coming before the crisp tech of
'Flow Dreaming' ups the ante with more drive and layers of vocal whispers, hi-hats and smeared dub chords.
Elsewhere the likes of 'Quiet Reflection' lean into the groove with swirling pads and one-word vocal sounds
drifting through the air over propulsive drum loops, and 'Boiling Range' suspends you in deft synth loops
amongst the stars over a prickly house beat.
The superb synth craft and well-designed grooves continue through the dusty deep house of
'Karl-Marx-Allee' and minimal dub of 'Dynamic System' before the elegant melodic techno of 'Apeiron' and
dreamy synthscapes of 'Parallel 30' close the album in a reflective fashion.
This is a deeply evocative album with a fully realised concept that is as thought-provoking as it is immersive.

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Middex

LP | 2023 | UK | Original (Goods Outward)

Alexandre Babel & Latifa Echakhch

Release: 2023 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Kevin Hendrick aka Middex is a musician and writer from London with a catalogue of cassettes, LPs and 7s dating back to 2015, including early releases on Polytechnic Youth and The Tapeworm.

Collaborations include a track with Malvern Brume for his Infant Tree label and with Marland Starkie, a soundtrack piece for a film work by artist Sop for the “Rooted Beings” exhibition at the Wellcome Collection, London.

2021 saw the release of the landmark ‘Let the Engine-Loud Apocalypse Play Havoc with your Soul’ on his own Demotic Brick label, a concise and concentrated collection of sound and feeling.

More recently, ‘Perpetual Skip’ was a project in two parts seeing The Outer Reaches label release the LP version in 2022. This was predated by a booklet edition, published by Makina Books, a collection of eleven prose poems. This was subsequently selected for inclusion in the UK’s National Poetry Library.

Hendrick’s work has always given equal footing to his words alongside a stark sound palette consisting of bass and grain with bright shards of melody where necessary; structures built on a foundation of noise, digidub and sounds gathered from his daily life.

Middex never rests and beyond ‘In Second Floor and Third Floor Story’, there’s more on the horizon after Hendrick undertook a Britten-Pears Arts residency in March 2023 which is fuelling a future project work of sound and words entitled "Fugitive Dust".

Middex “In Second Floor and Third Floor Story” There is a wall missing on the second floor. We are exposed to the brilliant light, the pixilated heat, moving with the sandstorm. The grains appear greyscale. Looking closer, each is iridescent; with the potential to bloom (in spite of the agriculture). Follow the thread of shimmering bells, altering the air pressure. Up staircase. The denizens of this place, always just out of eye line. The Kleptomaniac, the Typical Male, the Wild Family. The Angels on a working breeze. The Been and the Gone. The Retching Birds. The Hyena up there. The Homophobic Neighbour. All leaving their impressions, heard but never seen. The third floor offers us shelter, though it is howling outside. Door after hall, after chamber, after corridor. Each cell filtering, through its own resonance to pure tones. The only way is onward, following the thread. Keeping a count as best you can....

Mastered by Amir Shoat.

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The Concert

LP | 2023 | UK | Original (Shelter Press)

7" | 2024 | US | Original (Galaxy Sound)

Release: 2023 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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When Latifa Echakhch was tuning the concept for her presentation at the Swiss Pavilion during the 59th Venice Art Biennale, she wondered how it might be possible to alter her visitors’ perception of time. She invited Berlin-based drummer and composer Alexandre Babel to come up with a response to her silent exhibition, held inside a striking multi-room building designed by Bruno Giacometti and originally intended for the display of classical art. Babel assembled field recordings captured at the Pavilion alongside pre-recorded viola, contrabass, flute and percussion sounds contributed by Jon Heilbronn, Rebecca Lenton, Theo Nabicht and Nikolaus Schlierf, combined to construct an immersive slow-creep of detailed micro-sounds designed to gradually alter your temporal and spatial bearings. Opening with echoing footsteps over a discomposing whirr of modern machinery, our attention is drawn to the physical space and the natural rhythm of walking. Pinprick clicks add an extra layer of microscopic grist, as water droplets form an incoherent pulse that eventually turn to woodblock clacks and toms. Resembling the innards of a clockmaker’s workshop as though heard from the central hall of a vast gallery space; Babel’s rhythms are so finely drawn that they’re hard to grasp at first blush, demanding multiple listens in order to fully comprehend their abstruse latticing. Spray can blasts and white noise bursts dance in tandem, ushering in low-end rumbles that cautiously mutate into the album’s central segment, where a bass drum slowly ushers in a pressure shift. It’s at this point where the music begins to fully betray its influences, linking the freeform heartbeat-led expression of Milford Graves and his under-sung student Jake Meginsky with crys cole’s lower-case sonic journeying. When more traditional instrumentation rings out from the rafters, it’s to reinforce the piece’s rhythmic thrust, not drown it out with buttoned-up respectability. At its peak “The Concert” sounds lost between genre and temporality, both electronic and astonishingly biotic. It’s the rare site-specific installation piece that truly meets its brief, forcing listeners to consider not just the three-dimensional space it’s responding to, but also the constant rhythms that surround them in day to day life.

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Mr. Theolonius

Clap Ya Hands / Web

11,99 €*

12" | 2023 | EU | Original (Heist)

Release: 2024 / US – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves, Electronic & Dance

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Give It Up Or Turnit a Loose (Edit) by James Brown b/w Web (Edit) by Hampton Hughes / Give It Up or Turnit a Loose (Bonus Breaks) by James Brown| Galaxy Sound Company — Gsc45-044, test pressing | The long-running @galaxy_sound_company imprint has been responsible for some superb re-edits over the years, most of which are pleasingly purist in tone — meaning they are pro rearrangements with no added effects but & needless new beats or cheap trickery like so many out there— making any of their releases cop-on-site. & as you can hear from the test pressing, the 44th in the stellar series delivers yet again.

Side A is a masterclass in breakbeat editing of a b-boy classic sample source. Yes, there are many killer JB edits out in the universe, but when you see that the legendary Black Cash & Theo AKA Thelonious Beats take a turn, you know you gotta cop this mutha on site. Here the edit master bravely returns to one of the main sources of the dawn of hip-hop — JB’s comp “In The Jungle Groove” which was released in 1986 to capitalize on it’s popularity in the genre at the time. The comp is named for a breakdown section that appears in “Give It Up Or Turnit a Loose” which is the workout we have here. JB quiets the band down to handclaps, footstomps & congas played by Johnny Griggs. After he raps a little, JB cues legendary drummer Clyde Stubblefield back in, followed by bassist Bootsy Collins & the rest of the band. JB wasn’t intentionally trying to create a perfect batch of hip-hop samples in the late 60s & early 70s, but he couldn’t have succeeded any better if he had been. This edit may enter well-worn territory but he uniquely delivers an edit that showcases why it inspired so many & still delivers the goods to help you get your party started off right & quickly.

Next up on the flipside we are treated to an edit of “Web” by Hampton Hughes, from his 1974 David Axelrod produced & arranged album “Northern Windows”. Heads will recall it as the core sample for “Off the Record” by Hieroglyphics, from the 1998 LP “3rd Eye Vision”. This jazz-funk burner features a stellar line-up: Piano/keyboards = Hawes Trumpet = Allen DeRienzo, Snooky Young Trombone = George Bohanon Sax/flute = Jackie Kelso, Jay Migliori, William Green Electric Bass = Carol Kaye Drums = Spider Webb

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Orlando Voorn

Heist Mastercuts Part 2

LP | 2023 | CA | Original (Telephone Explosion)

Release: 2023 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Orlando Voorn is back on Heist after his 2022 ‘Heist mastercuts’ EP and comes in with a heavy dose of soulful machine funk. ‘Heist mastercuts part 2’ has the techno & house veteran showing his eclectic style with the vocal cut ‘Soundsystem’, Midwest inspired sample jam ‘High’ and his Boo Williams collaborative drum workout ‘909’.

On the first Heist mastercuts, Orlando dove deep into his archives and presented a collection of old and new tracks, showing us that his music has aged well and reminding us that he’s a producer still on the top of his game. He kept busy in 2022 with releases on our own label Transient Nature, Kompakt, a handful of Bandcamp only tracks, and a self-released album. Somehow, he found the time to work on his follow up ep on Heist and managed to completely blow us away with the music.

The EP kicks off with Soundsystem: a masterclass in simplicity. A steady and minimalistic groove guides you through the track, where silky vocals and woozy chords take you on a trip through Orlando’s sonic universe. Orlando moves into freak mode with a trippy lead and dubbed-out keys to add some playfulness to an already outstanding track.

‘High’ is Orlando’s take on what could easily be an old Andrés track. Here, he samples a female vocal (I get high, I get high, I get high), and cleverly adds his own vocals to add depth and originality to the track. The percussion on high grooves in an effortless way and underlines the feel of this track: It’s fun, cool and incredibly funky. There’s a bit of Dam Swindle sauce on the mix to make sure this track hits the right spot on any dancefloor.

On the flip, there’s ‘Day by day’: A classic Orlando Voorn cut with a live bassline, plenty of chopped samples and a Rhodes loop that could have come straight from a B-roll of a ‘First Choice’ recording session. The b-side ends with a collab with Orlando’s close friend Emil and legendary Chicago producer Boo Williams. The producers take a monologue from Boo Williams about working the 909 and deliver a drum workout -yes with the 909- that keeps on building energy, showing exactly what Boo is talking about.

The digital package also includes an instrumental mix of Soundsytem and an alternative mix to 909, just for good measure. This is the first artist release in our 10 years of Heist anniversary year and this EP perfectly encapsulates the Heist Sound: varied, deep, soulful, and banging.

Yours sincerely,
Maarten & Lars

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Masahiro Takahashi

Humid Sun

33,99 €*

Maison Rose Expanded Edition

Release: 2023 / CA – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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For the good part of the past decade, Japanese composer-musician Masahiro Takahashi has been crafting gently spellbinding pieces that simultaneously embrace electronic abstraction and a palpable, even brittle, humanity. His delicate and evocative landscapes always seem to be illuminated in vibrant magic hour tones as golden synth lines emanate from between soft flickers of acoustic instrumentation.

Since moving to Toronto in 2020, Takahashi has swiftly become a local fixture, enough so that his elegant Not Not Fun tape, Flowering Tree, Distant Moon saw an LP reissue with prominent local imprint Telephone Explosion (home to Joseph Shabason, Mas Aya, Steve Roach, Badge Epoque, Eucalyptus and others).

The forthcoming follow-up, also on Telephone Explosion, is entitled Humid Sun and proudly exhibits connections that he has cultivated in both his new and former homes. Recorded between January and August 2022, the record lives up to its title and sunset-hued cover, unfolding a kaleidoscopic, vaguely tropical calm over ten luxuriant tracks. All but one of the pieces features contributions from guest artists. On one hand he has invited several artists from back home namely Tokyo-based electronic producers H. Takahashi, Takao, and Yamaan, on the other he has brought aboard members of Toronto's rich experimental music community, including his labelmates Joseph Shabason and Brodie West (leader of Eucalyptus), as well as Ryan Driver, Bram Gielen, and Michael Davidson. He also enlisted Sandro Perri of Constellation Records infamy to provide the final mix.

Though bearing Takahashi's personal atmospheric signatures, Humid Sun's warm, saturated colour palette and sunny repose audibly also take cues from the imaginary utopias of vintage lounge and exotica. These tropes offer an unexpected avenue through which Toronto's local influence creeps in again. Takahashi explains that he envisions the record as an auditory tool to cope with the city's harsh winters—and the references are designed to provide a sort of sonic vacation. Indeed he succeeds in achieving this objective; the album's nuanced colours and contours engender a sense of equatorial tranquility, though completely devoid of the kitsch associated with his inspiration.

While it might be easy to imagine Masahiro Takahashi's unique brand of introversion as the product of hermetic solitude, anyone that knows him from the Toronto scene will tell you that Humid Sun vividly captures his true temperament—curious, attentive, and quietly gregarious.

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Emmanuelle Parrenin

LP+7" | 1977 | UK | Reissue (Souffle Continu)

32,99 €*

Reverberations: Tape & Electronic Music From The 1960's

Release: 1977 / UK – Reissue

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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'An album such as this obviously owes a lot to the atmosphere in which it was recorded, which we can imagine was magical. We know it took place in Fromentel, Normandy, in a farm converted into a studio by the producer Jacques Denjean, known for his work with Dionne Warwick or Françoise Hardy as well as having been a member of the Double Six. It was also at Fromentel, that Denjean would record two fantastic albums with Albert Marcoeur. When Emmanuelle Parrenin followed in his footsteps a year later she was in good company: the sound engineer at the studio was her partner and therefore uniquely capable (we imagine) of creating an adequate soundscape for her delicate universe. What is more, five years previously, Bruno Menny, the sound engineer partner, recorded his first and only album, but what an album: in electroacoustic terms we can hear things which make him appear as the spiritual son of his mentor Iannis Xenakis!

What makes Maison Rose unique is exactly this fusion between the two conceptions of Emmanuelle Parrenin and Bruno Menny, creating a perfect marriage of tradition and experimentation. The tradition comes from the songs collected by Emmanuelle Parrenin in rural areas, in a similar vein to the work carried out by Alan Lomax and Shirley Collins. The experimentation is in the sound captured by Bruno Menny, who both arranged and recorded the album. This is not to forget those who came with their guitar (Denis Gasser), or their lyrics (no less a figure than Jean-Claude Vannier). On the one hand we have the humble and non-demonstrative singing, with melodies which remind us of songs we would sing to calm a child's nightmares, and on the other hand a pronounced rhythmic intensity at certain points, such as on "Topaze" where the drums in particular evoke the Motorik of krautrock legends Faust.

A real haven of peace, Maison Rose is enchanting with its aura of mystery and spirituality, with soft, gentle songs which seem both ancestral and futurist. Originally published by Ballon Noir in 1977, this album follows on from other folk marvels such as Le Galant Noyé from the pre-Mélusine period. On the subject of Maison Rose, if we had to risk a few comparisons we would mention Vashti Bunyan, Linda Perhacs, Joanna Newsom, Collie Ryan, Shirley Collins, Trees Community, Sourdeline and Véronique Chalot as those which spring spontaneously to mind. But this is too reductive for the timeless singularity of Emmanuelle Parrenin: because Maison Rose was recorded in 1977, in the midst of the punk revolution.'

Exclusive artwork by Charles Berberian. Additional 7’’ contains 2 unreleased tracks. Pressed on 180g ultra clear vinyl. Licensed from Emmanuelle Parrenin.

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Pauline Oliveros

11CD | 2022 | US | Original (Important)

79,99 €*

Love, Care, Kindness & Hope

Release: 2022 / US – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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This dense 11 disc retrospective of Pauline Oliveros’ early and unreleased electronic work includes her very first piece made for tape in 1959. Organized chronologically, this set not only documents Pauline's earliest electronic music but it also functions as an early history of electronic music itself. Follow as she participates in the establishment of the legendary San Francisco Tape Music Center and then moves to University Of Toronto Electronic Music Studio, Mills Tape Music Center and University of California San Diego Electronic Music Center.

This 10th anniversary edition is packaged in a clamshell-style box containing all the tracks from the 2012 edition spread out over 11 CDs each housed in single pocket sleeves. A 36 page booklet includes extensive liner notes and essays from Pauline Oliveros, Alex Chechile, Ramon Sender, David Bernstein, Corey Arcangel.

Pauline Oliveros was a composer, performer, humanitarian and an important pioneer in American Music. Acclaimed internationally, she forged new ground for herself and others. Through improvisation, electronic music, sonic philosophy, teaching and meditation she created a body of work with such breadth of vision that it profoundly affects those who experience it and eludes many who try to write about it.

"On some level, music, sound consciousness and religion are all one, and she would seem to be very close to that level." John Rockwell

Pauline Oliveros built a loyal following through her concerts, recordings, publications and musical compositions written for soloists and ensembles in music, dance, theater and inter-arts companies. She provided leadership within the music community from her early years as the first Director of the Center for Contemporary Music (formerly the Tape Music Center at Mills), director of the Center for Music Experiment during her 14 year tenure as professor of music at the University of California at San Diego to acting in an advisory capacity for organizations such as The National Endowment for the Arts, The New York State Council for the Arts, and many private foundations. She served as Distinguished Research Professor of Music at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Darius Milhaud Composer in Residence at Mills College. Oliveros was vocal about representing the needs of individual artists, about the need for diversity and experimentation in the arts, and promoting cooperation and good will among people.

She was honored with awards, grants and concerts internationally. Whether performing at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., in an underground cavern, or in the studios of West German Radio, Oliveros' commitment to interaction with the moment went unchanged.

Oliveros passed away peacefully on November 24, 2016 but her sonic legacy and philosophy continues to grow and inspire.

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Fred Everything

LP | 2024 | UK | Original (Lazy Days)

LP | 2024 | US | Original (Impatience)

Release: 2024 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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One day early in the global lockdown, Frédéric Blais scribbled four words on a Post-It note and pinned it up in his studio. When he headed to a studio in the mountains north of Montreal to start work on his fifth album as Fred Everything, those words went with him. They would not only provide inspiration during two weeks of isolated music-making, but ultimately provide the subsequent album with its title: Love, Care, Kindness and Hope.

Those sentiments – a positive mantra during a period of personal and collective vulnerability and isolation – resonate throughout the album, a gorgeously warm and beautiful affair that counts as Blais’s most personal, musically expansive, mature and sonically detailed set to date.

While each of the tracks began as a rough sketch laid down during Blais’ retreat, they evolved considerably over the months that followed. Blais reached out to a handful of carefully selected guest vocalists and collaborators, including Stereo MC’s, Robert Owens, Sapele, James Alexander Bright, Wayne Tennant, string arranger Pete Whitfield and multi-instrumentalist Finn Peters. He also lent his voice to several tracks, a first in a career that stretches back to the 1990s.

The results are magical, with Blais not only offering subtle variations on his own trademark deep house sound, but also nods to complimentary music styles and classic electronic albums from the late ‘90s and early 2000s.

Naturally, much focus will fall on the album’s high-profile guests, whose contributions work perfectly with Blais’ cultured dancefloor electronica and soul-soaked broken house grooves. Robert Owens – “the voice of house” himself – expertly delivers lyrics full of compassion and reassurance on recent single ‘Never’, Sapele infuses ‘A Long Time Coming’ with lashings of soulful spirituality, and UK hip-hop/soul legends Stereo MC’s make their presence felt on the subtly Latin-infused dub house excellence of ‘Soul Love’.

Then there’s ‘Breathe’, where UK singer-songwriter James Alexander Bright and backing vocalist Wayne Tennant rise above punchy broken house beats, Blais’ trademark square-wave bass and Pete Whitfield’s swelling strings on ‘Breathe’. By the time kaleidoscopic, sun-down breakbeat brilliance of ‘A Good Day’ arrives to draw proceedings to a close, you’ll be overflowing with Blais’ “love, care, kindness and hope” – just as he intended.

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Nuke Watch

Pepper's Ghost

29,99 €*

7" | 2022 | UK | Original (Polytechuc Youth)

Release: 2024 / US – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Don’t believe your ears - Pepper’s Ghost is the latest offering from NYC project Nuke Watch.

Whatever you think it is - it is not. By the same token it really can be whatever you want - electronica, jazz, improv, noise, new age, ambient - it’s none and all of these. Like the primitive visual illusion it’s named for - Pepper’s Ghost is a projection of a thing, it’s not the thing.

The Nuke Watch method - like that of Aaron Anderson and Chris Hontos’ other primary project Beat Detectives - leans almost entirely on live improvisation, with some advanced studio alchemy in post. Where the Beat Detectives palette draws from club music tropes, Nuke Watch blends recognizable tones (hand drums, woodwinds, keys, fretless bass) with sounds of providence unknown, the line between organic and synthesized instrumentation unintelligibly smudged. What is real and what is projection? It’s hard to say. What do our ears tell us? This is where we arrive at Pepper’s Ghost.

Warped as the sounds may be, the playing belies a crew of deeply expressive, learned improvisers who have their craft honed. Their friendship and psychic connection enhances the ritualistic rhythms, mutant modular synthesis, nimble keyboard runs, absurdist sampling and unidentified skronk. They’re wonderfully complemented across several tracks on this set by Cole Pulice’s levitational, sublime saxophone.

As unhinged as this might all appear, once the mind and music meet on the same wavelength this is profoundly moving, energizing and uplifting Alive Music that recalibrates the sense of what music can be.

Nuke Watch is Aaron Anderson and Chris Hontos, with an array of friendly guests. They’ve released records as Nuke Watch on The Trilogy Tapes, Commend and Moon Glyph. As Beat Detectives they’ve released records on Not Not Fun, 100% Silk and their own studio imprint Nypd Records.

Pepper's Ghost was written and produced by Aaron Anderson and Chris Hontos. Additional instrumentation on these recordings by Cole Police, Leonard King, Eric Timothy Carlson, Chris Farstad and William Statler. It was mixed by Chris Hontos and mastered by Jack Callahan. Painting on the cover is “The Unity Of Being” (2020), by Ry Fyan. Design and layout by Aaron Anderson.

Riyl - Musical illusions, puzzles and magic tricks, downtempo, music of the spheres, good journey, Eddie Harris, Ketron, "world building", orange sunshine, suspension of disbelief.

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PH (Pete Hamilton)

Slow Ballet

10,99 €*

Moon Shadow / Moon Light (10th Anniversary Mixes)

Release: 2022 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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The Second of these last PY 45s sees a lovely 5 track 7” EP from Irish minimal synth musician ph (Pete Hamilton), with 5 tracks from his (finally) acclaimed rich body of work in electronic music. From Dublin, Ireland, in 1982, ph emerged from the demise of the peridots (lower case p) that previously had arisen from the ashes of Modern Heirs, who first played live in 1978 with Pete Hamilton and ex-Radiators (from Space) Steve Rapid, sharing a bill with an early U2. The band line-ups in the small Dublin scene were fluid, as were the band names, becoming the peridots in 1981 with Steve Hamilton and Stan Erraught and during a brief period with drummer Pat Larkin (The Blades). In 1983 Steve would leave to form Stars of Heaven. Subsequently, ph was mostly Pete Hamilton with passing members Pat Larkin and Des O'Byrne. peridots released a single “Open Season”, on the Optional Good label in 1981. But it wasn’t until 2012 that peridots and ph appeared again on a vinyl release, on the compilation “Strange Passion: Explorations In Irish Post Punk DIY And Electronic Music 1980-1983”. In 2015, Manufactured Desire Records (Barcelona) began a series of limited releases on cassette, and very limited art editions on lathe cut vinyl, including ‘Slow Ballet’ (ph), ‘Precious Blood’ (peridots), ‘Chrome’ (ph), ‘Later that same day’ (peridots) and culminating in 2017 with a 5 cassette, 48 track, box set, “Pete Hamilton Anthology” described as a treasure-trove of classic minimal synth from early ‘80s Ireland, filled with growling analogue synths, hugely catchy melodies, striking punchlines and beautifully atmospheric minimal electronic music. Sadly, Hamilton gave it all up in 1984, overwhelmed by the underwhelming response from a public who would take many decades and a renewed interest in early 80’s minimal electronic music scene, before finally beginning to appreciate the beauty of his music. Polytechnic Youth hopes to do its bit in either furthering that rediscovery programme or perhaps act as a first time introduction to ph’s music. A pressing of 250 copies in PY’s BBC Library inspired tracing paper bags. Massively recommended to all minimal synth nuts, early mute, Transparent Illusion, Futurisk, Neural circus et al….

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Bassfort

12" | 2022 | EU | Original (Local Talk)

LP | 1982 | EU | Reissue (Bureau B)

Release: 2022 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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From the very beginning in 2011 the concept was simple and crystal clear. Mad Mats & Tooli's new label Local Talk had two main focus points. First, the actual music was to be inspired around those magical 4/4 house rhythms...and beyond. Second, the logo! The idea was that a simple and direct visual point together with a strong dance Music message would make the label stand out among other labels in their northern neck of the woods. In Scandinavia, the main theme is electronic 4/4 rhythms (techno, tech-house etc) and with Local Talk being more inspired by black dance music this has made them the black sheep in the hometown of Stockholm.

To set the musical direction straight from the very start they released Bassfort's 'Moon Shadow' which got instant attraction from both house heads and the more open-minded clubbing community. With its warm, melodic chords, infectious piano theme and big strings it's always been the label's fave jam from their now +150(ish) releases. When they decided to choose a track that would define the label for their 10-year anniversary, the choice was simple.

Mats & Tooli thought long and hard about who they wanted to interpret 'Moon Shadow' and after months of discussing options they decided that the only one they could trust to give the track a quality boost was NYC legend Joe Claussell. Back in the late 90's, Mats used to book Joe for his legendary Raw Fusion parties in Stockholm so the connection and mutual respect were already in place. The result is a +11 minute long musical house journey that builds and builds until those characteristic piano chords make an entrance and transform the dynamics into a rainbow of sounds. Epic is not a word big enough to explain this grand musical production !

But the goodness does not end there, we're only halfway in on this anniversary release. The blood brothers Javi & Luis aka Kyodai (and 2/3 of Bassfort) made their own mix on the B side track from the original release, Moonlight. As schooled jazz musicians they diverted from the electronic soundscape and went for a live jazz-funk production. The final product is a warm and musical version with live drums, bass, piano, strings and even vocals from the brothers themselves. The track almost comes across as something 4 Hero would put out back in the day.

All we can say, enjoy the dance!

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P!OFF?

25,19 €* 27,99 € -10%

Phenomenon Of Combination

Release: 1982 / EU – Reissue

Genre: Electronic & Dance, Pop

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1980, Friday evening in the Munich suburban pub »Panoptikum«. My girlfriend draws my attention to the fact that behind me two guys are talking about looking for a new guitarist for their band. I turn around, chat them up (Jochen and Thomas) and praise my skills to the skies. A few days later I’m standing in Thomas‘ perfectly equipped practice room with my Ibanez Les Paul copy. We jam a little while – jazz rock, to which I can contribute very little due to my lack of skills. We quickly agree on a new style: minimalist, no drums, just a drum machine, Moog and organ, less guitar, dry bass. And German lyrics! We don’t really know or want that this should be ”ndw”. But of course we listen to DAF, Ideal, FSK, Fehlfarben and – yes, Spliff too. These influences are undeniable. So we found the ”piss OFF Orkesstr”, which very quickly becomes ”p’off Orkesstr” and then finally ”P!OFF?”. Ambitious and inspired, we produce a demo cassette that already contains ”Das dicke Kind”, ”Großer Bruder”, ”Pass Auf!” and ”Walkman” and send it to various record companies – including Munich‘s ”Ariola”, which is desperately looking for NDW acts because the Ariola empire has missed this trend. Therefore, they ”buy” about 25 bands at the drop of a hat – and P!OFF? is supposed to be one of them, because they expect some good airplay mainly from ”Walkman”. Producer god Anthony Monn (Amanda Lear, Relax, Saragossa Band, Fancy et al.) takes us under his wing and manages to keep the original demo sound, but to improve it considerably. ”Mein Walkman ist kaputt” didn‘t make it into the charts, but it was played more often on the radio and the Album didn‘t sell badly. In 1982, however, NDW is now commercialised to death and that ship had sailed. But we stay together (under different band names) and over the decades become first New Romantics, then Indie Rockers, then Grunge Noise Makers and finally Electronic Freaks. In 2009, for my fiftieth birthday, we decide to play a few songs from the old 82 record live, which becomes a huge success. And so we are – again as P!OFF? – still on the road with our old songs. The ’82 Album has become a sought-after collector‘s item and cult object – so we are very happy that Bureau B is presenting a lovingly remastered reissue after almost 40 years.

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Ryuji Takeuchi

12" | 2019 | EU | Original (Depth Request)

8,39 €* 11,99 € -30%

2LP | 2016 | EU | Original (430 West)

Release: 2019 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Close to a year after its Blasted-fathered, inaugural first EP, Depth.Request operators reveal that the London-based imprint is far from being dead in a cradle and has a pair of legitimately attention-commanding names presented on the sleeve of its sophomore record as a matter of fact: with a career spanning well over a decade, Osaka’s reliable warehouse demolitioner Ryuji Takeuchi needs little in terms of introduction and really so does A1 remix-assigned Swarm Intelligence, whose designer creations are known to provoke thought and action at even degree. Phenomenon Of Combination starts off with Noctambulism, an anxious-to-get-to-it opener whose 6 kicks a tact work nicely to perceivably speed up its tempo of 132 and aren’t halting for bit as the distorted acidic sequence, spinning hats and tides of noise gradually show up to do what reaching crude oil connection would to a wildfire already raging. As percussion in a revised 136-BPM version is approached differently and with more emphasis applied, the signatures remain uneven—as is often the case with Swarm Intel’s offbeat and off-the-wall production; that aside, the roaring digital grinding and vertiginously panning mid-section drones add sinister colors to Takeuchi’s metaphorical picture which wasn’t exactly evoking green pastures and still waters to begin with. While brought down to 124 a minute, one probably wouldn’t want Somnambulism running much faster anyway with a somewhat convoluted drum programming that is involved; a steady rise of distortion and gain of its fluctuating acid bassline also proves to provide enough fortitude to make up for the mid-range tempo and slowly but surely fills up every patch of the spectrum with acute aural intensity. Definitively exhausting the synonyms for this titularly addressed brand of parasomnia, Sleepwalking brings the release to closure through diligently whanging 4x4s alongside a condensing arrangement of 16x16s, paced at 137 and supported in their plight by faintly striking claps with light hats peaking from behind the perpetuating pattern of a deranged acid wall that undoubtedly does to psyche something akin to subtly stirring the sanity meter towards E while drilling a hole in tank to eliminate the possibility of a refill. Maddening in all good senses, second adoptee of Depth.Request is a four-pack of tools forget to inflict hard damage, best recommended to those that regard their local factory-made-a-venue as weekend retreat. – rhetor

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Octave One

Love By Machine

12" | 2023 | EU | Original (Depth.Request)

Release: 2016 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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A year after their impressive last album Burn It Down, Detroit techno legends Octave One are back with a nine track double EP that again shows they are masters of big hypnotic grooves.
Entitled Love by Machine, the album's name is a nod to the fact that the Burden brothers are such revered masters of their hardware. Both in the studio, where they cook up atmospheric house and techno with soaring synths and vocals and also in the live arena, where they are celebrated as one of the most accomplished and forward thinking performers in the game today. That is all the more impressive when you bear in mind they have been active since the ‘80s, most often releasing on their own 430 West label, which is where they appear again here.

Say Lenny: "We've been exploring the theme of connection with this project. How technology gives us the illusion that we are closer to each other more than ever. At some point humanity crossed a line where the devices that we created to bring us together are the same devices that are blocking us from organic experiences.”

"Technology is only a tool, which we also had in mind during the recording process.” Adds Lawrence. "We decided to go back to how we used to make our records, when we didn't have so many ‘sophisticated' audio devices. Back to when we interacted in the studio together as musicians.”

Things open up with the loose metallic percussive line that is In Mono, which sets the machine made tone and is filled with promise. Locator then immediately gets to action with a gallivanting techno kick and various synth lines wrapping round each other as you get sucked into the groove. Just Don't Speak (Midnight Sun Redub) is a more deep and house leaning track with big feel good piano keys and slithering synths that will get hands in the air. Proving they have real range, 7 B4 Dawn is a moody and reserved cut with subtle acid pricks, hip swinging claps and a spaced out dead of night feel.

The second half of the album offers peak time business in the form of the spectacular Bad Love II, the whirring and cosmic Sounds of Jericho and the big loops and fluid grooves of [Where] Time Collides. Pain Pressure is a wonky number with big bassline and a focus on percussive patterns as well as some vocals with real attitude and last cut 8 B4 Dawn ends things in a downbeat and sombre way with sad chords and emotive strings. It is pure Detroit, much like the whole album, and rounds out another fine release from these most revered veterans.

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Lesser Of

Within My Fragility

3xLP | 2024 | EU | Original (Embrace The Real)

Release: 2023 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Having been deck slaying as near their London headquarters as Germany and as far as Canada, goth techno prodigy Lesser Of is steadily approaching double digit release count. With an established residence at queer x trans focused, revolutionary event series Subverted, their efforts have been welcomed to a formidable list of industrial electronic labels and remixed by a tidy sum of high profile scene icons.

Here at Depth.Request our sonars are attuned to emanant potential, and so we conscript Lesser Of to hammer out our fourth acetate offering to date. To this, harsh noise and drone music inspirations are declared, alongside an artistic secret of the trade: lights-off sessions in live room of a recording studio vibrating with the pulse of a bass guitar ran through a freeze pedal were what begot the tracks, and they are well intent on assaulting your headphones with noise. Reeko on the remix - yes, this record fucks.

Prolonged, ominous intro? Nah. Have a face full of Crude Manifestation Of Power instead, as an insatiable, 10-minute long opener braces your ears for a week of ringing with a sonic equivalent of metallic thrashing one could expect from being a sinful, rave-lusting scoundrel. On title-diverting continuation Within My Fragility the words "strength in fragility" are truly alliterated as the pace, abrasiveness and intensity of pummelling are all ramped up fiercely, with linear open hats thrown against them from time to time for good measure. Having reached 140 BPM and concrete mean, Masked proceeds in a well anticipated ra(n)ge: infernal atmosphere, sandy hats and layered tectonic tremors achieved with increasingly undefined low end consisting of a rumble line and rolling kick morphing into abrasive haze. Winding the tempo back a notch, a halftimearranged contemplation Our Descent grows in direct, hyperborean vector: glassy drones and sharp syncopulsation first - atonal reverberations, distorted arpeggios and punchy stabs endwise. Reeko's analog reinvention of Masked convolves the drum structure by borrowing from breakbeat narratives and authorizes the dystopian ambiance to rise and fall on more gradual, panning, confined terms; adding, however, more disorder to the mix with spectrum slicing, high-range chaos.

As you would have learned to expect from Depth.Request, Within My Fragility EP is not an easy listening five-tracker. If by the end of it you find yourself feeling as if you just stepped out of a pounding warehouse at 3AM and you don't know what day it is, you wouldn't have been experiencing this mindspace alone.

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4am Kru

Incognito Rhythm

40,99 €*

12" | 2024 | Original (Toy Tonics)

Release: 2024 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Preorder shipping from 2024-11-08

Fresh off a rework of Papa Levi with single Ribena, London’s jungle pioneers 4am Kru drop their highly anticipated debut album Incognito Rhythm featuring all the tracks that have cemented their reputation as the go-to act for raw, live jungle music.

Having already taken the 2024 festival circuit by storm with appearances at Outlook Origins, Boomtown, Boardmasters, Reading+ Leeds, The Blind Tiger, Parklife Waterworks, Boundary and a milestone Saturday night closing set at Glastonbury’s Temple Stage, 4am Kru continue to draw audiences into the madness of their raucous blend of 1993-1994 influenced jungle. First bursting onto the scene post-lockdown, the falling monitors and flying bodies of their shows were particularly thrilling for ravers who had turned 18 in isolation.

Originally developing their live sound in indie bands while sharing a studio in Tottenham, the duo quickly realized that the traditional DJ set couldn’t contain the energy of their act. They have since surrendered to the chaos of their incredibly physical performances, nursing chipped bones and back injuries, deep finger taping, chalking up and wearing shoes designed for skipping rope whilst rewiring what it meant to move their bodies. Their innovation extends to the equipment, with the duo reinventing a way to deliver their signature throbbing basslines with a Roland SPD SX drum pad as thick as a car tire. Their upcoming UK tour this October promises to further showcase their immersive, disruptive sound.

4am Kru’s latest single Ribena breathed new life into Papa Levi’s iconic British reggae classic Militancy following the release of hard-hitting Wutt this past July, setting the stage for their most ambitious project yet. Their debut album draws from a wide range of influences in addition to 4am Kru’s signature blend of 90s jungle flavours, from obscure slow jam R&B like Angela Bofill, Janet Jackson and Prince, early hardcore bands like Hüsker Dü, off kilter Scottish folk, and even classical music. The project is a snapshot of the incognito, nocturnal world that the duo have dwelled in for the past two years, a time capsule of well-worn songs played between midnight and 4am. An extraordinary debut, 4am Kru’s Incognito Rhythm is an immersive, razor sharp, face melting journey through their show-stopping live sound.

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Coeo

Eternal Waves

Release: 2024 / Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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COEO back on Toy Tonics! The German duo has been part of Toy Tonics since day one. Now they celebrate their return to Toy Tonics with an outstanding EP full of timeless, contemporary house music that also marks their 10th contribution to the label after their first release on the imprint 10 years ago. Their house vibes have been defining the sound of the Toy Tonics label for many years and still now they regularly play the Toy Tonics events around the world. (The Toy Tonics Jams).

On this new EP one more time the boys dive deep into the Italo & Piano House world- getting more electronic than ever. This EP is 100% in the vibe of now. With great piano chord drops that make everybody scream on the dance floor, with horn and synth melodies that you can sing along after you heard them one time only and with classic house beats that are THE sound of today.

The main title “Nostalgia” is inspired by and a tribute to all the intimate and ecstatic moments they were able to share over the years with music lovers on festivals and in clubs around the world. While the piano house theme on the A1 brings you in that festive mood of your last summer festival you have been to with your closest friends, the second track of the EP „Breeze“ takes it on a higher energetic level and combines a funky bass guitar with progressive house elements. Remember that special moment when you were attending your first full moon party in that far away country after you have finished school? That gentle wind blowing through the trees? „Breeze“ could be the soundtrack of that adventure.

On the B side Italo house influenced „Meet me at the cascades“ captivates through an hypnotic approach and unfolds dreamy synth pads and arpeggios to take you on a imaginary journey to your favourite retreat, a place you feel safe.

The EP features 3 original tracks and also a remix by COEO friends Stump Valley. The former Dekmantel artists who now joined Toy Tonics. Stump Valley btw are Francesco and Aleksei. Aleksei also works under the name of Brian de Palma and will release a solo album soon on Peggy Gou’s label Gudu. Stump Valley‘s remix of „Nostalgia“ rounds up the EP with its stand out piano solo and marks the perfect end to an EP that is meant to stay in your head just like all those intense memories which life in general evokes.

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Kicking Dust: The Goa Way, A Full Circle Compilation

2LP | 2024 | EU | Original (Full Circle)

45,99 €*

Now Is Black Vinyl Edition

Release: 2024 / EU – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves, Electronic & Dance

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This one has been in the works for quite some time. A statement compilation showing what Full Circle is about, paying homage to the very roots of psychedelic dance music. A little town in India, which was a haven to a bunch of hippie outcasts, was throwing freeform outdoor parties since the day those freaks put their flag down. What was once a gathering around live music blew up into a rave as electronic music started to appear, paving the way to what would eventually become Goa Trance.

Full Circle, the duo project of Alexis Le-Tan and Joakim, started 10 years ago when Alexis accidentally discovered that some of his old Goa Trance records he was about to sell sounded great when played at the wrong speed : 33rpm instead of 45rpm. He called his long-time friend and collaborator Joakim to work on edits of those tracks that became the sound signature of this DJ duo : a slow, heavy and trippy sound that would eventually infiltrate the fringes of the underground club scene via like-minded DJs such as Vladimir Ivkovic, Jane Fitz, Ivan Smagghe and many more.

10 years later and a bunch of releases and remixes behind them, Full Circle decided to tell the story of how this Goa sound came to life. At a time when Trance has made a major

comeback and infiltrated pretty much all the sub-genres of club music, it felt right to look back at where it all started - going full circle, when Trance was not Trance, Goa was not Goa but the seeds of tripped out dance music were being sown.

After all, there are countless compilations about Balearism, the Italian Cosmic scene,The Loft, The Paradise Garage etc but none about the roots of this Goa sound.

This is a compilation of the best tunes played by the pioneer Goa DJs like Laurent, Goa Gil, Mike Maguire amongst others, between the late 80s and early 90s. Proto House, New Beat, early Techno, Industrial, with a distinct psychedelic tone, a few arpeggios here and there, acid lines, chopped up vocals, all elements of what would later constitute a genre of its own.

This beautifully packaged compilation includes liner notes by Tom Colebrooke and excerpts from Tom and Alexis’ interview of Mike Maguire of Juno Reactor fame, one of the pioneers of Goa Trance.

Check the liner notes for more info about the early Goa history !

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Rival Consoles

LP | 2022 | EU | Original (Erased Tapes)

Release: 2022 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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London-based musician and producer Ryan Lee West, aka Rival Consoles, creates driving, experimental electronic music that makes synthesisers sound human. His consistent desire to create a more organic, living sound, sees him forming pieces that capture a sense of songwriting behind the machines. ‘Now Is’ marks a new chapter in an ongoing quest for refinement and evolution. More playful and melodic, the album draws from much experimentation in minimalist songwriting and seamlessly blends synthesisers and acoustic instruments. “There are some pieces that are influenced quite strongly by the isolation and anxiety of these times. There are also pieces which are more optimistic and vibrant, which I think is a consistent attitude of my records, as I want art to express many aspects of life.” From the elevating arrangements of ‘Beginnings’ and motorik beats of ‘World Turns’, to the isolation of ‘Frontiers’, influenced by the barren landscapes of Iceland, Rival Consoles’ eighth studio album subtly morphs and evolves. “The title of the record ‘Now Is’ interests me because it is the beginning of a statement, but it is incomplete. I like art that is open and suggestive of ideas even if they are inspired by very specific things. With my previous record ‘Overflow’ being very dark, heavy and almost dystopian, I wanted to escape into a different world with this music and ended up creating a record which is a lot more colourful and euphoric.” For the sonic ‘Vision of Self’, West looked to create the kind of movement and colour a string section in an orchestra would construct, but with synthesisers. “I think there’s a lot of synergy between the two worlds. I wanted to create a hypnotic journey, where the synths and sounds weave in and out of each other, so you get lost in the music and don’t know where one sound starts or another ends.” This “journey” West refers to is symbiotic of the way he has approached music throughout a progressive career – an ongoing project that is never static and always moving forward. A sense of euphoria is reached with the pulsating title track which bursts into colour like the appearance of the summer sun, while ‘Echoes’ is a vivid exploration of rhythm and sound for summer nights. The track starts with a dense collage of modular synths, fragmented metallic tones, broken sounding drums and a downcast melodic synth line. “This is a piece where the main melody has been in my head for a long time and was just waiting to come out. I kind of think of it as the sonic equivalent to an impressionist painting in that I wanted to explore the sensation of lots of small layers of different colours and textures that are constantly moving around each other.”

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Virtual Dreams: Ambient Explorations In The House & Techno Age 1993-1997

2CD | 2020 | EU | Original (Music From Memory)

19,99 €*

Don't Let Go / Don't Let Go Record Store Day 2021 Edition

Release: 2020 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Music From Memory is delighted to be turning 50 with a special release: Mfm050 - V/A - Virtual Dreams: Ambient Explorations In The House & Techno Age, 1993-1997 (3xLP/2xCD). The first in a series of compilations, alongside more in depth artist-focused releases, Virtual Dreams will delve into music produced during the 1990’s that redefined the boundaries of ‘Ambient’. This was music that explored the possibilities of Ambient music within a new setting, created often by House & Techno music producers for a world beyond dance floors but made very much with the pre and post-clubbing listener in mind. When House and Techno exploded out of America in the mid 1980s a whole generation was redefined not only musically but also culturally and chemically speaking. Peaking, quite literally, with a second ‘Summer of Love’ in 1988, millions of young people across the world would experience the life-changing ups of a brave new world but with it of course came the downs; enter the concept of a ‘Chill-out’ room. Whilst early Chill-out rooms lacked a specific sound and were often soundtracked by music such as reggae and soul, slowly young Techno and House producers themselves would become increasingly interested in developing a futuristic ‘Ambient’ soundtrack to a world beyond the thud of the main room. ‘Ambient’ in this new age now though had sharper teeth than in Brian Eno's key text for ‘Music for Airports’, instead here the sounds were the mode of transport rather than the backdrop. While the melodies were pretty, the soundscape steered away from the pastoral, dreaming of outer-space and technology as opening up exciting new dimensions. Much like in the first Summer Of Love; the musicians were again exploring psychedelic, mind-altering and transcendental possibilities of music. And also much as in the first Summer Of Love, a psychedelic visual language would accompany the music. Though now the tracks could be accompanied by music videos, utilising early CGI techniques, they would look almost entirely to the future: envisioning technology, nature and humanity intertwined in a new Utopian future. Virtual Dreams of a better world. From Ambient and early Chill-out classics, to lesser known one-off projects, as well as Ambient deviations by some of House and Techno’s leading producers, Volume One of Virtual Dreams features tracks by Bedouin Ascent, LA Synthesis, LFO, Marc Hollander, Mark Pritchard & Kirsty Hawkshaw, Richard H. Kirk and more. To celebrate our 50th release the first 1000 copies include a holographic 'Virtual Dreams' sticker plus a special insert poster with artwork by Victoria Pacheco and design by Steele Bonus.

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Mr. K

7" | 2021 | US | Original (Most Excellent Limited)

LP | 2024 | EU | Original (Umor-Rex)

Release: 2021 / US – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Record Store Day 2021 Release. Mr. K takes on two different disco moods in the latest in his long-running series of edits on 45. Danny Krivit’s edit of Tony Orlando’s “Don’t Let Go” was released in Japan in 2012 and immediately became a sought-after, impossible to find rarity. Orlando’s version of “Don’t Let Go” was released at the height of the disco era, but the song itself was already a well-worn pop standard, having been covered by numerous artists before the pop singer tried his hand at it, switching things up with a percolating disco groove. “I never expected to rave about a Tony Orlando record,” wrote Vince Aletti in his Record World column in June of 1978, “but this one’s really terrific… My pick for a summer refresher.” The Jimmy Simpson mix on the original 12-inch follows the vocals with a long instrumental section that teases the various elements provided by the Muscle Shoals band (guitar, vibes, strings, and above all a sinuous synth) back in over the relentless bass and drums. Danny’s edit, which he’s trimmed down for its debut on 7-inch, works with this instrumental break and more than lives up to Aletti’s description as an addictive warm weather jam. From the moody instrumental sound of “Don’t Let Go” we move to the bright uptempo vocal track "I Fall In Love Everyday." In spite of the relative obscurity of this fabulous but lesser-known cut, it comes with a sparkling pedigree. “I Fall In Love Everyday” was written by Jay Graydon (whose credits also include “Turn Your Love Around” for George Benson and “Breakin’ Away” for Al Jarreau), produced by Motown ace Mickey Stevenson (who wrote “Dancing In the Street”) and arranged by David Foster, who was just making the transition from session keyboardist to the superstar songwriter/arranger he’d become. The backing track was first used for singer/TV personality Jaye P. Morgan’s version of the song a year earlier, but you certainly can’t blame the team for reusing the music when the band included studio heavyweights like Harvey Mason, Lee Ritenour, Ray Parker Jr., and Kenny Loggins. Danny’s creative edit fashions a clean, DJ-friendly instrumental intro where none existed on the original, and gives new life to a track that’s sure to bring some sunshine to dancefloors. As always, these unique selections from Mr. K’s personal stash are cut on a loud, club-ready 7-inch pressing.

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Driftmachine & Ammer

Sonic Behaviour

2x12" | 2024 | UK | Original (Wtr)

Release: 2024 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Sonic Behavior by Driftmachine & Ammer is an album exploring the origins of sound, noise, and various music genres. Alongside lyrical declarations of love for noise ("Song To Noise"), the album delves into sonic reflections on how beauty and emotion emerge from mundane vibrations in the air ("The Siren Is A Simple Device"). For the first time, the analog sound researchers of Driftmachine (Andreas Gerth, Florian Zimmer) incorporate spoken language and noise into their sound research. They have collaborated with word and sound artist Andreas Ammer, renowned for his radio plays with Acid Pauli, aka Console ("Spaceman 85"), or FM Einheit ("Radio Inferno," "Symphony of Sirens").

In "The Siren Is A Simple Device," the words are spoken by 81-year-old musician and poet legend Ted Milton (Blurt, Loopspool). Despite its simplicity and obvious ability to produce high volumes, the siren has led a marginal existence as a musical instrument. Yet, it is capable of evoking the most intense emotional states in the listener in the shortest possible time, like almost no other sound-producing mechanism. "Sonic Behavior" capitalizes on this fact. The familiar hypnotic sounds of Driftmachine are accompanied by a siren organ inspired by the revolutionary Russian futurist Arsenij Avranov and built by Andreas Ammer, while the lyrics talk about the simple physical reasons behind the sound chaos that has just been unleashed: A siren ... chops the air into sound.

The core of the album is "Song To Noise," an electro-acoustic mini-symphony about the beauties of noise and all its producers, which is based on a poem by the British poet Deryn Rees-Jones and spoken by the poet herself and Alexander Hacke (Einstürzende Neubauten, Hackedepicciotto). Driftmachine & Ammer develop a soundtrack that is as powerful as it is loud and danceable (which is why the LP also includes a textless version of the composition).

"Sonic Sculpture" is the zenith of the work: a text/music track spoken by Ted Milton, which creates the possibility of a sound sculpture that encompasses the universe: What if one could imagine the infernal sound that encompasses all conceivable harmonies at the same time? A piano does when you throw it down an earthly staircase (the epitome of music is a piano falling down the stairs) through silent space to the next theoretically life-filled, Earth-like planet, Proxima Centauri B. The radio makes it possible. Driftmachine & Ammer tried it. The result will be heard there in 4.24 light-years. On planet Earth, the time has come on May 2, 2024. On this day, Sonic Behavior will be released, a conceptual album by Driftmachine & Ammer exploring sound, its creation, and its power.

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Masrahiya

Shkoon

38,99 €*

Tape | 2024 | EU | Original (Osàre! Editions)

Release: 2024 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Berlin, 20 August 2023 – In a world where music serves as a gateway to explore the intricate dance between reality and imagination, Shkoon, the innovative germany-syrian musical group, presents their newest single, "Al-Furat." This release is a captivating addition to their upcoming album, a collection that masterfully blurs the lines between the tangible and the ethereal. Its the first single of their 10 Track Album being released on 16st of November followed by a big concert tour. "Al-Furat" is not merely a song; it's a satirical exploration of life's complex game. With a wink to the audience, the song invites listeners to look beyond its surface and decipher the layers of meaning hidden within. At the heart of it, "Al-Furat" beckons the audience to find what resonates with them, to uncover the deeper messages that lie beneath the harmonies and rhythms. A Harmonious Blend of Emotions Crafted with a touch of irony, "Al-Furat" humorously contrasts the declarations of love for one's homeland with the journey of Ameen, the protagonist, as he navigates the game-like challenges to reach France. It's a juxtaposition of joy and sorrow, presented through cheerful melodies and thought-provoking lyrics. This blend of emotions adds depth to the song, making it not just a musical piece but a thought-provoking experience.

Blurring the Boundaries Shkoon doesn't stop at melodies and lyrics; they expertly play with boundaries. The video showcases Thorben crossing borders with a French baguette, a clever visual metaphor that challenges stereotypes. The inclusion of French demonstrations further blurs the lines between art and reality. It's a deliberate move that asks the audience to question their perceptions and assumptions.

Art with a Message As with their previous works, Shkoon's "Al-Furat" carries a hidden message—a critique and commentary on societal norms and expectations. It's a call to look beyond the surface, to recognize the dual nature of art as both entertainment and a mirror to society. Shkoon's ability to weave such messages into their work is a testament to their artistry and depth.

The Album After Rima (2019) some singles, EP’s and their touching live album “firaq” (2022) Shkoon is coming up with another concept album “Masrahiya” which is arabic and stands for theater play. Shkoon created a strong message again, with a diverse piece of art combined with an album concert tour.

This play 'Masrahiya' delves deep into the blurred boundaries between reality and fiction, where the lines of truth and imagination intertwine like a mesmerizing dance. As the three captivating chapters unfold, tragedy, politics, and irony are seamlessly woven together, creating a tapestry of emotions that leaves the audience spellbound.

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Hasan Poppu

12" | 2023 | US | Original (Fresh Meat)

Release: 2024 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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The project by Jens-Uwe Beyer and Thomas Venker boasts a remarkable origin story. In 2017, Venker, co-founder and co-editor-in-chief of Cologne’s Kaput magazine, hosted a gathering at Beyer's house, bringing together journalists, creatives, and musicians. To mark the occasion, the pair decided to join forces for an impromptu ambient-electronic performance, presenting themselves as a two-man band. That evening, donned in special costumes designed by artist Sarah Szczesny and fuelled by a generous amount of Japanese whisky, Hasan Poppu was born. Over the course of the pandemic, the duo thought about creating a record based on the live recording of their premiere show. However, the synergy of their collaborative creative energies led them in entirely novel directions. Their self-titled, double-sided album traverses a wild and raucous terrain, moving swiftly from hybrid noise-techno to giddy party ecstasy, to strange and shadowy atmospheres.

Including remixes by YPY, Hibotep, Lena Willikens, Efdemin and Barnt, the 11 tracks span a dizzying array of experimental dance-facing styles. 'Die-Biden' kicks off as a high-vibrational vocal experiment seemingly voiced by a sentient German vocoder. 'Kodō' follows, featuring Venker's playful mantra set against a stomping beat. Willikens' reimagining of 'Teiko' transports the track to obscure realms inhabited by strange creatures emitting ungodly sounds. Meanwhile, Efdemin's take on 'Ekusutashī' pulsates with a kinetic buzz. Flipping over to the B-side, 'Sakura' is a euphoric wall of drone punctuated by eerie whispers and mystical singing. Then, the second installment of 'Kodō' takes a fresh trajectory with a touch of Barnt’s electronic groove stylings. Finally, Hibotep's 'Shojo no yo ni flp' serves as the finsher – an unrepentant trance belter that disintegrates into sampled fragments. Loosely translating to "broken pop music," Hasan Poppu is informed by Beyer and Venker's shared love for Japan. The band takes their cues from the country’s rich sonic cultures while also drawing on Venker's wordsmith background and Beyer's flair for melding melodic tech-house with song-based synth-pop. Originally out on Beachcoma Recordings, Hasan Poppu’s debut album gets a new lease of life on Osàre! Editions with a digital and limited edition cassette tape release. Sarah Szczesny reprises her role in shaping the visual identity of Hasan Poppu by creating beautiful, painterly artwork for the record. words by Hannah Pezzack

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Audio Soul Project

Simurgh

14,99 €*

In My Dreams (I’m A Bird And I’m Free)

Release: 2023 / US – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Audio Soul Project is back with their latest vinyl-only EP, Simurgh. With a title inspired by the mythical Persian bird, these four tracks fuse elements of house, R&B, dub, and drum & bass to create an ecstatic and hypnotic experience. The EP kicks off with "Deliver Me," a dreamy house track with warm filtered chords and bouncing synth bass. R&B female vocal ad libs pepper the groove and the refrain "Deliver Me" adds a sense of yearning. The percussion, including morphing 4x4 and breakbeat drums, piano and synth stabs, nod to the cerebral Detroit and Chicago house compositions of the mid 90s. "Azizam Dub" takes a more stripped-down approach with a subsonic bass line bump and Juno 106 stabs. Frantic percussion and deftly cut vocal samples accent the ebbs and flows of the arrangement, making for a dynamic and engaging dance. The B-side of the record starts with "Internal Vybrations," a bass-heavy drum & bass track that winds and jumps with multiple layers of deep, fluttering bass and ambient pads and strings. Percussion layers like hi-hats, shakers, and maracas lift and relax the rhythm in parallel to the rest of the composition, making for a hypnotic and trance-inducing vibe. The B2 track on the EP, "Celebration Dub," is a bass-heavy swinging house track with ecstatic diva "Whooo" samples that punctuate the ups and downs of the groove's energy. Classic reggae and dub-influenced vocal samples and heavy tape delay on certain key instruments add to the joyful and uplifting vibe of the track. The keyboard and string section can transport a dancer to other realms of consciousness if they let themselves go to the groove. Simurgh is a masterful fusion of various genres that showcases Audio Soul Project's production prowess and ability to create an entrancing sonic journey. TL;DR: Audio Soul Project's Simurgh EP features 4 tracks of dub-infused house music. Deliver Me has dreamy chords and female R&B adlibs, Azizam Dub is stripped down with subsonic bass and vocal samples, Internal Vybrations is a bass-heavy drum & bass track, and Celebration Dub is a swinging house track with reggae and dub vocal samples. Everything by Maziar Namvar except where indicated below Mix on Deliver Me and Celebration Dub by Brian Boncher Mix on Azizam Dub and Internal Vybrations by Tim Vitek Mastering by Dietrich Schoenemann

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Auntie Flo

LP | 2024 | UK | Original (A State Of Flo)

LP | 2023 | UK | Original (Alter)

Release: 2024 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Preorder shipping from 2024-11-18

Brian d’Souza, better known as Auntie Flo, delivers his brand-new fourth studio album, ‘In My Dreams (I’m A Bird and I’m Free)’, set for release on 21st November. The album, a rich blend of electronic music, live instrumentation, and global influences features collaborations with the likes of Nicola Cruz, Joshua Idehen, Shingai Shoniwa, Yohan Kebede (Kokoroko) and even his Goan Auntie Florie, where the Auntie Flo moniker is derived from. Each track on the album transports you to a different location: Goa, Istanbul, Nairobi, Mexico City, Waiheke Island, Rio De Janeiro, Havana, Seoul are all destinations to nest in across its ten tracks. It will be available in both digital and vinyl formats on his own label, A State of Flo Records.

Auntie Flo’s latest body of work is the culmination of a five-year journey that has seen d’Souza expand both personally and musically. Known for his unique ability to fuse electronic sounds with rhythms and influences from across the globe, d’Souza takes his craft to new heights in this album, offering listeners an intimate look into the experiences, places, and stories that have shaped his artistic evolution. The groundbreaking DJ and producer presents an expansive, deeply personal exploration of global sounds, collaboration, and migration.

Following the success of the Afro-disco single Green City—a dynamic tribute to the legendary Fela Kuti and Luke Una’s ‘track of the year’—In My Dreams (I’m A Bird and I’m Free) ventures further into uncharted musical territory. The album, however, is more than just a continuation of Auntie Flo’s signature sound. It is a reflection of d’Souza’s life and career, capturing his exploration of identity, migration, and cultural fusion. With tracks that draw inspiration from field recordings collected around the world, the album resonates with a profound sense of place and memory.

In My Dreams (I’m A Bird and I’m Free) is not only a reflection of d’Souza’s creative journey but also a commentary on migration—both human and musical. The album draws on the freedom of birds to migrate across borders as a metaphor for artistic and personal freedom, juxtaposed with the challenges that political barriers impose on human migration. As d’Souza explains, “Birds have the freedom to migrate wherever they choose, while humans face constant barriers”.

A State of Flo supports Earth Percent. 10% of the revenue generated from this release will be paid to environmental charities.

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Finlay Shakespeare

Illusion + Memory

21,99 €*

Drifted Entities Voluem 2

Release: 2023 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Finlay Shakespeare is an electronic musician working from the UK and across Europe. A childhood obsession with his parents’ record collection led him to both create his own music and build his own synthesizer equipment throughout his teenage years. After studying audio engineering, he was invited to become in-house engineer for the Moog Sound Lab UK, leading to collaborations with acts as diverse as Suicide, Charlemagne Palestine, The Grid and Mica Levi & Eliza McCarthy, both in live and studio environments.

In 2017, Finlay began recording a series of monthly “Housediet'' releases - all improvised and captured at home utilising drum machines, modular synthesis and processed vocals. After several encounters with Peter Rehberg of Editions Mego, a compilation of the Housediet tracks was drawn up by Rehberg and Shakespeare, culminating in the release of “Domestic Economy” in early 2019. “Solemnities' ', a second album for Editions Mego appeared the following year. In the period since Rehberg’s untimely passing, Finlay has recorded for Superpang, Modulisme and his own Goto Records imprint. “Illusion + Memory”, meanwhile, continues on from where “Solemnities” left off, with Finlay once again aiming to work at the fringes of electronic pop.

Alter is proud to present “Illusion + Memory”, the third full length physical LP of Shakespeare’s utterly unique and sophisticated output.

Shakespeare’s obsession and knowledge of late 70’s and early 80’s electronic pop music is once again at the forefront of this intense and dynamic release. Alas, this is not some retro throwback. Shakespeare’s deep understanding of his machines breathes new life into a genre of music once defunct. Supporting the likes of Blancmange bolstered his reputation for sublime synth hooks and dark lyrical content.

Building on his previous work in the field “Illusion + Memory” is an unabashed pop record, as joyous as it is intense, moving from the brooding opening ballad “Your Side of the River” through the punchy “Theresa” which could be read as a love song to Throbbing Gristle’s United. Elsewhere “Climb” unleashes the opportunity to the dancefloor as wild electronics snake into all manner of schizophrenic shapes.

There is a romantic side to this music. In its homage to electronic pop of the late 70’s and early 80’s but also in the emotional punch Shakespeare injects into every second of every track. Shakespeare’s reboot of these musical forms is technically impressive, one rich in feeling and deep in emotion, atmospherically and vocally. The two come together to create a unique visceral sonic experience… today!

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Healing Force Project

LP | 2023 | EU | Original (Beat Machine)

29,99 €*

Release: 2023 / EU – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves, Electronic & Dance

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On 17th March Beat Machine Records present ‘Drifted Entities (Vol. 2)’ – the second instalment in a pair from the mind of genius abstract sound painter Antonio Marini, AKA Healing Force Project. Whereas ‘Vol. 1’ had a dubwise expanse between the primordial space-grooves, here Marini jettisons the former’s amorphous flow, upping the tempo and intensity in an abstract yet funky style. Bearing the hallmarks of a true musician and a scientist, here he splices and assembles myriad sources, effortlessly blurring the lines between jazz funk, jungle and broken beat, making complex ideas work with formidable fluidity. Spring-heeled basslines meet brass, piano, rhodes, and FX, which bob and weave around the detailed framework of beats; the elements dancing freely and independently, but also interlocking and rotating like cogs. At points the album brings to mind Chris Cunningham and Aphex Twin’s strange automaton ‘Monkey Drummer’ video, and at others it recalls the latter’s ‘Drukqs’, only more 70s and wigged out. This is not so much ‘Bug In A Bass Bin’, more a hundred alien critters jumping all over Billy Cobham’s kit. Using ‘Music Is The Healing Force Of The Universe’ by Albert Ayler as an inspirational foundation, Marini believes that via study, experimentation, and the breaking down of traditional patterns, a remedy begins to radiate through sound. Delving into his world is to embark on his spiritual and musical mission, opening a door to the cosmos, encountering a fathomless presence that simply exists, continuously, whether anyone is listening or not, like a sonic Schrödinger's cat.

For nearly a decade now, Italian born artist Antonio Marini has been going through a sonic adventure known as Healing Force Project. Drawing inspiration from “Music Is The Healing Force of the Universe” by the sax player Albert Ayler, Antonio uses musical experimentation to break down traditional patterns. The creative process becomes a tool to “dismantle modern life boundaries and find a spiritual remedy in the music itself “. His work is extremely hard to pin down as it embraces a diverse spectrum of genres: dabbling into the electric period of Miles Davis and the avant-garde jazz of Anthony Braxton, adding a dash of groovy 70’s funk and slowed down echoes in the style of Lee Scratch Perry. Most important is also Antonio’s passion for electronics, traceable in the distorted sounds and hypnotic rhythms that reference to artists such as The Black Dog and Autechre

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2x12" | 2023 | UK | Original (Above Board Projects)

Space Part 2

34,99 €*

LP | 2023 | EU | Original (Black Truffle)

Release: 2023 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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A tribute to the late Kenny Hawkes, London's dark lord of house music. Lovingly selected and curated by Luke Solomon, Jonny Rock and Leon Oakey.

Running from 1995 to 2002, 'Space' was a Wednesday night founded by Kenny Hawkes and Luke Solomon. It inhabited the underground world of Bar Rumba right in the heart of London's West End and took place each and every week. Kenny and Luke had both been regular fixtures on infamous London Pirate Radio station 'Girls FM', and were seeking a suitable place to play the kind of music they supported on their respective radio shows. They were presented with a weekly opportunity at Bar Rumba and snapped it up.

'Space' was THE place for 7 solid years, hosting local and international guests from the house music community week in week out, to 200+ hardcore and dedicated followers. Regular guest bookings read like a 'who's who' of the music scene with sets from Derrick Carter, Andrew Weatherall, DJ Harvey, Tom Middleton, A Man Called Adam, Ralph Lawson and Huggy, Harri and Domenic, Francois Kevorkian, Salt City Orchestra, Carl Cox, Chez Damier and Ron Trent.... the list goes on and on and on! Music from seminal record labels such as Classic, Prescription, Cajual, Paper, Relief was played on rotation amongst a killer mix of Disco classics, alternative 80s music, left-field B-sides and techno. The night undeniably became a cauldron of amazing music and midweek hedonistic chaos.

As Soho changed beyond recognition and clubbing moved Eastwards, Kenny and Luke decided to call it a day. Sadly, Kenny Hawkes died in 2011, leaving a huge hole in the dance music community. Kenny was a legendary figure with an unmistakable sound and DJ style, he had a warped sense of humour and a huge personality and he continues to be dearly missed by all to this day.

As a tribute to Kenny, his musical partner in crime Luke Solomon alongside 'Space' regular and DJ / Editor supreme Jonny Rock, and former Classic Records label boss Leon Oakey have joined forces to celebrate his life through music. 3 years of tweaking, pooling music and clearing tracks have culminated in 2 very special double albums and a digital compilation. A collection of 'Space' classics, underground jams and the tracks that shook the Shaftesbury Avenue dance floor, shaping one of London's most revered midweek sessions.

All profits from the compilation will be donated to the British Liver Trust.

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Tony Conrad

Tonic 19 01 2001

12" | 2023 (Fixed Rhythms)

Release: 2023 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Celebrating its one hundredth release, Black Truffle is honoured to present a major archival discovery: a stunning document of the only performance by the trio of Tony Conrad, Arnold Dreyblatt and Jim O’Rourke. Across a two-night programme organised by David Weinstein at legendary New York experimental venue Tonic in January 2001, Conrad, Dreyblatt and O’Rourke presented individual projects before performing a collaborative set each night, the first with members of Dreyblatt’s ensemble and the second the trio heard here. As Dreyblatt points out in the wonderfully informative and reflective liner notes written for this release, this was a collaboration across generations, reflecting the profound impact of Conrad’s pioneering minimalism on Dreyblatt and O’Rourke. Both Dreyblatt and O’Rourke came to this collaboration armed with a deep appreciation of Conrad’s music and the just intonation principles at its core, Dreyblatt having first encountered the incredible power of Conrad’s precisely tuned violin chords during his tenure as an archivist for La Monte Young in 1975, while O’Rourke had performed with Conrad in various settings since the mid-1990s (as well as admiring, reissuing, and performing Dreyblatt's music). The flyer for the concert promised ‘massive, ecstatic, pulsating overtones’, and the trio certainly delivered. From the moment this keening stream of bowed strings begins, it is clear, as Dreyblatt writes, that we are in ‘Tony’s sonic universe’, as massively amplified, slowly shifting combinations of precisely chosen pitches fill the room with complex beating patterns and ghostly difference tones. For more than twenty-five minutes, the music operates at a level of intensity comparable to classic recordings such as Conrad’s Four Violins, until the texture thins out slightly in the performance’s final quarter, allowing for the listener’s first recognition of the individual voices that make up this enormous, overwhelming harmonic edifice. The constant stream of bowed tones is broken by a beautifully rich pizzicato from Conrad on monochord, the sliding low tones and metallic shimmer of the other strings taking the set's final moments on an unexpected detour into spacious pastoral psychedelia.

Though produced by three individuals known for their own distinctive bodies of the work, this is egoless music, the perfect expression of Conrad's desire 'to move away from composing to listening', to 'working "on" the sound from "inside" the sound'. Historically important and overwhelming in sonic impact, this release also serves as a moving tribute to Tony Conrad from two musicians profoundly marked by the example set by his art and life.

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Jr2k

Walking Backward

14,99 €*

12" | 2022 | EU | Original (Avian)

Release: 2023

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Jackson Ryland comes in focused and ecstatic with his first vinyl release under his technoid alias JR2K. Jackson is based in Washington DC as one-half of both Superabundance and Rush Plus. He’s recently released on Peach Discs and Pleasant Life, showcasing his knack for presenting energy as a delicacy. JR2K “Walking Backward” is another illustrious highlight in the savvy DC producer’s already-accomplished underground career. Played on Hör Radio by Kush Jones and supported by Peach, Ciel, Clarisa Kimskii, Ryan Elliott, CMD, Davis Galvin, livwutang, Furtive, Golden Medusa, Lychee, Miley Serious, and Jialing!

The A side opens up whooshy and hard with “ExoGeni Approach”. This illustrates perfectly what I love about Jackson’s style(s)...it sounds like the sickest mid-90s techno track, full of energy and movement while taking in the atmosphere with repose. After the rollercoaster intro, the acidic up-ticks, lush synth layering, and perfectly crunchy closed-hats sink your ass straight through the dance-floor to tumbling free-for-all in the green-screen collage of your daydreams. Wake up…A2 “Call Back” splashes you with a glass of refreshing water…you still got hours at the party, and you’re coming up on some healthE shit…time to get back to that business of dancing your soles and soul away to this driving monorail of euphoric acidic techno. Choo choo choose your own dance destiny, baby!

Don’t expect too much of a breather on the B-side though. “Sun Anthem” brings the solar modular beams on top of a delightfully delayed kick with swinging hats. Sounds like funky lasers, if light had mass and it could creep into your skull and massage the worries right out of your brain folds. The record ends with the titular track blooping, stomping, and clapping all over the dance floor. The end shows just how much of an auteur Jackson is, how he can put his special, funky je ne sais quoi on dance music that will shake you down hard and fast. All four tracks have something unique, but they all proudly say that dance music can be simultaneously defiant and sophisticated, banging and subtle. Cop this slab–don’t sleep!

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Lamin Fofona

Artist

LP | 2022 | EU | Original (Studio Mule)

Release: 2022 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Lamin Fofana debuts on Avian. The Sierra Leonean producer arrives on the label with Here Lies Universality, a brace of undulating sound design explorations – in equal parts tense and meditative; thorny and worked smooth. Despite the beatless nature of the compositions, Lamin Fafona’swork is imbued with the spirit of Detroit’s pioneering Techno experimentalists. As such, it is Ambient music that does not exist as a peripheral flavor to color the listeners own experience, but rather as a vehicle for expression that requires attention and observation. The artist uses sound as a vehicle to examine the historical movement – forced or otherwise, of Black people across the globe, and how this movement feeds into inequitable contemporary socio-political and economic power dynamics. Fofana explains that this latest missive, ‘rubs against liberal universalism and reflects on how the pandemic exacerbates existing contradictions and violence significantly and puts them in high relief.’ Opener Here Lies Universality, with its warbling, crystalline lead-synths and pitch-bent tonal interjections offers an introduction to this latest deep-sea rumination. Made at once near with layers of surface noise, but simultaneously fathoms deep thanks to delicate pulses in the low frequencies, it builds gently before subsiding purposefully but without resolution. Split subtly into three movements, follow up Bankrupt Utopia Sez Tell Me begins life with a rousing lead sequence that approaches crescendo before dissipating with washes of heavy modulation. The recording continues with a more conversational tone and that heavy surface noise returns once more to the fore, driving the work and providing a satisfying level of sonic intricacy. Finally, the piece segues into a soft, almost mournful reflection in its closing minutes. On the B1 the artist shares Here Lies Universality Redux, an alternative iteration of the title track. Soft and mediative in its early moments, the recording leaves its synth work behind near the mid-point and morphs into a dense matrix of aquatic sound design and field recording. Measure of Memory/ I Stagger and Remember continues to mine the Drexiyan palette to create a patchwork of shifting, granular sound architecture. Glistening in the high frequencies with timbral plucks and knocks giving the work a shape of sorts, there’s a palpable – almost unnerving,sense of movement throughout. Resounding Water closes the EP, an echo of Here Lies Universality Redux’s latter stages – but also a bookend, returning the listener to the depths after the glowing reverie that preceded. Written & Produced by Lamin Fofana Mastered by Rashad Becker @ Clunk, Berlin Design by atact.uk © Avian 2022

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222

Song For Joni

LP | 2022 | UK | Original (Ideal)

Release: 2022 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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A pure journey inward into the headspace of an artist, that reveals his gaze at the earth-ly zones he walks in: “Song for Joni”, the new album by Japanese musician Shunji Mori, brings pure natural music full of artificial nuances who create in conversation with ana-logue tones a new kind of musical nature, loaded with vibrant seasons, unknown to us, the unwise humans. moreover, the album is a fine continuation of Japan’s rich ambient leaning music traditions, carrying them into Lorren Connor’s like pending guitar galaxies.

In the 1990s Tokyo based Mori was part of the trip hop, nu-jazz, deep house, and down-tempo duo natural calamity, releasing a string of albums and EP’s on labels like legend-ary London based imprint Nuphonic, Japanese Idyllic Records or Down 2 Earth Record-ings.

In 2003 he launched the instrumental guitar duo Gabby & Lopez with his buddy Masayuki Ishii. Together they created three albums and performed live. Additionally, Mori plays improvisational concerts with Japanese musician, multi-instrumentalist, and stage direc-tor Daiho Soga and finds time to invent his very own, charismatic guitar music.

His solo work now finally gets introduced with a full-length album for Studio Mule, con-sisting of recent and a decade ago compositions, all merely recorded with the electric guitar, pedals, and field recordings.

In the center of “Song for Joni” is the guitar, spreading longing, drifting melodies. Free floating, yet deeply felt compositions, performed in an accurate journey music style. around the string notes, ambient landscapes soar and vanish.

In some moments, the guitar works like a slow-mo yacht rock lead, flying speed less over and under imaginative sonic clouds. Then, Mori’s music distributes psychedelic ef-fects in the tradition of krautrock legends like Günter Schickert, just without the echo fuzz.

Additionally, in warm vibrating seconds, his creations remind on the calm flashes in the musical work of English photographer, musician, and artist designer Steve Hiett, while Mori’s ambient spheres come close to the magic vibe of records like “Pier & Loft” by his fellow countryman Hiroshi Yoshimura.

A mixture, that transports considerate listeners into the meditative world of Shunji Mori, a calm island of bliss, made for all those that follow the heedful path of life.

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Tot Onyx

Senno I

LP | 2022 | EU | Original (Magazine)

Release: 2022 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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The debut album from group A's Tommi Tokyo is an illusory marvel made up of snatched half-heard voices, ritualistic rhythms, digi-fucked power electronics and emetic sci-fi drones. Impossible to classify, incredible to absorb - like Vainio, Stockhausen, Anima, Porter Ricks and Ramleh playing in a small room.

Since 2012, Tokyo-based duo group A have been toying with the concept of performance, attempting to melt various art styles - from body art and live painting to noise and performance - into their jaw-dropping live sets. Tommi Tokyo strikes out solo with "Senno I", her debut under the Tot Onyx moniker that appears a couple of years after an impressive collaboration with Hiro Kone emerged on "More Light", 2020's Berlin Atonal box set. Alone, Tommi is able to approach her art from a more personal, even biographical angle. She describes the record as a "study of her interior life", and played from beginning to end it feels like being plugged into someone's brain as it dumps its most polar content, "Johnny Mnemonic" style.

Each track appears to comb through a different cortex: opener 'Voice Calling' juxtaposes her voice with distant ritual drums, cyber-animal gurgles and plucked strings; 'A Leaf Laughs' is distorted close-mic'ed fauna crunches set against low-end rumbles; and the lengthy 'Inhabitants of Brain' is a dial-up powered flicker of faint floppy disk buzzes, indecipherable voices and nauseating electronic burbles. The album shifts into a different gear when it hits 'a-h5n1', referencing the flu subtype to help evoke a crushing mood punctuated by ketamized percussion, dissonant string scrapes and retching industrial noise.

It's a record that's honest enough to capture the ugliness and cavernous depth of the mind; all its beauty is inevitably snatched away to be buried by guttural screams or digitally rehashed machine belches. Any rhythm - which emerges frequently and pointedly - is disrupted by Isdn cable interference or ghostly muttering. At its best, the record tips fully into cyberpunk dystopia, coming across like a ghastly simulacrum of recent Porter Ricks transmissions and Slikback on the submerged 'Maggots' and pneumatic 'Plague'. The latter is a particular highlight, electro-plating acoustic drums and forming them into stuttering error-pools of post-Schematic grit and grind.

It's a harrowing journey, tipped to William Gibson fans or anyone who scoures the lower levels of Discogs for rare Japanese improv.

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Curd Duca

Waves 3

Zen Koans For Subway Commuters

Release: 2022 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Magazine is glad to announce the album Waves 3 by Curd Duca,
the third and last part of the trilogy Waves: Austrian electronic composer Curd Duca is widely known for his 1990es series of critically acclaimed easy listening 1-5 (Normal) and elevator 1-3 (Mille Plateaux).

After a long break from the studio, Duca has issued part 1 of the Waves series in late 2020 on Magazine. This was in fact his first album in 20 years. The Waves recordings pick up the thread of his 90s work and open up a new chapter. Again, everything is shifting constantly and all tracks are quite different (soft, rough, melodic, abstract ... ), but complement each other in a surprisingly coherent way to form an idiosyncratic universe.

While other experimental artists can sound as if they're attempting to lift lead weights over their heads, Duca is content flicking feathers into their faces. After his impressive 1990s/00s run on Normal and Mille Plateaux, Curd Duca had disappeared for 20 years before emerging from the aether last year.

The albums of the new "Waves" Trilogy represent a flawless examination of sound and texture. The Vienna-based producer still straddles high and low culture, but approaches his sonics with a more historically aware ear. So plain and resonant gong recordings are placed next to pop music loops and DSP-fractured cut-ups, and icy electronic jams nudge up against cassette warped instrumental sketches.

Waves 3 is a continuation and culmination of the series. In the final chapter, we’re drawn in with church bells on dome, but quickly transported to another era entirely with the crackly bläser and absurd zither, a tongue-in-cheek plunderphonic experiment assembled from zither samples. Duca follows this evocative run of tracks with a machine-gun blast of experimental sound, from the percussive 500 GRM to the ferric Asmr birdsong of ziegenmelker.

This is Duca at his most uncompromising, grabbing central European culture and dragging it through his array of processes. Playing the album from beginning to end opens up a weightless cut-and-paste mixtape, stitched together with expert foresight and a knowing wink to camera.

Like the best psychedelic experiences, memories are triggered and turned inside-out, and knowledge is allowed to blossom. Curd Duca has been refining his process for three decades now, and few artists have quite the same ability to challenge, provoke, and inspire.

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Personas

Tape | 2022 | UK | Original (Personas)

15,99 €*

LP | 2022 | UK | Original (Miasmah)

Release: 2022 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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It’s 2013 in Tokyo. The second worst heatwave in Japan’s history blazes across the land of the rising sun, the Democratic Party of Japan have lost control of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly to the Liberals and somewhere on the subway Nic (Pleasure Cruiser) and George (Smoke Thief) are meeting for the first time. Nic (Chinese-Irish producer with releases on High Hoops, Step Recordings and a participant of Red Bull Music Academy) and George (Tokyo based soundtrack producer and saxophonist with an MA in musical performance) brushed shoulders on the Tozai Subway line, got to talking and have been best friends ever since. The pair created the production duo of Personas – an ambient, soundtrack-leaning moniker – and have been quietly working on their debut album – Zen Koans for Subway Commuters, which features a special collaboration with Japanese electronic composer Soichi Terada under his Omodaka alias – an album that very much does what it says on the tin. Zen Koans for Subway Commuters plays out like the listener's own personal cinematic experience. It’s easy to draw comparisons with the lonerism scores of Tokyo based films such as the Scarlott Johanson and Bill Murray starring Lost in Translation (2003). There’s an isolated aesthetic to the album. It captures the melancholy and freedom that comes with a commute; catching the meditative relief of travel and channelling it into an inner-main character episode as we hurtle to and fro. Floating from the beatless, contemplative pads of ‘Elevation’ to the live-sax of ‘Northside Hibiya Sen’ and the heavily field-recorded experimentation of Ayako and Omodaka’s collaborative ‘Shuuten’, Zen Koans for Subway Commuters maintains it’s interest throughout thanks to it’s variety of ambient sonics and real-life manifestation. Footsteps from heeled shoes clip-clop across sterile white tiles, trains rattle as they pull into the station, voices call out in greeting to friends and loved ones. It’s a trip in every sense of the word, a form of meditative therapy designed to think about nothing or think about everything. Featuring live recordings from the pair's ventures throughout Tokyo, Personas have crafted a mesmerising debut album that pulls on the heartstrings whilst maintaining a complete sense of freedom. Getting on the train to go anywhere is exciting, not just because of the destination, but because of the liberation that comes with sitting down, reading a book or listening to music and knowing you can't do anything else apart from that for a few hours. Intimate, subtle and cinematic, it’s the perfect soundtrack to get lost to.

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All That We See Or Seem

28,99 €*

The Soundtrack Of My Home

Release: 2022 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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“Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?” This quote from a poem by Edgar Allan Poe sums up the lamenting, primal work that is "All That We See or Seem"; a project conceived between Finland, England and Brazil. The self-titled album consists of two long-form pieces of droning mysticism hailing from the trio of Gruth (concept, production, electronics), Ellen Southern (vocals, field recordings, percussion) and Johanna Puuperä (violin, modular synthesizer, additional vocals). The album opens straight into a thousand yard stare with “Myrskymielellä", adapted from a 1891 poem by the Finnish national poet, Eino Leino, who wrote it at the tender age of 13. Here a blank distant droning of synths and the sounds of flowing water hover underneath like a dark river observed from the air. This is a sound and feeling that will stay constant for the entirety of the piece´s thirty minute duration. It is a trance-inducing composition that slowly unfolds elements of pagan ancestry into its own life. At first, faint female vocals are introduced as distant spatial elements, which gradually advance into waves of cries and anguish as the piece progresses and moves further into the storm. The tranquility of the first half is slowly morphed into a full blown ceremony as driving ritualistic percussion and a foreboding witch-like presence shifts the piece into a Dead Can Dance-like territory. Here a constant enveloping mixture of violins, modular synths, field recordings and vocal screams creates the feeling of a grande finale. It is an astounding piece of music that develops like a drone symphony for the beginning of time. With the second piece, “A Dream Within A Dream”, from Edgar Allan Poe´s 1849 poem, you are transported to the shores of an undisclosed island; a place where it´s only you, your thoughts and the endless emptiness. The continual sound of waves is soon brought together with a cloud of synths and mourning violins that will keep a steady dreamlike state during most of the piece´s duration. This time the wordless vocals feel almost angelic in their pageantry. The composition flows like a slow caress of the soul and feels like the spirit twin of Gavin Bryars' “The Sinking of the Titanic” with its lamenting slow movements towards the unknown. Truly a ghost of a record, “All That We See or Seem” is an experience hard to shake and feels like entering sacred ground. We are in a place surrounded by earth, both ancient and present. "Let loose, Vanha, the rage of an earthly storm! Detach the elements, completely open the sky! In the Earth, let an incessant storm prevail, so that in my chest I would not feel the miserable pain” - Eino Leino

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Kjetil Jerve

12" | 2022 | EU | Original (Dugnad)

19,99 €*

LP | 2022 | UK | Original (Where To Now?)

Release: 2022 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance, Classical Music

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Home is a powerful concept with an abstract definition. This solo album takes those subjective ideas and unifies them under one roof. Evolving from Jerve’s #dailypiano posts in 2019, ‘The Soundtrack of My Home’ relays thoughts and improvisations that trace his journey from childhood home to adult and now, father. Nurturing a mood or feeling, each song begets a sonorous story of someone close to him, expressed through the language of piano playing.

Jerve makes use of his hands as a human step sequencer, often programming two or more motifs of varying lengths in a polymetric fashion. These melodic patterns and arpeggios evolve at varying rates but grow around clear progressions with standard 8-bar forms.

The first track - ‘Kjetil’ enters with an earnest, gentle and endearing character - like a young river near its source. As with such a river, it will grow to varied sizes throughout the album but must begin as a humble expression from the source. The following titles sketch his interpretations of the people that have made up his home.

There is a theme across the album that unites the songs, so much so that differentiating tracks can at times be difficult. Though, Jerve punctuates this overarching mood with a few distinct structures, as found in tracks ‘Karoline’ (wife), ‘Espen’ (brother) and ‘Sven’ (father). ‘Turid’ (daughter) and ‘Jon Eirik’ (brother) seem less directive and welcome more intrigue, reminiscent of a curious child wandering through the dappled light of a forest.

‘Iben’ (daughter) and ‘Eivor’ (daughter) have a hypnotic, three-pointed melodic structure that leaves the listener suspended; transfixed - while ‘Sussi’ (cat) carries unique momentum and suitably feline autonomy. ‘Mette’ (mother) has a mood of ascending, like that of a child's upward gaze at their maternal carer. Utterly nuanced in structure, Jerve leaves ample space for subjective interpretation and allows the listener to weave their own life into the tones.

As expected from the founder of Dugnad rec - this album signifies a deeply personal sentiment. Sometimes we are forced to confront the music and other times, we are left to wonder. Here, we find a balance and unity that allows little thoughts and worries to drift away, bringing us warmly to rest in the present. The LP edition's bonus track features producer/performer extraordinaire Stian Balducci, drawing a line to the next chapter of piano-based music from Dugnad rec: Tokyo Tapes: Piano Recycle.

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Orlando Fitzgerald

Slow Drift

Arve Henriksen & Kjetil Husebø

Release: 2022 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Where To Now? are proud to present the new album from Irish born, NY based Orlando FitzGerald. Previously recording as ‘Orlando’, FitzGerald has released music via ‘Local Action’, ‘Gobstopper’, and All City affiliated label ‘First Second’. Where Orlando’s previous works have focused on the dance floor, here we see a pivot towards a Cello led sound which embraces experimentation, space, and solitude. FitzGerald's approach to music is born from punk, and he carries this DIY approach towards the weighty world of the Cello. With no formal training FitzGerald instead takes an intuitive approach, quietly seeking out expression and treating his sounds to create a unique basin of tension, warmth, and paced release. With percussive contributions from Matthew Byas (of Phony Ppl), restrained Sax skronk from the brilliant Kate Mohanty, synth work from Evan Shornstein (also known as Photay), and vocals from none other than NY Post-Punk legend Anna Domino, FitzGerald has created a cinematic record that moves between worlds of unnerving dread, and lush, hopeful melancholy. ‘Slow Drift’ opens with the unsettling ‘Infinite Life’, where layered Cello and Sax murmur set the scene and accompanying bass rattle evokes the feeling of mechanical motor drift. This melding of the mechanical and organic will become a central theme to the album. ‘Anticipate The Heat’ follows, with the album's most Jazzwise moment - where Byas' scattered hand drums punctuate Mohanty’s mellow flutters. ‘Wind’ is where we find Orlando at his most cinematic and melodic, presenting a serene, bubbling movement where hushed picking and restrained playing recalls the quiet ambience of Helios, or the melancholy of Bruce Langhorne at his most desert swept, staring into an endless horizon. ‘Unfolding’ opens with Anna Domino’s unmistakably fragile, sensual, and affecting vocals, for which the Cello compliments in call and response fashion, allowing Anna’s vocals to lead, creating a moment which appears to explore themes of regeneration, loss, and hope - which again, is refracted and responded to by Orlando. Next we have a triptych of ‘Grid’ movements, which continue to explore the above themes, drifting between meditative minimalism and abstract discordance with hypnotic effect - Orlando approaches these pieces with such considered interplay, fully embracing space, silence, and cyclical repetition to create a devastatingly emotive, and desolate landscape, which continuously attempts to regain focus, yearning for stillness. Finally the album ends with "One" a meditation on wholeness and unity where moody, yet serene guitars balance wailing cello.

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Sequential Stream

LP | 2022 | UK | Original (Smalltown Supersound)

Release: 2022 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Properly transcendent deep-dream jazz fantasy from prolific trumpet virtuoso Arve Henriksen (Supersilent) and Norwegian pianist Kjetil Husebø, together shaping an album that’s much, much more than the not so inconsiderable sum of its parts. Like a fever-dream comedown, it takes us from insanely rich sounding 4th world topographies to fizzing, electric ambience and fluttering prepared piano, perfectly soundtracking the humid un-reality we’re living through. We’ve been snagged on Henriksen’s work since his ‘Chiaroscuro’ album appeared back in 2004 - it’s ‘Opening Image’ often cited here as basically the last word in cinematic framing. But It’s his work alongside Helge Sten (Deathprod) and Ståle Storløkken in Supersilent that’s perhaps thrown us furthest down the Henriksen rabit hole in the years since, his distinctive shakuhachi-style playing often accenting their finest recordings. ‘Sequential Stream’ is Henriksen’s first collaboration with pianist Kjetil Husebø, the pair assembling the album remotely from their respective studios in Gothenburg, Sweden and Oslo, Norway over the course of 2019 and 2020. Henriksen plays Trumpet alongside synths, various electronics and - on ‘Single Sentence’ - a striking vocal delivery that eschews his usual wordless/soprano in favour of a more dense Tenor. Husebø plays grand piano, synths and samplers, and veers from cascading to more fluttering styles as the album progresses. In one sense the album functions in a traditional mode of Jazz reflection, aided considerably by a beautifully pristine recording and subsequent mastering by Helge Sten. Every note skips and shimmers with abundant clarity and depth - like the most affecting Jazz, played on the most luxurious systems; it just sounds rich and impossibly clear on even the most modest setup. At the same time, the pair’s avant garde instincts gradually make an indelible mark - be it through the prepared piano backbone on the remarkable ‘Slow Fragments’ or the percolating, Conjointesque electronics on ‘Sonic Binoculars’, piping in atmospheric depth and disjointed detail like some seismic event rippling through the ocean. Not usually drawn to the Jazz orthodoxy, ‘Sequential Stream’ presents us with something of a paradox - it feels like Henriksen’s most approachable work in years, but also his most complex and multi-faceted. If you’re looking for a late night soundtrack to the most celluloid moments of your life - it works on that level. Dig a little deeper, and you’ll discover much more ambiguous, subterranean delights.

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2LP | 2022 | EU | Original (Malka Tuti)

Sheva

Late Metal Coloured Viynl Edition

Release: 2022 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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2020 was supposed to be a year of joy in Malka Tuti, celebrating and commemorating 5 years of our existence. After several celebratory dates and many plans were postponed due to coco-19 and its collateral damage, we have understood that the universe is trying to tell us something, and we’ve read it as Slow Down! After months of contemplation and excessive thoughts, we have come to the inevitable conclusion that 7 is simply a better number then 5. Therefore we are now celebrating 7 years of existence. To share our festive mood, we are releasing a 2xlp compilation filled with goodies supplied by our close friends, and their friends. For us, the Sheva (Seven in Hebrew) compilation represents a large chunk ofthe sonic spectrum that is the Malka Tuti multiverse to date. Whether its Red Axes’s dance floor punk, the tribal minimalistic psychedelia of Decha, the endless soundscapes of Vactrol Park, or the post-pop attitude of Xen and Shari Vari, one can hopefully notice that gentle thread weaving it all together. That thread is Malka Tuti. On the compilation you can find many unreleased remixes to tracks we’ve released on the label, from amazing artists such as Nicola Cruz, Phew, Khidja & Manfredas. Each Remix gives new life to our back catalogue’s feel. In addition, Xen is also back on Malka Tuti with 2 new songs, Blue & Cats in collaboration with brother Yoav. Both songs were recorded in the winter of 2017 In Uhrwald Orange studios outside Düsseldorf, with comrade Sebastian Lee Philipp (of Die Wilde Jagd fame) on the mixing decks and engineering hat. In addition to his collaboration with Xen, You can find Yovav In ace form here, contributing a mid tempo discoish banger like only he knows how.. Even more fun comes from Vactrol Park, our dear modular brothers, showing off their deeper than deep sonic aesthetics and minimalistic groovy rhythms on Seemingly Strange. We are also thrilled to welcome a dear friend Benedikt Frey to the family. Expect some banging stuff from him in the future on MT. Last but definitely not least, Lithuanian superhero Manfredas is responsible for one of our favourite secret weapons of the last couple of years, an alternative remix to Shari Vari’s Dance Alone, never released before. This Remix is a trippy pop excursion to the sunnier side of things. All tracks on the compilation were meticulously chosen throughout the past few years and slowly stitched together to comprise what is now Sheva.

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Thomas Roussel

12" | 2022 | EU | Original (Ed Banger)

Regards / Uklony Dla Boguslaw Schaeffer Purple Vinyl Edition

Release: 2022 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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I met Thomas Roussel in 2017 at a Pigalle fashion show in Paris. As always with Stéphane Ashpool, the designer of Pigalle, casting is perfect and the clothes are modern and groundbreaking. But my eyes and ears were intrigued by this retro-futuristic instrument next to me, the Cristal Baschet. French composer and conductor Thomas Roussel wrote the soundtrack of the show. He add this magnificent instrument in his "not very classical" orchestra, this is what I immediately loved with him! He invited us into his world of classical music with a fresh twist, simplicity and audacity. At the same time I was scratching my head to find something different to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Ed Banger records. For a long time I had this idea of mixing both electronic and classical music together. Exactly like my heroes Metallica did in 1999 with the Symphonic orchestra of San Francisco! Thomas Roussel seems the perfect man for this crazy idea. We did Ed Banger 15 together and we became friends. Thomas Roussel grew up in Dijon, spent his days at the conservatory and his nights at L’An-Fer, one of the most respected Techno club in France. Probably the reason why he ended up working with Jeff Mills, on two projects mixing Jeff’s 909 and a classical orchestra. By experimenting new ways of using an orchestra, by creating state-of-the-art scenography and producing more ambitious music he quickly became the man in charge of everything "classica". The list of his collaborations is too long and will ruin this little introduction. It could sounds like this : Chanel, Apple, Cartier, Kenzo, Nike, Dior. Performing from Paris to Macau, from Monte Carlo to Dubai and from New York to Beijing! In 2017 Thomas Roussel released his first album as Prequell with Universal Music. A successful collaboration that really allows Thomas Roussel to become an artist. In 2022 Ed Banger records is proud to release Thomas Roussel "late Metal" a 3 tracks EP. Where uplifting orchestration and electronic music composing collide. The perfect soundtrack of a block buster movie mixing George Lucas & Christopher Nolan generations. It’s also a marker of our time, music boundaries are explosing. It’s time to hear the London Symphony Orchestra’s strings battling with a Drum’n’Bass beat, a way to Deified classical music. It’s also a record for your eyes. Art director Andy Picci created an algorthym and gave life to a mercury abstract form. This collaboration marks the need for Thomas Roussel to always push the boundaries and take his project to another Level.

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Matmos

LP | 2022 | US | Original (Thrill Jockey)

34,99 €*

LP | 2022 | EU | Original (Alga Marghen)

Release: 2022 / US – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Matmos are one of the most prominent experimental electronic artists working today, crafting work by creating new conceptual frameworks & immediately testing those frameworks absolute limits. For Regards / Uklony dla Boguslaw Schaeffer they've focused on another artist known, in large part, for doing the same. Boguslaw Schaeffer was one of the first Polish artists creating electronic music. In step with American contemporaries like John Cage and Morton Feldman, he worked across the boundaries of classical composition, electronic experimentation, and radical theater in playfully form-breaking ways. Matmos are not the first ones to recognize the power of his catalog, from Solo (a 2008 documentary that garnered numerous international awards), to the annual Shaeffer's Era Festival (most recently celebrated simultaneously in Warsaw and Los Angeles) his work continues to inspire. Regards.. however, was not just inspired by his work, Matmos were given access to the entirity of Schaeffer's recorded works to use as they saw fit, commissioned by the prestigious Instytutu Adama Mickiewicza. They re-assembled & re-combined these recorded works with modern instrumentations in a way that only Matmos could, and what emerges is a composite portrait of the utopian 1960s Polish avant-garde and the contemporary dystopian cultural moment regarding each other across a distance. To facilitate the transcultural exchange that is the album's essential premise, all song titles and liner-notes are provided in both English and Polish. The album was mastered by Rashad Becker and features illustration and design by acclaimed artist Robert Beatty (Tame Impala, Osees, Mdou Moctar). Like the anagrams of the letters of Boguslaw Schaeffer's name that were re-assembled to create some of the song titles, the album itself is a musical re-assemblage of component parts into possible but unforeseen new shapes. Adding harp from Irish harpist Una Monaghan, erhu, viola and violin from Turkish multi-instrumentalist Ulas Kurugullu, and electronic processes from Baltimore instrument builder Will Schorre, and Horse Lords wunderkind Max Eilbacher, the resulting arrangements constantly toy with scale as they move from the close-mic-ing of Asmr and the intimacy of chamber music to the immensity of processed drones and oceanic field-recordings that close the album. Offering a "life review" of production styles, Regards / Uklony dla Boguslaw Schaeffer builds temporary shelters out of the panoramic wreckage of modernist composition, sixties tape music, seventies dub, eighties industrial music, nineties postrock and dark ambient, 2000s era glitch fetishism, and contemporary post-everything collage sensibilities.

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Anton Bruhin

Rotomotor / Inout

28,99 €*

LP | 2022 | EU | Original (Sleepers)

Release: 2022 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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"in the mid-1970s anton bruhin was surely at the peak of his tape manipulation works. always using poor techniques and equipment he sculpted everyday-life sonic objects turning them into very accomplished and yet totally experimental music artifacts. the works presented here surely are among the most accomplished results of his expanded creativity. "inout", a masterpiece for tuning whistle, mouthharps, flutes, toy and party gag instruments, percussion, bells, electric razor, model ship engine with propeller, birdcall whistles, ch-phon, feedback speaker-microphone, siren, double shawm, falling down spoon, jew's harp (only two short notes), tearing scotch tape from the spool, ocarina, hair dryer and other noise makers plus occasionally radio tuner was recorded in zurich between may 17th and may 22nd, 1981, on a sanyo m7300l stereo radio cassette recorder with both integrated and external microphone. the recorder is in the recording standby position, both record and pause buttons are pushed. then bruhin sings or plays a tone into the microphone. during this tone he releases the pause button by pushing it. subsequently he presses the pause button again within a fraction of a second. now the first short note is recorded. in "inout" thousands of very short notes were added this way, like a patchwork, like an acoustic quilt with geometric irregularities and varied patterns. "rotomotor", subtitled "ein motorische idiotikon", is a 28 minutes long reading representing one of bruhin's major works. written in zurich between 1976 and 1977, then recorded in august 1978 at etienne conod's sunrise studio. "rotomotor" is a poetic idiotikon of the swiss-german dialect where, instead of the straight alphabetical order, the words are organized according to the similarities of their letters (each word differ from the previous one by just one letter). for this reading a delay equipment which repeated the signal after 0.6 seconds was used and each word is superimposed to the echo of the preceding one. on one hand this echo generates the rhythm of the performance, on the other it supports the acoustic metamorphosis of the words. as always in anton buhin poetics, a very simple concept perfectly accomplished. anton bruhin in the 1960s began organizing happenings and performances, creating sound works, designing and typesetting his own books (which he self-published with hannes r. bossert through april-verlag), drawing and writing poetry. anton bruhin was a member of the first class to study at the f+f school with serge stauffer, famous art teacher and specialist in marcel duchamp, where he came into contact with concrete poetry, fluxus and experimental music."

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Suns Of Arqa

Revelation XVII

12" | 2021 | UK | Original (Central Processing Unit)

Release: 2022 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance, Reggae & Dancehall

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Suns of Arqa is a sonic mission created by luminary Michael Wadada, who began in 1979 after receiving higher guidance in Jamaica while working with roots reggae chanter Prince Far-I. It is a prolific traveling music collective that has seen over 200 collaborators, meant to connect people from all cultures and walks of life through a “deeply spiritual vibration that merges cultures, faiths and musical genres”. Wadada combines ancient Hindustani raga systems with Piobaireachd and Nyabinghi roots drumming, creating ritualistic world music infused with dub and reggae. The lyrics combine both mystical and sensory elements, often including prayer and referencing a higher power but finding root in experiences common to all people- memory, sight, and physical sensation. Their first album, Revenge of the Mozabites, was a collaboration between Wadada and On-U Sound creator Adrian Sherwood. Following its 1980 release,Peter Gabriel invited them to perform at the first Womad festival. Today, the record is regarded by some as a cult classic. Over the years they have played at many major music festivals including Glastonbury, Big Chill, Telerama Dub Festival, and Transmusicales, and released over 40 albums on Virgin, EMI, Interchill Records, Antler Subway, Red Rhino, and their own label, Arka Sound. Suns of Arqa has had a seminal influence on the World Beat sound, and continued to make appearances at seasonal festivals and sacred ritual spaces all over the world until 2021. Michael Wadada passed away in the midst of planning their U.S. tour for this release. The record is a compilation of some of Wadada’s and Sleepers Record’s favorite old Sun of Arqa tracks, mixed by Youth and Adrian Sherwood, and mastered by Eroc (drummer of Grobshnitt). Notable collaborating artists include: Guy Called Gerald, UK producers Youth and John Leckie, Greg Hunter, 808 State's Graham Massey, Finley Quaye, Sounds From the Ground, Bryn Jones aka MuslimGauze, Adrian Sherwood, John Cooper-Clarke, The late great Professor Stanley Unwin, Eric Random, New age guru Tim Wheater, Astralasia, Prince Far-I, The Orb's Alex Patterson, Zion Train, and Gaudi. "And although the Great Spiritual being Michael Wadada has returned to source and his body to earth at our time, his music is alive and will continue to be a great force for higher spiritual realms and raising vibration through occult frequencies...Suns of Arqa will continue to raise the vibration of the hearts and minds of humanity" – Angela aka Angel-Eye (Wadada's wife and bandmate)

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Blackploid

Strange Stars

John Morales Presents Teena Marie

Release: 2021 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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German electro producer Martin Matiske has recently breathed new life into his Blackploid alias. The project's revival continues to bear fruit with the Strange Stars EP, Matiske's third Blackploid release of 2021 and second for Central Processing Unit after issuing March's Cosmic Traveler EP through the Sheffield label.
Blackploid's two CPU drops have more in common than just stargazing titles. Those who enjoyed Cosmic Traveler will find plenty to like again in these four tracks, with Matiske serving up another quartet of snappy machine-funk joints this time around. However, while there is certainly a throughline between Cosmic Traveler and Strange Stars, this EP also finds Blackploid pushing the envelope at points by taking risks with his synth tones which thrill and enliven the record.
In keeping with the cosmic theme of Blackploid's recent output, Strange Stars kicks off with 'Star Patrol'. While this opening cut is full of the same needle-gun basslines and dinky synths that characterised Cosmic Traveler, the drum programming eschews the broken beats favoured by many in the scene for a straight house/techno snap. It makes for a very groovy jam, one with Drexciya, Computer World-era Kraftwerk and a pinch of Space Dimension Controller in its mix.
Indeed, the only track on Strange Stars which skips along on a broken beat is second entry 'The Signal'. 'The Signal' also features some of Blackploid's most impressive electronics programming to date, announcing itself with a brilliantly unusual synth that sounds like an old video game unit which has just gained sentience. When this alien tone is combined with another precision-engineered bassline the track invokes the grizzly bangers of the L.I.E.S. label, though the keyboard stabs which enter periodically also hint to the funkier electro of, say, Egyptian Lover.
'The Unseen', the first B-side of Strange Stars, finds Blackploid bringing together many of the things which made the two previous tunes such standouts. A steady four-on-the-floor and a slightly haunted feel to the synth choices casts back to 'Star Patrol', but much like 'The Signal' this joint also features some rather weird tones which are a hair's breadth away from machine malfunction. It's a feeling which runs through to closing cut 'Light Corridor', a number where melodies and anti-melodies zip around an array of gurgling electronic cells.
Martin Matiske's fine run of Blackploid EPs continues with the intergalactic electro stylings of Strange Stars.
Riyl: Drexciya, Cardopusher, Legowelt, Beau Wanzer, Jensen Interceptor

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Love Songs

3LP | 2021 | EU | Original (BBE Music)

48,99 €*

12" | 2020 | EU | Original (Patience)

Release: 2021 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Producer extraordinaire John Morales returns to BBE Music, celebrating the life and work of R&B / soul legend Teena Marie with a double album full of brand new remixes, lovingly crafted from the original studio tapes, entitled ‘Love Songs & Funky Beats’. “Teena is somewhat underrated, and people don't really know much about her.” Says Morales. “I set out to immerse people in her music and represent what she really did. That meant for me a dive into more than her R&B hits, to dig into her ballads and dance cuts. People know she was talented. I don't really think they really knew the depth of her abilities, her complete confidence to take it upon herself to do everything – singing, producing, arranging, songwriting. Teena Marie was the total package.” John Morales had the pleasure of mixing many of Teena Marie’s original records over the years, so it felt natural to dig into the archives and select his favourite cuts to rework, extend and subtly update in his own distinctive style. While by no means a definitive collection of Lady Tee’s expansive musical catalogue, ‘Love Songs & Funky Beats’ represents a fitting tribute to a multifaceted and important voice in popular music, by one of the most storied mix engineers and remixers of our age. Jumping into the music industry deep end in 1979 with a three-year mentorship from Berry Gordy & Rick James at Motown, Teena Marie then spent seven fertile years with Epic, which yielded her greatest commercial successes (including the classic album 'Starchild'). After founding an independent label ‘Sarai’, Marie took a ten-year hiatus which ended in 2004 in a deal with hip hop label Cash Money Records; a less unlikely partnership than some might assume, given that Teena was one of the first ‘mainstream’ artists to perform a rap verse, on 1981’s ‘Square Biz’. Teena Marie Brockert forged a unique path through the industry, an artist in-charge of her own destiny, influencing (and heavily sampled by) both the hip hop and R&B sounds of the 90’s and early 2000’s. Her 1982 lawsuit against Motown records resulted in "The Brockert Initiative", which has benefitted literally thousands of other artists by making it illegal for record companies to ‘shelve’ artists by keeping them under contract without releasing their material. She continued to tour regularly and deliver commercially successful, expertly sculpted music, right up until her untimely passing in 2010.

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Promoter

Cogitate

LP | 2020 | EU | Original (Ikuisuus)

Release: 2020 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Cogitate is the first release from NYC local Promoter and an invitation to gaze inward and sit with sound. Borne of hours lost in loops, Promoter calls forth deep, dubby bass rumble, off-kilter rhythms and murky atmospherics, relishing in repetition and evolving subliminally but surely. Disorienting, engaging and engulfing, Cogitate is the 4th release on NYC-based Patience, catching you off guard then inviting you in. Cogitate offers two cuts from the same cloth - one locked into the grid, the other drifting far above it. Both begin with shards of static cascading over submerged synth stabs - on Cogitate 1.1 a bassline bubbles up from below before a kick drum sneaks in and drops anchor, driving forward a slice of sparse zero gravity dub techno for a zonked out dancefloor in a dream. Cogitate 2.0 offers a pared back version of 1.1, slowed down and stripped of the rhythm section. A gentle brain scrub or a cascade of mind tricks depending on your headspace. Is the sequence evolving or is your perspective on it shifting? Does this sound like something I know or nothing at all? Has this been going for 3 minutes or 3 hours? Is this climax sublime or simply creepy? Whatever it is, Promoter presents an opportunity to let the mind wander, and offers proof that repetition invites participation. Both cuts simmer in ambiguous emotion, never spelling out what to feel but allowing the listener to be their own trip commander. Promoter is a new project from a life-long NYC resident, most recently releasing a couple of 12”s under the Image Man moniker, who for the most part would prefer that the music is received on it’s own terms, with a mind wide open. Cogitate 1.1 was mixed by Mood Hut mixologist CZ Wang. Both tracks were mastered by M. Geddes Gengras. Following this release will be an extremely limited cassette of material recorded in the same time and (head)space. Keep an ear to the ground for that one. Patience is an outlet for exploring further beyond the break than usual. Inspired by the music perpetually on rotation at HQ – with E2-e4 representing the format’s high tide mark – each release will be one artist’s deep dive down one inspirational wormhole spread across two sides of vinyl, or two side-long sojourns making full use of a round 12” piece of plastic. Set and forget, zone out to tune in.

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Red Brut

Cloaked Travels

LP | 2020 | US | Original (Sub Pop)

Release: 2020 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Following her debut LP (kraak, 2018) and a string of tapes and 7-inches, Red Brut drops her second album, Cloaked Travels. It is a joined release by the Finnish labels Ikuisuus and Lal Lal Lal. In many aspects, Cloaked Travels is an amazing realisation of what Red Brut does best: molding the absurd, the amateurish, and the crude into beautiful and elegant sound pieces. These eight “songs”, organised in two suites, dwell between abstract avant-garde and pop sensibility. Working with cassette tapes, Red Brut enhances the ambiguous qualities of her sounds with the warm distortion and background hiss typical of the medium. The music leaves the listener to him- or herself, happily lost in small universes that contain many layers of beauty, discomfort, and intimacy. Susan Sontag once claimed that diaries, despite secretly kept by the author, are meant to be read by others. Red Brut’s intimate and highly personal take on musique concrète is characterised by a homely feeling: sounds of doors, kids outside her house, a synth that sounds like a house pet, muffled whispers of her voice. Her compositions sound like you are secretly reading her diary. You are in the uncomfortable position of watching someone chasing her own tail, unaware of the fact that she is being the object of our gaze. Unaware? Cloaked Travels displays on a certain point the sound of a squeaking door. Over and over until it starts sounding like a wild free jazz solo. Is Verbiesen playing tricks on our minds? Is she actually the Unconsciously Watched? Or is she cloaked as that character, and in fact very well aware that we are peeping into her inner emotional universe; maybe she is even projecting a fake version of what sounds like here day-to-day, intimate environment — making us conscious of our own gaze? Again Sontag comes to mind: she deliberately projected a well-constructed character in both her diaries as in public life. Cloaked Travels contains distinct and carefully composed pieces that play upon the tension between the concrete and the abstract. Every song acts like a Cave of Plato: we are unable to see what is actually happening, we only see the shadows of a door moving or the sounds of someone gurgling. The album suggests some fundamental questions: is what we conceive as reality nothing but a derivative of the Ideal? Is there really something behind the shadow, or is the shadow the actual reality?

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Washed Out

Purple Noon

LP | 2020 | EU | Original (Possible Motive)

Release: 2020 / US – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance, Pop

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Washed Out is Atlanta-based producer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Ernest Greene. Over three enchanting, critically-lauded albums and an EP, his music has proved both transportive and visual, each release inviting listeners into immersive, self-contained universes. With Purple Noon, his fourth album, and his return to Sub Pop, he delivers the most accessible Washed Out creation to date. Life of Leisure, Washed Out's 2009 debut EP, set the bar for the Chillwave era, shimmering in a warm haze of off-the-cuff Polaroids and pre-IG filters. Within and Without, his 2011 full-length debut on Sub Pop, morphed into nocturnal, icy synth-pop and embraced provocative imagery. 2013's Paracosm was Greene's take on psychedelia, with a full live band and kaleidoscopic light show, and saw him playing to the largest audiences of his career. The sample-heavy Mister Mellow (2017, Stone's Throw) delivered a 360 audio/visual experience, with cut-n-paste and hand-drawn animation to match the hip-hop influences throughout the album. With each release, Greene has approached his evolving project with meticulous detail and a steadfast vision. For Purple Noon, Greene again wrote, recorded, and produced the entirety of the album, with mixing handled by frequent collaborator Ben H. Allen (Paracosm, Within and Without). Production of the album followed a brief stint of writing for other artists (most notably Sudan Archives) which enabled Greene to explore genres like R&B and modern pop. These brighter, more robust sounds made their way into the songs of Purple Noon and mark a new chapter for Greene as a producer and songwriter. The vocals are front and center, tempos are slower, beats bolder, and there's a more comprehensive depth of dynamics. One can hear the luxuriousness of Sade, the sonic bombast of Phil Collins, and the lush atmosphere of the great Balearic beat classics. Mediterranean coastlines inspired Purple Noon, and Greene pays tribute to the region's distinct island culture - all rugged elegance and old-world charm - and uses it as a backdrop to tell stories of passion, love, and loss (Purple Noon's title comes from the 1960 film directed by Rene Clement and based on the novel The Talented Mister Ripley by Patricia Highsmith). Much like romantic Hollywood epics, the melodrama throughout is strong: a serendipitous first meeting in "Too Late"; a passionate love affair in "Paralyzed"; disintegration of a relationship in "Time to Walk Away"; a reunion with a lost love in "Game of Chance." Purple Noon adds a layer of emotional intensity to the escapism of Washed Out's oeuvre, taking the music to dazzling new heights.

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Moisture

Substance

LP | 2019 | EU | Original (Morr Music)

Release: 2020 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Substance, the second album by producer Moisture, sets out to deliver an immersive tech-noir fantasy of emotional and physical deconstruction. Inspired in part by William S. Burroughs 1959 novel Naked Lunch, the conceptual narrative of the album follows a humanoid subject through an urban landscape and the exploration of its depravations.
Sampling and filtering sounds from other music, movies and own field recordings, the tapestry of Substance is a three-dimensional world of hard industrial spaces and fluid organic matter. While its conception is rooted equally in literature and film as well as music, one can draw comparisons in particular to Barry Adamsons 1989 album Moss Side Story, in that it also works as a chronological narrative; the tracks aligning to make a world of its own.
And while Adamson was aiming to create an imaginary soundscape of his native Manchester, the geography of Substance is based on the city of Malmö. Using field recordings from its city streets, the album paints a rain soaked, neon-clad portrait of the city's hedonistic nightlife.
On the opening "The Marketplace" we are teleported to Bergsgatan at night (the track title a subtle nod towards Eden Ahbez 1960 song of the same name).
This introduction is similar in line with the experience Burroughs once had in 1957 upon entering Malmö for the first and only time, which he details briefly in Naked Lunch: "averted eyes and the cemetery in the middle of town (every town in Sweden seems to be built around a cemetery), and nothing to do in the afternoon (...)"
This image of Malmö portrayed with dread and loathing holds a longstanding narrative tradition over the cultural geography of the town. Yet it is often paired with an image of great promise and bohemian splendor, seemingly a paradox but often perversely intertwined. This duality has always been a vital mindset in the underground music scene of the town and its illegal after hours clubs. Substance is a work steeped in the grayscale prism of techno and its post-industrial fetischism. Yet in picking it apart, one can find elements of everything from post-punk, drum & bass, trip hop and new age.
The theme of depravation that soaks through Burroughs Naked Lunch seems oddly befitting to this side of Malmö (one wonders what the author would have made of it had he stayed longer) Through rhythmic excursions and the exploration of repetition, the tracks of Substance are arranged to convey this self-destructive longing for depravity. Michel Foucault's ideas on limit experiences serves as context for this peculiar form of endeavour, as he puts it: "the point of life which lies as close as possible to the impossibility of living, which lies at the limit or the extreme".

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Benoit Pioulard

Sylva

LP+7" | 2018 | EU | Original (Wah Wah)

Release: 2019 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Kranky veteran Benoît Pioulard (né Thomas Meluch) has created his first full-length for Morr Music, complemented by a linen book of Polaroid SX70 photographs from more than two years of environmental explorations. The music on Sylva and its 84-page visual companion bear the beauty and strange shapes of nature: desert rock formations and colorful leaves, restless waters and peculiar plants. Meluch’s dreamy ambient drones and saturated lo-fi pop embody the impressionist sensation of his visual aesthetic – with this collection sound and vision are merged into an affectionate study of the organic.

Sylva is the result of one of the most productive periods in Meluch’s life. During a 9-month hiatus from his day job he embarked on daily recording sessions amid trips to the American southwest, Montana, Hawai’i and his native Michigan. Back home in Seattle, he developed his recordings and wrote the album’s two mesmerizing vocal tracks, which call to mind early Fleetwood Mac or peak pop-era Brian Eno. “Keep” is based on a tiny flower called Draba mentioned in the book A Sand County Almanac, about which “no one ever wrote a poem”; considering all the little plants he had inadvertently crushed throughout a lifetime of hikes, he wrote it for them. The piano-driven “Meristem” features a striking violin contribution from Freya Creech (London, UK), and is dedicated to Meluch’s brother, who died suddenly two years ago. Sylva’s other collaboration is the soaring vocal arrangement created for “Raze II” by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer/singer Caroline Shaw (New York, USA), a former touring mate who resided at the Banff Centre (Alberta, CAN) during the same period in which Meluch completed his recordings there.

The album’s ten songs are divided into four movements: Solum (soil/solitude), Ignis (fire), Coeptum (seed) and Vireo (thrive), with each group embodying a slightly different environ. When paring down the photo collection Meluch abided three guidelines: no man-made objects, no redundant textures, and a color palette as diverse as his vintage camera allowed. From more than six hundred images, 102 were selected and arranged in diptychs with a preface from the artist. Book and album work well on their own, but by experiencing them together one finds a fundamental connection as well as a three-dimensional view into their creator’s perception of the cosmos.

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Zanov

Moebius 256 301

21,99 €*

2LP | 2017 | US | Original (Audika)

Release: 2018 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Under the alias of Zanov we find the works of French electronic pioneer Pierre Salkazanov, who had started playing guitar in the 1960s in a Shadows styled band, Les Ambassadors. Instrumental rock was not enough for Salkazanov, he was always looking for evolution, so when a meeting with French synth player Serge Ramses (of "Secret" fame) got him into the world of synthesizers he just dived deep into the bourgeoning world of electronic music. He got himself an EMS VCS3 and started producing works into a 4-track Teac tape machine. French music was at its best, it was the time of Jean Michel Jarre, Didier Bocquet, Richard Pinhas and Heldon, Alain Meunier... Even Gong's Tim Blake was living in France at that time. By the time of his second LP, Moebius 256 301, issued also on Polydor in 1977, Zanov had already gathered a small collection of gear, including an ARP 2600 and an ARP sequencer, his old VCS3, an RMI Harmonic and a PS 3300. Again under the influence of both first and second generation of Berlin school musicians the LP will appeal to fans of Klaus Schulze or Tangerine Dream, but they will also find a big deal of Zanov's own personal sound on it, since as the musician himself reckons he had little contact with other peers of his generation, so besides a general love for the electronic gear used and the sounds you could make out of them the creative ideas behind his works were all his own. On his second album a richer sound is found, not only due to the use of the new gear, since some of its tracks where recorded using only his old EMS, but also due to his won experience after having taken his works to the life stages in the Golf Drouot boite, the Lase Olympia venue (on the basement of the famous Olympia), the Paris Planetarium or those for planned one month tour (of which in the end only four dates were accomplished).

Zanov's three albums met with unanimous critical acclaim for the sound quality as well as for the originality of this very personal universe.

We offer the first ever vinyl reissue of Zanov's Moebius 256 301 under license from Pierre Salkazanov himself and with his cooperation, in a limited edition of 500 copies that reproduce its original artwork, come with remastered sound and an 8 page insert with liner notes and photos courtesy of www.audionautas.com plus one bonus 7" with previously unreleased on vinyl format material.

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Arthur Russell

Instrumentals

41,99 €*

LP | 1969 | UK | Reissue (Island)

Release: 2017 / US – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Before Disco, and before the transcendent echoes, Arthur wanted to be a composer.

His journey began in 1972, leaving home in Oskaloosa, Iowa. Heading west to Northern California, Arthur studied Indian classical composition at the Ali Akbar Khan College of Music followed by western orchestral music at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, before ending two years later in New York at the Manhattan School of Music.

Traversing the popular and the serious, Arthur composed “Instrumentals” in 1974, inspired by the photography of his Buddhist teacher, Yuko Nonomura, as Arthur described, “I was awakened, or re-awakened to the bright-sound and magical qualities of the bubblegum and easy-listening currents in American popular music”.

Initially intended to be performed in one 48 hour cycle, “Instrumentals” was in fact only performed in excerpts a handful of times as a work in progress.

The legendary performances captured live in New York at The Kitchen (1975 and 1978) and Franklin St. Arts Center (1977) feature the cream of that eras downtown new music scene including Ernie Brooks, Rhys Chatham, Julius Eastman, Jon Gibson, Peter Gordon, Garrett List, Andy Paley, Bill Ruyle, Dave Van Tieghem, and Peter Zummo.

Pitchfork lauded “Instrumentals” Vol. 1 as a masterpiece and one of Arthur’s “greatest achievements”. Americana touching on Copeland, Ives, and maybe even Brian Wilson. “Instrumentals” Vol. 2 is a moving, deeply pastoral work performed by the CETA Orchestra and conducted by Julius Eastman.

Also included are two of Arthur’s most elusive compositions, Reach One, and Sketch For “Face Of Helen”. Recorded live in 1975 at Phill Niblock’s Experimental Intermedia Foundation, Reach One is a minimal, hypnotic ambient soundscape written and performed for two Fender Rhodes pianos. Sketch For “Face Of Helen” was inspired by Arthur’s work with friend and composer Arnold Dreyblatt, recorded with an electronic tone generator, keyboard and ambient recordings of a rumbling tugboat from the Hudson River.

For this remastered vinyl edition, a key part of Arthur’s musical life has been restored. The sparkling, multidimensional results take the listener closer to Arthur’s coast-to-coast journey: his iconoclastic determination to combine pop and art music; and his desire to make music that would resonate in the present and, ultimately, across time.

The remastered double LP comes with a 12-page booklet including liner notes by Tim Lawrence, Ernie Brooks and Arthur Russell.

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White Noise

An Electric Storm

30,99 €*

LP | 2024 | UK | Original (-ous)

Release: 1969 / UK – Reissue

Genre: Electronic & Dance, Pop

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An Electric Storm is justly renowned among techno boffins as one of the first albums to fuse pop and electronic music before the advent of the Moog synthesizer. But you don't have to be versed in the language of sine waves and oscillators to enjoy this mostly delightful and hugely inventive album. For although the White Noise were almost exclusively composed of virtuoso knob twiddlers and tape splicers moonlighting from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, luckily they were no slouches when it came to penning a decent tune. There's also anarchic humor at play on the manic "Here Come the Fleas," which contains more edits in its two minutes than the whole of Sgt. Pepper's.Yet it's the retro-futurist textures that still grab the ear most. These are sounds that will be familiar to anyone who knows the soundtrack of Forbidden Planet or the early series of Doctor Who, but they had never before been deployed in the service of pop music, nor have they since. And whereas the Moog would supplant all of these primitive, time-consuming techniques of sound generation and manipulation within the year, it also destroyed much of electronic music's spirit of adventure in the process. How could you boldly go where no man had gone before when your sound universe was suddenly overlaid by tram lines and route maps? So although most of the songs that make up the first half of An Electric Storm are pretty much your standard-issue polite British psychedelia (the somewhat embarrassing United States of America-style orgy of "My Game of Loving" aside), the way they're dressed up still sounds innovative decades later. Sometimes songs dissolve into bleeps, whooshes, and gurgles that hurtle between your speakers, but compared to the extended guitar and organ solos that were common currency at the time, they are the very essence of restraint. That said, restraint was put to the sword on the final two tracks, the 12-minute "The Visitations" and the seven-minute "The Black Mass: An Electric Storm in Hell." The former is a decidedly spooky "Leader of the Pack"-style drama with a supernatural twist. The biker, having departed this life, attempts to make one last attempt to cross over and console his grieving beloved, only to fall agonizingly short. If you can suspend your disbelief -- and persuade yourself that the biker's departing spirit doesn't sound like a cappuccino machine -- it's spine-tingling stuff that you won't dare listen to with the lights off. Which is more than can be said for the concluding track, a would-be satanic jam session botched together in a hurry to meet Island's suddenly imposed deadline.

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Ludwig Berger

Garden Of Ediacara

LP | 2023 | UK | Original (Tain)

Release: 2024 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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"Music is a form of world building. I love to develop sonic characters and set them into fictional ecosystems with unique textures, acoustics and atmospheres. Each song forms a different landscape, through which a vocal character guides us and tries to tell us its stories." — Ludwig Berger
Ludwig Berger's 'fictional' debut album "Garden Ediacara" unfolds as a musical eco-fiction, guiding listeners through a speculative ecosystem with synthesized vocals. Infused with storytelling techniques from sci-fi and fantasy, the album intertwines melodic songwriting with electroacoustic sound design. Inspired by hydrofeminism and eco-fiction novels, such as "A Door Into Ocean" by Joan Slonczewski, the album delves into the geological period of Ediacara around 600 million years ago — an era so remote it resonates as a glimpse into a possible future. The Ediacaran period was characterised by a peaceful and thriving ecosystem inhabited by soft-bodied creatures without eyes and bones, which were completely wiped out through the appearance of a new species. "Garden of Ediacara" alludes to this period, celebrating both the pleasures of biodiversity as well as mourning its inevitable loss. The narrative unfolds as an exploration of growth and interconnection in the shadow of a coming extinction. The track titles, written by Daisy Lafarge, reveal themselves as a cohesive poem and contribute to the album's narrative.
Informed by his practice of field recording that focusses on intimate encounters with plants, animals and geological phenomena, as well as his studies in electroacoustic composition, Berger expands his palette for his debut in 'fictional' music. The album prominently features a post-human, non-binary death metal voice synthesizer, physical modeling instruments, and microscopic field recordings of plants, insects, as well as aquatic and geological life. With impressionistic strokes, Ludwig Berger crafts vibrant worlds using glassy timbres and more-than-human voices, guiding listeners through emotionally ambiguous terrain, seamlessly oscillating between moments of intimacy and irritation, melancholy and playfulness.
Ludwig Berger is a landscape sound artist, educator and musician. In his compositions, installations and performances, he enables intimate and playful sonic encounters with plants, animals, buildings and geological entities. He is founder and curator of the label Vertical Music, which releases field recordings and experimental music. Berger holds degrees in electroacoustic composition, as well as musicology, art history and literature. As a sound researcher and teacher at the Institute for Landscape Architecture at ETH Zurich from 2015-2022, he studied the sonic dimension of Japanese gardens, alpine glaciers and urban landscapes, which among other things led to the release of the acclaimed album trilogy 'Melting Landscapes', 'Dammed Landscapes' and 'Buried Landscapes'.

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The Dengie Hundred

Lammas Land

2LP | 2023 | UK | Original (Secret Teachings)

Release: 2023 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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The new recordings from The Dengie Hundred unfurl on Tain Records after a busy year releasing a solo tape on Sagome and a collaborative LP and tape with Japan Blues on Demdike Stare's DDS imprint.

Lammas Land is an album which meditates on the Walthamstow Marshes, an ever-changing watery landscape, rich with history and wildlife. The Dengie Hundred writes:

"I am sitting at my table overlooking the marshes listening to Lammas Land in November 2023, watching crows fight a never-ending aerial battle with the gulls. In summer, you can see bats from here every evening, fluttering around the windows as the light begins to fade, but today it is colder so there is smoke rising from the boats on the River Lea and the dog walkers are wrapped up tight against the wind. Most of Lammas Land was made sitting right here, playing guitar and recording the sounds passing by. I would hang a microphone out of the window to capture the ‘putput’ boat which delivers provisions, or the trains that rattle along the tracks that cut across the marshes and up to Stanstead, carrying passengers to the airport and away. I wonder what tourists make of the marshes as they cross them, the landscape opening up for a moment between the urban sprawl of the East End and the rampant development of Tottenham. They offer a jarring pause of green and sky. I feel very lucky to be living in that pause, a resident, for now…

The album contains a whole year of found sounds recorded from the window and while out walking. It is full of bird song and radio sounds, singing, life.

Many others have been inspired by this space, this pause. The author Esther Kinsky who wrote River, published by Fitzcarraldo Editions, captures this area so perfectly. I borrowed the two track names for this album from her book. I hope she doesn’t mind.

Also, the photographer Paul Fuller whose work reflects the atmosphere I feel here precisely. On hearing the music he wanted to collaborate on the Lammas Land project, He spent a year filming the marsh through the seasons. Some of his images are included with the vinyl release, and there is an accompanying film close to completion. I am so pleased this project is continuing in new forms.

The vinyl also contains a piece of writing, ‘Sound Fishing’, by Gemma Blackshaw, an author, art historian and curator who in a twist of fate also found herself spending time on the marshes, but that is her story, for another day."

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Siraba

29,99 €*

LP | 2023 | EU | Original (Odda)

Release: 2023 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Malian and French pair Siraba unveil their much-anticipated self-titled debut LP on Damian Lazarus’ Secret Teachings label, a 10-track odyssey fusing Mali’s rich musical traditions with cutting-edge electronic music.

Malian hunter Boubacar Samake and Damien Vandesande, one half of the French electronic band dOP, have won plenty of plaudits for the early singles taken from their debut album as duo Siraba. Those singles, spanning across the summer months, have found the pair bring the traditional sound of the Wassoulou - a river valley of West Africa - to the electronic world after 20 years of friendship. The music comes with an important underlying message of love and respect and results in spellbinding tracks that move heart, body and soul, finding a perfect home on Secret Teachings - a left-of-centre alternative label to Lazarus’ celebrated and often more club- focused Crosstown Rebels. With the arrival of the full album, the pair exhibit and showcase the emotional breadth and depth of their music, with detailed explorations of organic textures and native sounds merged with future-focused ideas and concepts.

The title track opens with an atmospheric mix of spoken words and spine-tingling chords that bring rich Afro flavours, while ‘Dounoiia’ is a languid groove made from hand drums and pixelated synth leads that cast a fine spell. The slow-blooming ‘Bani’ brings rich Malian blues and melancholic horns, while ‘Komafly’ is a rich mix of acoustic strings and broken beats that transports you to a hot and dusty landscape. A vital component of the sounds of the Wassoulou, the indigenous stringed instrument the Ngoni features again on the rousing ‘Nanse’ as spiritual vocals sung in Bambara rouse the soul.

‘Djandjo’ is another rich infusion of Malian culture with simmering electronics to make for something both ancient sounding yet futuristic, and the hypnotic ‘Ngana Fôlly’ with its rich bass is a song ‘dedicated to those who fight for the well-being of their families, for unity... a song for the people who also fight a great disease, between life and death’. The sublime ‘Toro’ is a wavy groove perfect for sundown - a deep and inviting sound rich in soulful vocals and dreamy melodies, while ‘Tolonawoulile’ is driven by the intense strumming of the Ngoni with busy hand claps and hurried drums and last of all ‘Fo Te Mokobana’ sinks into a heart-warming slow groove with sweeping strings and Malian percussion all overlaid with impassioned vocals.

A rich listening experience, Siraba’s debut album is an immersive journey and absorbing dive into the minds of two artists breaking new grounds while spotlighting native traditions and musical techniques spanning hundreds of years.

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Kirk Barley

Marionette

Release: 2023 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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The organic minimalism of composer and producer Kirk Barley is collected on his new studio album Marionette, released via Odda Recordings. Whether drawing from field recordings, found sound, instrumental improvisations or synthetic processes, Barley’s compositions evoke unfolding sound worlds, as simple ideas or motifs are layered and developed into complex set-pieces that reveal themselves over time. Marionette showcases the breadth and variety of the Yorkshire-born artist’s sound, weaving together familiar and uncanny moods of rural England and its Victorian architecture, as suggested by the gated garden print of the album’s cover. Unfurling between physical textures – the patina of vinyl crackle or gentle rain – and the hyper-real spaces that his music inhabits, Barley describes the compositions as “landscape or static scene paintings,” with many of the album’s tracks taking nature’s rhythms as their compositional cue. On ‘Seafarer’, this manifests in the repeated synth swells of a boat on rough waters, while title track ‘Marionette’ imagines an eerie scene, were shadows flicker by an open fire. Similarly,‘Lake of Gold’ layers plucked strings at different scales and velocities to create what Barley calls the “rain-like quality” of the rhythm. Drawing from jazz, minimalism and techno, Barley focuses on the detailed qualities of sound, experimenting with time signatures, temporals and tuning systems. His esoteric alter-ego Bambooman (2013-2018) found a home on Matthew Herbert’s Accidental imprint, releasing the album Whispers in 2017. In contrast, under the pseudonym Church Andrews (most notably in collaboration with drummer Matt Davies), he produces synthetic, often beat-focused music, using digital synthesis and algorithmic composition techniques, with the live drum performances triggering and modulating Barley’s synths. The duo has recently performed at festivals such as Rewire and Waking Life, filmed sessions for Fact Magazine and Slate & Ash, and recently had their music played out by Aphex Twin. Under his own name, Barley released his debut album Landscapes in 2019 on 33-33 Records and received support from the likes of NTS Radio and BBC 6 Music. Barley has performed at events across the UK and Europe alongside the likes of Andy Stott, Beatrice Dillon, Jan Jelinek, MF Doom and Madlib. He has also completed commissioned work for the British Art Show, Camden Arts Centre, Mscty and the Open Music Archive.

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Neurotwin Box Edition 2 Marbled + 1 Clear + 1 Black Vinyl Edition

4LP | 2023 | EU | Original (Art21)

71,99 €*

Release: 2023 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Neurotwin is a Trilogy:

Part I In the fight against Alzheimer's, epilepsy, schizophrenia and other diseases characterized by an imbalance in neuronal activity, there are chemical weapons, such as those that try to prevent the protein fragments known as beta-amyloid plaques from developing in the cerebral cortex , and physical, such as electrical stimulation that allow to restore the functionality of brain cells. This last resort, which has already been shown to be effective in modifying the activity of the cerebral cortex, is today a weapon of general intervention. Converting it to precision requires the development of individualized and predictive brain models that allow identifying where and how much to stimulate each patient. To achieve this, an international European team is working on the creation of virtual replicas of the most unknown organ in the body: the Neurotwin project.

According to recent research, the decrease in power in the neuronal oscillations of the gamma band of the cerebral cortex (a pattern whose frequency ranges between 20 and 50 Hertz) favors the development of protein fragments related to Alzheimer's.

Transcranial application of weak electrical currents has proven to be an effective and painless way to modulate brain activity without side effects.

The objective is to create complete computational models of the brain with real data of living beings (human patients) and that allow to anticipate and specify the effects of non-invasive stimulation techniques on neurological mechanisms.

"Never turn your back on a friend." - Alfred Hitchcock

Part II The Neurotwin project is the successor to an initiative that encompasses many projects called Virtual Physiological Human, which was based on the idea of creating a complete model of a human being on a computer, to perform non-invasive tests at the computational level. Now the concept has been derived to "Digital Twin", which seeks not only to have an equal computational model for everyone, but to create "twin" digital models of each patient in order to be able to make personalized medicine from the genome of each individual. Specifically, in our project, we have focused on digital twin brains, which would be representations of patient brains created from data extracted with current neuroimaging and brain activity monitoring techniques.

"Mirrors are used to see the face, Art to see the soul." - George Bernard Shaw

Part III A digital twin is a computer system programmed in such a way that, receiving the same inputs as the physical object or process it is a twin of, it provides the same outputs.

Characteristics of digital twin technology 1 Connectivity 2 Homogenization 3 Reprogrammable and intelligent 4 Digital traces

"There is no light without shadows and no fullness of mind without imperfections. Life requires for its realization, not perfection, but fullness. Without imperfection, there is no progress or growth." - Carl Gustav Young

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Denshi Ongaku No Bigaku / The Aesthetics Of Japanese Electronic Music Volume 2

2LP | 2023 | EU | Original (Cosmocities)

33,99 €*

Eternity Lies Within Or Nowhere

Release: 2023 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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On this second volume, focus is laid on the boogier side of Japanese sonics, nimbly moving the cursor from jazz to Afro-house, via deep technoid wares and spaced-out funky business. Setting the tone without further ado, Seiji Ono’s sun-streaked chugger ‘Celebrate Your Life’ is the very epitome of a time-proof party anthem; a buoyant and catchy ode to Larry Levan’s Paradise Garage that keeps on giving even after the thousandth listen. A dynamic ride down memory lane, Uyama Hiroto’s Afro-Bossa number ‘Compass’ delivers a suspended moment in time, halfway the soothing ethereality of Brazilian folk and syncopated patterns of African music. Up with the very much sub-Saharan-influenced ‘Pray’, J.A.K.A.M. takes us on a luminous ride across endless dunes of sand and lush oases of melodic abundance and polyrhythmic flair.

Yuu Udagawa turns in the jacking ‘We Float’, a proper NYC-style piece of abstract hip-hop and Chicagoan house laced into one lithe dance-floor churner, whereas Jazztronik summons ancient woodlands spirits on the kalimba-heavy ’Neon Forest’, ushering us into a world of pure soulfulness where ghostly silhouettes float in a haze of shakuhachi flutes and vaporous pads. We all know a classic slab of piano house done the right way is hard to resist, but when Brisa opts for this tried-and-tested route on ’State of Mind’, he nevertheless injects it with the kind of refinement and oomph you simply have to bow down before. The Backwoods remix of Ryoma Takemasa ‘Deepn’’ opens a spacious window that looks out onto a dreamy skyscape where the stripped-back rhythmic grammar of atmospheric techno rubs shoulders with that of electronica’s deep focus.

Not just contributing the aforementioned remix, The Backwoods - alias DJ Kent, steps up with the big-room momentum of ‘Cloud Nine’ - an alt-rock-influenced piece of racing electronics bound for ecstatic after-partying and beachside boogie with your loved one at sunrise. In the hands of Hiroshi Watanabe, 909state ‘RaTaTaTam’ morphs into an entrancingly beautiful mix of slo-burning prog techno and neo-classical orchestration, just as sleek and elegant as it proves deadly in a club context. Graced with similar melodic accoutrements, Satoshi Fumi’s rework of Tomi Chair ‘Remorse’ offers a grandiose and mood-enhancing display of piano-riddled techno bravura, clearly geared up for climactic DJ use. A magmatic finale that lacks neither that stadium-sized oomph, nor Fumi’s hallmark of all-around compositional excellence.

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Canaan Balsam

CD | 2023 | UK | Original (Where To Now?)

LP | 2024 | UK | Original (Dell'Orso)

Release: 2023 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Canaan Balsam’s work revolves around the exploration of the dead space between ambient and new age music, the liminal zone between the harshness of industrial, and the beatific serenity of devotional music. ‘Eternity lies within or nowhere’ builds on the themes of loneliness, Isolation, and vulnerability, first explored on their debut album ‘Cruise Utopia’ (Modern Obscure Music). Responding to the context where ever-expanding modes of communication seem only to blur the line between connectivity and solitude, Canaan often returns to the theme of Isolation in his work, creating a deep melancholy - exploring how it can grow and metastasize, until it becomes incommunicable, resistant to empathy; an alien host overtaking the body. Canaan’s considered, emotionally aware experimentations hold that unique power to stop our world dead in its tracks, lulling the listener through the darkness but ultimately towards the light - there is intense hope within Canaan’s work, where pieces guide us through a crushingly low emptiness, but always towards glistening introspective peaks. “I wanted a music that spoke to solidarity, that in a quiet manner offered solace, a brief step outside of this world - not a meditation, nor a background ambient shimmer, or anything vague. That inspired to an almost religious intensity of serenity. Something with the potential to engender empathy and clarity. A music you could wear like an amulet, like a spell, like a religious medal around your neck. Music as protection.” Canaan often uses spoken word to further bring his soundscapes to life, but these self penned passages are far from being clumsily walloped vocal tinglers, instead Canaan’s use of voice compliments and contextualizes the states explored within his pieces with hauntingly evocative precision, where carefully curated guest speakers lament a often bleak scene of dread, despair, and longing recollection. The album culminates with the incredible ‘Requiem for a Wolf’, encapsulating the hints of light that have flickered the album, but blooming them to become 6 minutes of pure celestial minimalism, where bells swing in and out of focus, and radiant zither play looms below Canaan’s swelling ambience. Produced and mixed by Canaan Balsam. Mastered by Rupert Clervaux. Art design by James Hines and Liam Cosford. All tracks by Canaan Balsam except for 'I AM Skeleton' by Canaan Balsam / Saint Jude's Infirmary. 'Rat in a skull '- narration by Daniel Mutch. 'You are the architect of your own utopia' & 'A passive apocalypse': narration by Alex Johnston. 'You fell into a screen as you had no place left to fall': narration by Cosima Cobley Carr. 'I am Skeleton': narration by Jack Vettriano, taken from the track by Saint Jude's Infirmary.

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Mark Van Hoen

Plan For A Miracle

28,99 €*

Release: 2024 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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“I like to work with a variety of instruments and set ups,” says Mark Van Hoen, sometimes known as Locust or Autocreation but here working under his own name on the excellent Plan For A Miracle, his first physical release of solo music since 2018’s Invisible Threads. ”Sometimes it’s literally in my studio, with all the hardware electronics available. Sometimes the laptop, using software instruments. Some of the tracks on this record were recorded in the desert (Joshua Tree) using a 4-track tape machine and small modular synthesiser set up. Each track was recorded in different location using different instruments, which accounts for the distinction between each piece. It’s also about my own reaction to my environment, and what’s going on in my life at the time.”

The Croydon-born Van Hoen started musical life in the early 1990s, signing for R&S records in 1993 but developing his own, myriad and distinctive style across a range of releases on Touch, Editions Mego and other labels, using a battery of instruments, including analogue synthesizers and taking a number of different approaches to recording, rather than ploughing a single sonic furrow. He has worked on a number of collaborations, including with Nick Holton and Neil Halstead of Slowdive, under the moniker of Black Hearted Brother - their Stars Are Our Home was released in 2013. “I have known Neil Halstead since 1992,” says Van Hoen. “He shared a house with me for a couple of years, and the music I was making and listening to along with clubs

I was attending had an influence particularly on Pygmalion, the final Slowdive album on Creation.”

Each track on Plan For A Miracle does indeed sound like a world unto itself, a mini-environment, a weather condition, an ecosystem created for the moment. It’s a collection of tracks recorded over the past few years, released on Bandcamp - despite his apparent absence, Van Hoen works constantly. Opener “Climates”, in its exquisite limpidity, feels like a homage to Brian Eno, one of his most formative influences in his teen years, commencing with Music For Films, which he bought in 1979. “This Is For Them”, feels like a ghostlike throwback to early drum & bass or electronica, reminiscent of his own, earliest outings. “There have been a number of requests from labels to make some more music like my very early releases on R&S,” says Van Hoen. “This is part of ‘letting go ’and realising that there’s nothing less creative about going back to those styles again.”

“Pencil Of Spheres” is something else again, a magnificent, imaginary glass structure, shimmering, refracting, without visible means of suspension, a thing of impossible beauty. “Electric Lights” evokes an abandoned fairground, its lights still pulsating, its music lingering. “The Underpass”, meanwhile, insofar as it reminds of anything at all, is faintly reminiscent of Cluster or Neu’s! West German ambience, the urban mundane rendered magical, the sodium lights, the whitewashed walls. The reverberant, faintly oriental chimes of “Insight” transport us yet again, burgeoning and intensifying.

The landscapes, the skyscapes rendered on Plan For A Miracle feel unpopulated as a rule - but when he does introduce vocal elements, Van Hoen has a history of doing so to spectacular effect - think of “Real Love” from 1998’s Playing With Time, the seductive intonation of its title recurring throughout like a series of massive holograms, echoing, stuttering, breaking up, surging. Here, there are just the faintest of vocals, barely distinct, disquieting. “There’s been a bit of a game changer in recent times,” explains Van Hoen. “AI software that enables you to extract vocals and instrument parts from virtually any recording. That means sampling individual parts from existing sources is no longer limited to the original mix exposing certain parts soloed. The vocal parts I use are from multiple sources and often pitch shifted altered rhythmically and melodically.“ There’s further vocal chatter on “I Really Do”, proceeding at a faster pace as if giving chase, or being pursued - distant, enigmatic. “The Music”, meanwhile, its beat tolling, lost in its own fog of static, features a curious intonation, like the ghost of a lost Walker Brother.

Sadly, the album’s title is in reference to a personal tragedy on Van Hoen’s part - the loss of his wife. Titles such as “I Won’t Give Up”, which faintly reminds of another Eno masterpiece, Another Green World, in its nautical hurly-bury, or the pastoral strains of “Mrs Who”, heavily clouded with sadness, seem to allude to this. “In fact the record was recorded entirely

before she passed away,” says Van Hoen, “most of it before she even became very ill. The title was given to the album when it started to look like she wasn’t going to make it beyond a few months. It was something Osho said - “plan for a miracle” - so it was a statement of hope. Unfortunately it was not to be.” Although the album is non-thematic, non-specific in its atmospheres, sound paintings, elegant structures it most certainly stands as a magnificent monument to Osho’s memory.

-David Stubbs.

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Cocoon Compilation U 6x12" Purple Vinyl Edition

6LP | 2023 | Original (Cocoon)

96,99 €*

Rythmetic: The Compositions of Norman McLaren

Release: 2023 / Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Long-awaited, finally Cocoon Recordings is back with its renowned Cocoon Compilation. The iconic series continues with the 21st edition “Compilation U” and brings top-notch artists together as usual, providing zeitgeist and versatile sound. From deep and hypnotic techno beats to uplifting and euphoric melodies, there is something for everyone. Whether you're a seasoned clubber or a casual listener, this album is guaranteed to get your heart racing and your feet moving.

New Jackson conjures a beautiful beginning into existing with a spheric acidic micro house opener. Melancholic harmonies combine with spacy "Acid Jackson" vocoder parts while the bouncing sequence gives this track an exceptional unique mood. A musical journey that could go on forever. Next up is German house legend Ian Pooley. “DDG Talk” offers distinctive funk with a deep grooving rhythm. Synth parts ring out like tightly stretched rubber bands and you can literally hear Ian’s love for special analog curiosities. Complex modulations add to the charm of this piece and lead to a nifty production with a certain vintage charm. Sweet vibes that fit almost any moment. The impulsive deep tech track “Il Rotori”

then welcomes us to the circus ring and shows us the attraction of the virtuoso. Grinding hi-hats shake up and down alongside progressive sequences to form a cloud of happy frequencies. A sweet memory that lifts the energy of the moment and is reminiscent of a sunset on a beloved island.

DJ Tennis smoothly takes us to the next phase with a warm musical embrace. The bassline with Italian flavor grooves true to form, recalling the early 2000s. The perfect accompaniment for a sundowner. Shimmering zap sounds, hitting stabs, and energetic vocals that command us to “Take It, Take It” as we will for sure! Drumcomplex & Frank Sonic get things rolling with “Lacalute” serving hypnotic shaker patterns and a charismatic synthesizer sequence. Sven has already been playing this tune on heavy rotation since the beginning of the year. So, let’s head off on a thrilling trip with lightspeed. Get on the high-tension lift, next stop: peak time! The wild ride continues with a remarkable techno track from Michael Klein, primed to fill the main floor with a significant sound pressure level. “Time Warp” is a warehouse monster that offers a powerful bassline groove, a booming bass drum, and pulse-width synth madness, so time appears to move unpredictably.

Motoring on, a UK Rave 90s breakbeat rhythm – brought into the future with the perfect zeitgeist. Benjamin Damage is a hardware lover without a doubt, his machines seem to be an extension of his soul, which can be clearly heard in his sound. “Light” appears in wonderful harmony, and the blissful string sounds beam us out of the galaxy. Magical female vocal parts add the final touch, Benjamin did it again right down to the last detail. Balm for the soul from Levon Vincent, this tune is made for open air. The melancholic energy fluctuates between hope and summertime sadness but leaves us with a warm and fuzzy feeling. We reach a high energy level due to the radiant synth hook line and the pure 909 techno beat gains the underground feeling of the track in contrast to its comprehensiveness. Coming up next is “Cold Tuning” by Space Dimension Controller. It’s a timeless sci-fi saga, nostalgic and futuristic at the same time. Dreamy synth pads take us into another world and dimensions quickly rush by. A beautiful and touching atmosphere evolves, and the slightly off-key sensual string harmonies are predestined to generate emotions. A fast floating 808 kick expedites the spaceship beyond infinity. Mission accomplished!

Entering the final stage, no one less than Orlando Voorn spreads happiness all over. Orlando’s particular shuffle rhythm paired with alien reverbed synthesizer stabs form the basis of “Samurai”. But the outstanding feature is especially the noisy gritty bit-crushed synth hook line in connection with energetic and graceful vocal samples. As the penultimate, Marco Faraone & The Florentian Cabaret serve a playful and harmonious composition with 80s charm, which clearly stands out from their independent releases. Lovely organ sounds are layered with shimmering Roland-Jupiter-like synth pads, bringing everybody back together on the dance floor in the morning hours. To close things out, of course, we need an after-hour vibe provided by a stripped-down minimalistic groove from Fango. “Betta” invites you to close your eyes and let yourself go due to its hopeful carpet of sound and love designed to stimulate your soul. It’s a deep immersion in emotions and the perfect ending for this year's compilation.

Experience the magic for yourself, each track takes you on a journey through different emotions and moods, leaving you breathless and wanting more. From the moment you press play, you will be transported into a world filled with pulsating beats, hypnotic rhythms, and mind-bending soundscapes. But what makes this release truly special is its ability to surprise you at every turn. Just when you think you have heard it all, a new track comes along and blows your mind. Compilation U is a seamless blend of cutting-edge production and timeless musicality. “U” like ultimate music collection that will transport you into a world of pure sonic bliss.

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Norman McLaren

LP | 2024 | US | Original (We Are Busy Bodies)

Brothers G.R.Y.M. (Too Poetic, Brainstorm & E#)

Release: 2024 / US – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Pioneering Scottish-Canadian animator Norman McLaren (1914-1987) - creator of seminal short films Dots, Neighbours, Synchromy and many more - is remembered in first ever release of soundtrack works, self-composed from the 1940’s to 1970’s and forecasting the following half-century of electronic music.

Norman McLaren was once described by composer, music theorist, and mathematician Milton Babbitt as “the first electronic musician.” In addition to his pioneering work in animation, the electronic soundtracks McLaren created for his own films employ astonishing foresight and a characteristically precise methodology. They also crystallise boundless creativity, wit and whimsy, and illuminative brilliance into a unique insight to his remarkable mind, with or without visual accompaniment.

Rythmetic: The Compositions of Norman McLaren marks the first time his soundtracks have been released on record, carefully curated from his most important film works, hours of archival tapes, and multiple versions of the same key compositions. It represents an essential overview of McLaren as a composer, in neat dovetail with McLaren the filmmaker. Both are crucial figures in the respective developments of their fields, opening doors to a future that might not have existed without McLaren.

As an animator, McLaren was renowned for utilising or inventing techniques at their very vanguard and shaping to his needs the rudimentary technology of the era. Many of these techniques and technological adaptations, developed at the National Film Board of Canada over the 1940’s and 50’s, would eventually become adopted into standard practice for animation. He also blazed new trails for soundtrack composition: having heard the glue of spliced film reel produce sound as it passed through his equipment, he began meticulously applying his own cuts and notches to the tape and measuring the frequency values of the tones these striations would emit. Over years of refinement, he created a series of cards to correspond to eight octaves of musical notes, frequency by frequency, and to recruit these cards to compose his soundtracks. It was a way to maintain total creative control and freedom over his own work - every single frame would be processed “the McLaren way”.

“He could have used a synthesiser,” writes long-term assistant, friend, and filmmaker of McLaren documentaries Don McWilliams, also at the National Film Board, “but he had his own method and he stuck with it.” John Cage was an ardent fan, inviting McLaren to his infamous downtown NYC socials and once even writing to McLaren to beg a recommendation for his recruitment at the National Film Board.

Unsurprisingly, McLaren was musically capable and aware throughout his career. He was an inquisitive listener, often drawn to rhythmic expression found outside western music, and he collected records for both reference and enjoyment. West African and Chinese music were particular pleasures, as well as the gypsy jigs that in his youth had informed his own practice as a violin player.

The opening piece to this compilation, “Now Is The Time”, is crafted from trilling, birdsong arpeggiations of dulcet high frequency tones that chatter and warble in scattered dialogue. Accompanying the clouds, multiple suns, and dancing figures of the film, the soundtrack is alive with joy and wonderment. Next, “Rythmetic”, soundtracking McLaren’s famed numeric sequence visualisation, pitters and patters with the types of glitching rhythms so coveted by contemporary electronic music almost a century later. Even from these first pieces alone, it is readily apparent that McLaren could not have achieved the effect he desired with scored instrumentation. The “McLaren way”, so crucial to his process, is as much foundational to his soundtracks as it is to the films themselves.

Despite his acclaim and recognition within the world of film and animation - he won an Oscar, a Palme d’Or, is a favourite of George Lucas’, and is recorded in UNESCO’s cultural heritage archives (none of which interested him) - Norman McLaren is not a Walt Disney, Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, or an Ub Iwerks. His work is unflinchingly outré. Seeking out experimental, innovative, and unconventional modes of storytelling, his creative expression went even deeper than pioneering methodology and a prolific output, becoming part of the man himself as his working hours in the studio became longer and longer as his career blossomed. Even his straightest films are decidedly odd at their core, revealing not only a playful and joyously childlike sense of humour, but also the perpetual pursuit of perfection that fuelled his filmmaking throughout his life.

A gay man, McLaren also resisted the normative social structures of the day in his personal life, acutely aware of the legal implications of his relationship with lifelong partner and fellow NFB director Guy Glover. He also remains revered as the most generous and trusting of teachers, bringing under his wing young or inexperienced filmmakers in whom he saw passion and promise. His second protegee George Dunning, who went on to produce Yellow Submarine for the Beatles, had only recently graduated when McLaren brought him to work in the NFB studios.

Towards the end of McLaren’s career, McWilliams asked him how he perceived his own legacy; how Norman McLaren would be remembered in a hundred years’ time. “A filmmaker who made some interesting films,” was his reply. Modest, funny, wise, and yet knowingly sly. An answer most McLaren.

William Norman McLaren was born 11th April 1914 in Stirling, Scotland. He died January 27th 1987 in Hudson, Canada.

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Ghetto Repaired Young Minds EP (1989-1992)

LP | 2017 | UK | Original (Chopped Herring)

36,99 €*

LP | 2024 | UK | Original (Open Space)

Release: 2017 / UK – Original

Genre: Hip Hop, Electronic & Dance

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Prince Paul hit Chopped Herring up to release this dope early 90's project!!

The first incarnation of the group was formed around 1989 in Amityville, Long Island, New York, although the family grew up in Long Island. The family of four brothers (Anthony, Richard, Joel, and Edward) and one sister (Dawne), of which Anthony (Poetic) was the eldest, were born to Trinidadian parents who moved from Trinidad and Tobago in 1971, making their first residence in Queens, New York for a short time, then moving to Long Island. John Berkeley (a pastor and a local businessman) and Ela Berkeley (a homemaker, cook-nutritionist, and teacher) were both singers and artistic in general, and they encouraged artistic expression in their five children. The family was well-rounded musically, singing gospel and R&B up to their early teens all around New York, other states, and Canada as "The Berkeley Singers". Anthony (Poetic), Dawne, and Joel (Brainstorm) sang, accompanied by Richard on the drums and Eddie (E-Sharp) on the piano or keyboard.

Poetic began rhyming in his early teens in Wyandanch, and was known by many names and building a name for himself as a lyrical battle MC. He changed his name to Poetic around 1985, and in 1986 he formed the crew known as Too Poetic, who in 1988-89 released a modestly popular single called: “God Made Me Funky/Poetical Terror”, under the DNA/Tommy Boy Music imprint. The group’s relationship with Tommy Boy Records eventually panned out for various reasons, scrapping the album and making Poetic very displeased, an early casualty of the politics of the music business.

While Poetic was just beginning his formal hip hop career in 1987–89, Brainstorm was attending college at the State University of New York at Farmingdale, Long Island, where he was the roommate of Brooklyn’s own Super DJ Richie Rich (who had been in Third Base, Clark Kent’s Supermen, and the movie Juice). The university was host to many hip hop artists as visitors for parties and to do shows like Rakim, EPMD, Producer-Super DJ Clark Kent, and Biz Markie.

After Brainstorm finished his college run in 1989, he took time to learn many aspects of the music business, but in 1989 he and Poetic mutually decided to pair up with a hardcore lyrical edge, original word play, and acute metaphors, after many collaborations between them since 1985. Thus, Da Bruthas G.R.Y.M. was born shortly after Too Poetic’s deal with DNA/Tommy Boy had soured. The energy and high chemistry between these true by-blood brothers at the time was, simply put, natural.

In the first Bruthas G.R.Y.M. era (c. 1989–1992), the brothers Poetic (Brother One) and Brainstorm (Brother Two) garnered much respect on the underground hip hop scene of New York Their first official demo featured the underground bangers like “Bruthas G.R.Y.M.”, “Circle-Circle-Dot-Dot”, the politically charged “Popcorn” and “Livin’ In Hell (Had To Survive)”. The demo featured production mastering by Nate "NATO" Tinsley, their in-house producer Semi-Automatic (Pedro Sims, Mr. Semi, Gravediggaz), and the brothers themselves. After blazing underground radio and live shows around New York City, they were listed in The Source magazine as the best unsigned rap group of 1989. The crew was then managed by longtime friend Jack Pope (Jack Sprat, Starving Artists Entertainment), who later became the road manager of the Gravediggaz.

These cassette tape “dubs” floated around the New York streets in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and their demo eventually made their way to the seasoned musical ear of fellow Amityvillain Prince Paul (Stetsasonic, De La Soul, Gravediggaz) from his association with the local Long Island artists who had met the brothers and saw their raw talent. In 1990 Prince Paul decided to fund and executive produce further demos, finding various other known and up-and-coming producers for the unnamed project, as well as being the tentative DJ for the group.

Then the unfortunate happened – being disenfranchised by the politics and games of the music business and life in general, Brainstorm just quit altogether for “personal enlightenment”, before any formal deal could solidify. Poetic understood about Brainstorm’s personal path at that stage in his life, but was silently devastated because they were so close to sealing a major record deal that would have propelled them further into Hip Hop history.

Their original demo, even today, is still one of Prince Paul’s favorites. It was not until 1992 that Poetic, after Brainstorm quit in 1991, that it is said that Poetic “fell on hard times”, including a short period of homelessness.

Brainstorm would continue to write for leisure and therapeutic reasoning, but never to seriously pursue a music career, moving to Brooklyn New York and later down south to various states; in fact, Brainstorm was so “finished with Hip Hop” that he gave Poetic all of his original rhyme books to use at his own discretion – some lyrics ending up on Gravediggaz projects.

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Puli

Swirling

LP | 2022 | EU | Original (MAL)

Release: 2024 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Open Space is proud to present our first ever full-length LP by LA’s newest 3-man band, Puli. Some words from our dear friend Matt McDermott below: In recent years, a cadre of musicians from the east side of Los Angeles have reestablished the city of angels as the first city of Balearica. Alex Ho’s “Move Through It” followed in the lumbering footsteps of Project Sandro’s “Blazer.” Now, there’s a new landmark for the floating west coast sound. Swirling, the first album from LA supergroup Puli. If you’ve got your ear to the ground you know the names involved here. Drummer and producer Damon Palermo’s pedigree stretches back a good 15 years or so, starting off with dub punks Mi Ami. Phil Cho is one of the busiest DJs, musicians and advocates for the deep stuff in LA, throwing legendary hillside parties under the Third Place banner. John Jones, the preternaturally talented guitarist and electronic tinkerer, records as AV Moves, is a key member of the Suzanne Kraft and Baba Stiltz live configurations and plays in The Trilogy Tapes-affiliated act Geo Rip. But this listing of personnel and credentials puts too fine a point on it. Puli are three close friends who go to parties, DJ and get tacos together, repairing to their Chinatown studio a few times a week and coming out with remarkably textured, idiosyncratic downtempo jams. Building off the solid foundation of their 7-inch of heavyweight dubs for Melbourne’s Constant Delay, Swirling is an exploration of new horizons in chill out. “Ramona” acts a statement of purpose—with halftime/double-time dub-tinged rhythms, hazy yet bright synth motifs and atmospheric guitar from Jones, not terribly far from the expansive approach of Japanese dub aesthetes Pecker. “Cloudy,” meanwhile, is a sort of deconstructed and bittersweet Balearic pop featuring Cho’s ethereal vocals. “Bongo Springs” is steppers’ house not far from close LA peer Benedek or the Mood Hut crew up north. But what truly sets this record apart is the space and layers in the production—while it’s nominally an electronic record, Puli is a band that has slowly crafted these songs in the rehearsal space. “Havana Jam” cruises along a sliding roundwound bass guitar take with dubby chords and textural guitars. Palermo’s hand drums and live percussion enmesh perfectly with icy pads on “Leech Seed Dub.” Cho is back on the mic for the gorgeous closer, “C.S.B.”, underpinned by breakbeat and trunk-rattling sub bass. Puli doesn’t sound like anyone else, and is ultimately reflective of the city itself. Listening to Swirling feels like navigating a warren of side streets in the eternal sunshine. Take the drive and dive.

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Gav & Jord (Equiknoxx)

Writings Ov Tomato

12" | 2024 | UK | Original (Find Your Own)

Release: 2022 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Jon K & Elle Andrews MAL imprint returns with its second release - a long rumoured excursion from Equiknoxx skippers Gavin “Gavsborg” Blair and Jordan “Time Cow” Chung operating under the Gav & Jord masthead for the first time. It’s their most probing x tight set of productions thus far - showcasing that naturally wild rhythmic mutability that’s earned them followers in every corner of the experimental paradigm over the last few years. ‘Writings Ov Tomato’ ties off a certain loop between Equiknoxx and their early supporter Jon K, who was pivotal in bringing their productions to the attention of Sean Canty at DDS, who went on to release their by-now seminal ‘Bird Sound Power’ album a good half-decade ago. This new set of tracks came about after MAL suggested to the duo that they explore any under-excavated musical territory they’d been thinking about since they began to tour the world, and the result is this incredible, purely instrumental LP that romps between Autechrian mutations, avant R&B swangers, Jersey-style sluggers and proper, wig-flipping club missiles. Who else would boot off a new LP with a track titled ‘Childish House Mafia’? The fact it sounds like Actress formulating an industrial noise tape using ritual chants just makes it all the more screwy. The title track returns the duo to more familiar ground, with prickly “Bird Sound Power” drums notched up a few BPM and spliced with whirring trap hats and disorienting synths. ‘A Yow Jon K’ is a Kingston-fried take on sun-bleached Miami electro, with a rolling beat filled out by Gav & Jord’s hard boiled soundboard x foley crunches, before ‘Pig Pilot’, the record’s most substantial cut, loops JBC Radiophonic Workshop convulsions around a booming 4/4 that wouldn’t sound completely out of place at Berghain’s Klubnacht. Saturating the hook and allowing ferric hats to fill in the gaps, the pair manage to fabricate a sound closer to 1970s library music than Villalobos, and we’d wager you ain’t ever heard owt like it. Combine all this with lower-key slithering industrial-ambient moments like the plughole-wonked outro ‘Brent Bird’ (named after Gav’s producer brother), the tuned tinkle of ‘No Sweat in my Sweatpants’ and the airborne elegance of ‘Appinness’, and you’ve got another Equiknoxx joint that draws from the syncretic mosaic of Afro-Latin-Sino-US influences and re-contextualises them into remarkably odd and effective structures that dance in the integers of a myriad styles.

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Ceri

Can't Pay My Bills EP

Release: 2024 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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THE Remixes ARE Vinyl Only!
With Early DJ support from:
Kerri Chandler, Luke Una, Muallem, Eliza Rose, Chloe Caillet, Cassy, DJ Seinfeld, Skream, The Carry Nation, Samuel Deep, Enzo Siragusa, Djebali, Alison Swing, Fred P, Gerd, Nightmares on Wax, Jamie Jones, Radio Slave, Tsha, Moxie, Lakuti, Sarah Story and more...
From London to Ibiza via Berlin, inspired by Chigago and Detroit, Ceri finds her truth in proper house music. 'Can't Pay My Bills' EP provides a message of hope during uncertain times. Acknowledged as a "rising selector" by Crack Magazine, producer, label boss and record digger Ceri steps into 2024 with a brand-new EP 'Can't Pay My Bills" via her imprint "Find Your Own Records". "The title track is inspired by the current economic situation in the world, and also features a positive message that reflects the values and true origins of house music, reinforcing the belief that we can overcome our circumstances and improve our situation" - Ceri The new four track EP drips with Chicago, New York and Detroit jackin' house with garage influence, and a sprinkle of ripping UK breakbeat for good measure.
The people's producer D'Julz steps up, on remix duties, contributing not one but two remixes to the label's ongoing message of artist authenticity and collaboration. The remixes will be vinyl only, and the originals will see a digital release later in the year. "I have collected D'Julz music for many years, his label started around the same time I started DJing, and it was and still is, one of the few labels that I buy on sight. I know it will always be quality. Something I aspire to do with my label too."– Ceri.
As an artist led label 'Find Your Own Records' has become a home for genuine house legends Mr G, Fred P, Alex Arnout, and has rightly gained support from Mixmag, Resident Advisor, BBC Radio 1, BB6Music and BBC1Xtra. Support for the label so far comes from the likes of: Midland, Ben UFO, Move D, K-hand, Fumiya Tanaka, Fred P, Paranoid London, Steve O'Sullivan, Tristan Da Cunha, Ryan Elliot, Lakuti, DJ Deep, Kerri Chandler, Chloe Caillet, Fred P, Jeremy Underground, Cici, D'Julz, Chez Damier and more… As a DJ Ceri has performed marathon sets at Fabric, Corsica Studios, Pikes Ibiza, Thisishaven, and recently made her debut at the legendary Panorama Bar/Berghain. Confidently sharing the booth with club favourites Ryan Elliot, Jeremy Underground, Paranoid London and Objekt it's certain the next year of live shows will be ones to remember for the UK artist.

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12" | 2022 | EU | Original (Lowlife Cartel)

Kodoku

11,99 €*

Release: 2022 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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For their sixth instalment, Lowlife Cartel follow up to their last two compilations (“Pimps Improvisations” in 2018 and “Omnia Vanitas” in 2020) with a new six-track VA named “Kodoku”; a vortical release, both bold and forward-looking, while fully geared for the club environment. Taking its title from a poisonous magic from the medieval Japanese era obtained by placing several venomous insects in a jar and letting them kill one another until only one survives, “Kodoku” - which interestingly also translates as “solitude” - features a cast of producers old and new to the fold including Saverio Celestri, the faceless △, Prince de Takicardie, Tundramane & Ko$te, Solar Alliance and Shampoo.

A staple element of the Lowlife Cartel bunch, Saverio Celestri paves the way and dishes out one of his signature jagged, EBM-informed weapons in “Sundays”. Through this hotchpotch of acid-steeped bass entangled with a frantic newbeat-ish swing and razor-sharp synthwaves, the Italian producer shows off the raw and playful facets of his craft to optimal effect. Unknown contributor △ clocks in with “Crachats de Lune”, a proper ominous banger going straight for the jugular with its clever mix of dusty, drum-laden churn, processed vox stabs and sci-fi-indebted laser bursts flashing by unrelentingly. Tailored for hi-octane action at the defunct Boccaccio or Hacienda, Prince de Takicardie “Jam’on’Acid (House Mix)” blows the winds of euphoria across the club like it was done in 1995. Vibing to a pulsating mix of rabid snares, 303-vehicled charges and mangled vocal samples on a classic free rave tip, throwback material that packs a punch.

Flip it over and here is North-American duo Tundramane & Ko$te shifting the scope to Memphis chopped-and-screwed in true hardcore fashion. Straight-out aggression, “Brick To The Face” lives up to its title, so expect leaving the place with a few teeth out your mouth and a good concussion, though more side effects could appear over repeated listens. A radical U-turn from the previous, Ute.- related triplet Solar Alliance - alias Ekkel, Oprofessionell and Mikkel Rev - bring their dashing trance touch to the comp with “Quest for Kiba”, an uptemp maelstrom for the senses, swirling and whirling up until space and time make no damn sense any more. Topping off that versatile tour de force, Japanese producer Shampoo adds his delectably sensuous spin on the record with the lush, sample-heavy lo-fi appeal of “四季ノ歌”. Unpolished feelgood vibes, sun- streaked soulfulness and deft-handed MPC wizardry are on the menu for this ultimate ride and jolly finale.

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Tropical Disco Records Volume 24

12" | 2022 | UK | Original (Tropical Disco)

15,99 €*

Safe In The Hands Of Love

Release: 2022 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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One thing that is written in stone even in these days of near endless uncertainty is that when Topical Disco unleashes one of their vinyl releases they are a no questions asked, must have. For a label which regularly dominates the top spot of the download charts they still consistently manage to up the ante for their vinyl drops. It’s no wonder at all that the previous editions have gone on to become collector’s editions, disappearing from the shelves as quickly as you can say here today, gone tomorrow. Volume 24 easily keeps this incredible run of club vinyl masterpieces going strong. Packed across two side of black gold are tracks from newcomers and scene heavy hitters alike Toscana, Toby O’Conner, Charly Angelz and Frank Virgilio. The mysterious Toscana leads the way with the wonderfully enigmatic ‘The Girl With The Red Hair’, a six and a half minute slice of pleasure packed Balearic disco. Incessant, warm and inviting it combines a divine groove heavy bassline, funky guitar licks and a subtle percussive backbone with a rather brilliant stand-out guitar solo. This is a track which is guaranteed to fill those summer dancefloors. Next up is Toby O’Conner who is returning to Tropical Disco after his lauded ‘The Heist / 1920 EP’ with another high energy slice of disco goodness in the shape of ‘Cave Of Gold’. Again this is classic Tropical Disco, combing both live chops with jazz overtones as throbbing club ready drums provide the framework for a bubbling bassline, subtle keys and sax solo’s aplenty to weave their magic. Expect jazz inspired shapes to be thrown on dancefloors across the globe when this one drops. Over on the flip is Charly Angelz, another artist who has been making a considerable swirl on the disco scene of late. ‘Mother Phunk’ is very aptly named with an absolute gem of a bassline front and centre as classic funk vocal chops, vibey pads and guitar stabs all combine perfectly with earworm strings for anther sure fire floor filler. Closing the EP out is scene stalwart Frank Virgilio. Hailing from Napoli Frank has been behind a virtual disco smorgasbord over the five years including regular chart bothering appearances on Tropical disco. ‘What We Love’ tips its hat to the golden era of house music, think 90’s Soulfuric meets MAW. Vibes abound here from the classic drum sounds right through to the divine ethereal percussion which adds that touch of class. This is another track which will sound just perfect on the golden Isle this coming summer, did some-one say Ibizan boat party? We’re onboard! Support across Mi Soul & House FM.

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Yves Tumor

2LP | 2018 | UK | Original (Warp)

38,99 €*

2LP | 2023 | UK | Original (Hell Yeah)

Release: 2018 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Yves Tumor shows the world that it's Safe In The Hands Of Love with his debut album for Warp.

Released into the wild with no fanfare or prior warning, Yves Tumor makes good on the audience following astonishing singles 'Noid', 'Licking An Orchid (feat. James K)' and 'Lifetime'. Whereas each of these showed a different side to his sound, one that arguably wasn't afraid to immerse itself in the close running interests of skinny-jeans 'n' all indie, heartfelt romantic ballads and soulful RNB bangers, Yves Tumor's seeming refusal to be creatively pigeonholed is the most vital and compelling cog within his musical identity. Walking a tightrope between being on the one hand, one of the most seductive, soulful musicians of modern times, while also being a serious aficionado of harsh n0!se, as made evident with his recent years' live sets which have become something of a legendary experience/assault for each audience that has entered into the high-intensity sound-field that his on-stage presence creates.

Safe In The Hands Of Love captures each and every side of Yves Tumor's musicianship with an elegant mix of pop numbers and more "experimental" de-constructions. With the spirit of Danish noise/synth/punk/tekno institution Posh Isolation running through the lifeblood of the music, so much so that in a perfect bonding two of the Posh Isolation crew's finest Loke Rahbek and Frederikke Hoffmeier both appear on the album in solidarity with Yves' vision. The recordings are uncharacterizable as anything other than Yves Tumor music. From the gothic cloak 'n' dagger cyberpunk punishment of 'Hope In Suffering (Escaping Oblivion & Overcoming Powerlessness)' featuring Oxhy & Puce Mary, through to the 'Economy of Freedom' produced with Croation Amor and moving along with all the sludgy heaviness of a thousand broken hearts, the feelings explored upon offer a kaleidoscopic union of classic songwriting and lobotomized sound experiments. Chapters like 'Recognizing The Enemy' and 'Licking An Orchid' capture a sense of near blissful introspective blues, sounding like Yves is rushing into the deepest moments of winter while his words that are seemingly spun out of tears, begin to freeze in the cold night air. Before 'Let The Lioness In You Flow Freely' could be the Whitehouse and Steve Albini post-rock record that never materialized back in the 1990's, while 'Recognizing The Enemy' further explores the gothic soundscape rock 'n' roll (original and authentic shades, slick back and leather jacket) of 'Noid', ensuring that his stadium-sized approach to crafting earworms is well and truly represented.

Repeatedly carving out a new path within the diamond cut musical trajectory of Klein, Dean Blunt, Radiohead, Coil and Kevin Shields, Yves Tumor's Safe In The Hands Of Love builds upon his recordings for PAN while setting the stage and informing anyone still unsure that Yves Tumor is truly one of the most visionary and singular artists of his generation.

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Aura Safari

Island Dreams

2LP | 2023 | UK | Original (Invinc33lp)

Release: 2023 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Red hot Italian DJ and production collective Aura Safari is back with a second full-length album, Island Dreams. It lands on Hell Yeah Recordings on September 15th and is another live and sun-kissed odyssey through balmy Mediterranean evenings, gorgeous sundown sessions and funky analogue grooves.

Andrea Moretti, Lorenzo Lavoratori, Daniele Melloni, Nicholas Iammatteo, Lorenzo Francioli, Ruggero Bonucci and Nicola Pitassio are Aura Safari, and between them they play drums, percussion, bass, keys, and guitar. They contributed to the first volume of the Buena Onda compilation in 2020 on this label, a year after serving up a debut album on London's Church Records. Since then they have become ever more entrenched in their local scene in Perugia, playing summer sets at the Umbria Jazz Festival, winter warmers at the legendary Red Zone Club and host their own Tropical Climax parties each month in the town centre.

Aura Safari are also deep-digging music collectors who have extensive and far-reaching tastes. When cooking up their sounds they draw on everything from Afro to Italo, house to disco, 80s boogie to world music, jazz and Balearic beats. This new album shows that once more across four sides of vinyl that sweep you up and transport you to somewhere idyllic.

The title track kicks off with steamy Mediterranean grooves embellished with lush Rhodes chords and sprinkles of cosmic magic. 'Sur Mon Balconnet' then slips into dubbed-out disco territory with 80s synths and leggy drums while 'Riserva Naturale' is a new-age jazz house sound with majestic lead synths and heart-melting chords that speak of a sunset dance on the beach. 'Onda' has squelchy boogie bass with hip-swinging drums, 'Wave Riding' is a lo-fi funk excursion with hints of West Coast Californian swagger and 'Magic Malbe' is loose-limbed Balearica with clear blue skies and blissed-out chords.

'Dancing in the Moonlight' feat. Zeke Manyika has all the vibrant feelings of bubblegum pop with Afro vocals and steel drum sounds next to rich xylophone sounds. There is plenty of heat and exotic charm to the proto-Afro house of 'Tropical Climax' and as well as dub versions of 'Sur Mon Balconnet' and 'Dancing in the Moonlight' come the scuffed-up Dam-Funk style beats and boogie of 'Disco Mantra' before closer 'Patagonia' shuts down with elastic drums and bass and playful synth leads that send you home wanting more.

Island Dreams is a tropical escape to a rich world of fusion sounds that look back to go forwards. It's a feel-good record to accompany hot nights and lazy afternoons, cocktails at dusk and dancing till dawn.

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Secret Circuit

Green Mirror

2LP | 2023 | UK | Original (Good Skills)

Release: 2023 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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It seems like a long time since we last heard anything from the talented Secret Circuit aka Eddie Ruscha! Truth is he's been more prolific than ever...just not with his Secret Circuit alias.

For those of you unfamiliar with his work Secret Circuit is audiovisual artist and L.A. native Edward Ruscha V (yes indeed, son of Thee Ed Ruscha, legendary pop artist) who’s been on the music scene since time immemorial. He has been a member of innumerable bands and projects over the years including Medicine, Maids Of Gravity, Radar Bros and punk-dub outfit Future Pigeon to name a few as well as managing to squeeze in time for his equally multifarious and highly productive solo ventures. In just the last few years he's released a string of records under his own E Ruscha V moniker for labels such as Beats In Space, Good Morning Tapes and Fourth Sounds as well as finding time for several collaborations including Doctor Fluorescent (Crammed Discs), The Parels (Lal Lal Lal) and Xlnt (dfa). You could say he's prolific!

So it's definitely a long overdue and most welcome return for Secret Circuit. The "Green Mirror" album is a double LP comprised of 21 new pieces (80+ minutes of music) recorded between 2020 and 2022. It captures that spacey otherworldly quality Secret Circuit is known for, but the music also veers towards the warmer, ambient textural territories that his recent E Ruscha V and Only Thingz projects explored...an altogether softer sensibility.

Yet nevertheless this album is very much "Secret Circuit". Invisible Inc wanted to explore a side of Ruscha's that hadn't been captured so clearly before, focussing on his more emotive yet at the same time experimental side (is that a paradox?). Very rarely do we hear musicians using modular synths to create something so human sounding, and when juxtaposed alongside slide guitars, live bass and vocodered vocals, we have something very special indeed.

Then there's the artwork...all lovingly drawn by the bubbling mind and deft fingers of Eddie himself. The package is made complete with a double-sided colour insert with liner notes (which happen to be written in reverse, naturally, so you'll need a mirror to read them) and another of Eddie's mind-warping doodles. This is not like anything else you will hear...it's true art and you'll definitely need a very open mind to reap the rewards of this beautiful piece of work. A future weirdo classic in the making

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Roe Deers

Salt Town Boy

38,99 €*

LP | 2022 | UK | Original (MAL)

Release: 2023 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Roe Deers presents his fascinating debut full-length Salt Town Boy, a leftfield collection of wild sonic tales filled with dusky moods and punk attitude. The first LP to be released on Good Skills, the label Roe Deers runs with Bdhbts co-conspirator Titas Motuzas, the album brings together tracks produced in his Vilnius studio over the past six years. It also features a series of unique storytelling vocal contributions from an international list of friends and colleagues.

Roe Deers is a Lithuanian-based project led by Liudas Lazauskas. A regular at Vilnius institution Opium and a key member of the city's fertile scene, he's long been breaking the rules of genre in his explorations of the uncharted territories of murky electronic music, releasing on labels like Omnidisc, Turbo, Nein Records and Throne Of Blood.

The Salt Town of the album's title is Druskininkai, the Lithuanian spa resort where Roe Deers grew up and first began DJing at a venue run by his parents. The breadth of styles and moods he was exposed to from an early age can be heard across these 12 intriguing tracks, which blend elements of beat science, electroclash, post punk, italo, krautrock and EBM into a deliciously intoxicating brew.

The skewed motorik pulse of opener and lead single 'Trident', featuring apocalyptic intonations by French-Canadian lyricist C.A.R., sets an offbeat, ominous tone that prevails for the rest of the album. Vocal contributions from Israeli producer Niv Ast ('Late Night Tale'), Norwegian troublemaker Sex Judas ('Rodeo King') and Berlin-based singer Aquarius Heaven ('Walking Down The Streets') each bring out the moods - vampish, febrile, industrial - that permeate Roe Deers's textured, percussive productions. At the album's centre are two tracks that point to the past and possible future of the Roe Deers project: first, 'Theme' features French post punk band Order89 in a compelling disco-noir moment that recalls his earlier club EPs; then, regular collaborator Palmes Ziedas provides Lithuanian vocals for 'Tarp Raudonu Sviesu' ('Between Red Lights'), a frenzied howl of a track that fits an entire film score into its short three minutes.

The instrumental pieces on the album have their own stories to tell, from the dusty dive bar meditation of 'Flying Carpets' to the paranoid proto-techno pulse of 'Celebrity Theme' and the 11-minute cyclical epic 'Never - Ending -'. As the last moments of cinematic closer 'Fin' play out, we realise that our trip down the twisted paths of Roe Deers's beguiling sound world is coming to an end; but we also know that to go back in again all we have to do is press play.

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FOQL

Wehikul

12" | 2021 | EU | Original (Samosa)

Release: 2022 / UK – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Elle Andrews & Jon K’s MAL label pushes left with Foql’s new album of polyrhythmic sidewinders and blacklit electronics, edging into crankier spaces on a tense flux somewhere between Raime’s blasted-earth topographies and Anthony Manning’s crystalline FM sequences. Justyna Banaszczyk aka Foql was raised in the post-industrial decay of a city beloved by David Lynch for its abundant, knackered architecture (think ‘Eraserhead’, or run go check his warehouse photo studies). ‘Wehikuł’ translating to ‘Vehicle’, echoes its provenance and dark surreality across eight cuts of intricate post-techno pulses webbed with brooding synths that lend a fine new stripe of influence to MAL’s unpredictable ‘Rebel Music’ agenda, perfectly in step with its off-road vectors. Banaszczyk has been a part of her country’s grassroots underground for many years at this point, making music with a diverse cast of collaborators, co-founding the Oramics Collective and Radio Kapitał, running the Ignorantka space in Łódź, and helming the Pointless Geometry label. She brings this wide-ranging expertise and boundless motivation to her music, charging through her undulating productions with a rare sense of urgency and intensity. Foql patently has a taste for the tang of metallic tones too, coupled with a keen proprioceptive awareness of dubbed-out reverb in wide, vertiginous industrial space that manifests in her ductile, spatialised production. ‘Myrhh’ is a gummy introduction to her distinctive sound, a ruffled clash of bell-like synthesised sequences that harmonise with Anthony Manning’s brilliant (and still underrated) “Islets in Pink Polypropylene”. But Banaszczyk really lets rip with ‘Escapist Dubbbbb Machine’, building up from spliced drum hits into vaporous synth textures and pulsating electronics. Escapist dub is a good descriptor, finding a malleable mid-point that touches Tackhead to Sandwell District without treading into overused “dark” tropes. Her influences coalesce on the album’s title track, adding tense strings to jerky acidic dub, refining the rhythm into a disorientating, convulsive gallop. From here, Banaszczyk’s compositions hover around a similar thematic locale, interpreting her sense of turmoil but driving through it regardless with a relentless sense of purpose. ‘Twój Mózg’ adds fractal synth sequences over rolling loops and paranoid vocal snatches; ‘Shhhshh’ steps into the warehouse, syncopating industrial drums with a voice that’s begging for mental quietude; and ‘Divine Horseman’ dispenses with the rhythm altogether, connecting with Banaszczyk’s DIY noise roots and serrated foghorns over tape-saturated, microtonal rounds. Grim but not suffocating, “Wehikuł” is a flaming torch through inky black territory.

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Lex & Locke

Pacifica EP

LP | 2021 | US | Original (Black Studies)

Release: 2021 / EU – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Samosa Records releases are coming thick and fast in what could be their finest year yet. Lex & Locke are the latest talent to make their Samosa debut with their ‘Pacifica’ EP – a sublime three tracker which is mouth watering from the off. First up is Balandra. From the moment you hear the raw four to the floor drumbeat, you’re under its spell. The infectious bass riff moves the scenery around a little, whilst the subtle bongo attack teases what’s to come. And what’s coming is a funky, rolling cosmic lead synth that has no right to sound that damn sexy, no right at all. The vibe quickly grows into an interstellar journey, aided by an outrageously funky clav jam that gets inside your head. Balandra feels like the soundtrack to an ‘after dark’ undercover stakeout in a 1970s cop thriller. Detectives Lex & Locke are on the case and the evidence is compelling. A unique, 122bpm funk bomb which has the Samosa fingerprints all over it. A2 is Cabo Pulmo – continuing the vibe of Balandra, Lex & Locke lay down some serious grooves in what initially sounds like a live funk band jamming away in the studio without a care in the world. No soon as we get into the beat and the bass, there’s an immediate switch to a swirling, bold cocktail of funk infused with a touch of jazz that belies the 124bpm tempo. The production is expertly tight; layers of synth, electric organ and punchy guitar riffs make this ideal for both the sun terrace and the dance floor. You’re under arrest, and Lex & Locke are reading you your rights! The final track, Nine Palms has a real quirky, almost broken beat feel to it with its high-hat ride pattern and punchy bass drum. A wickedly twisted analogue organ riff is quickly introduced, which is cleverly used as both a rhythm device and the melodic platform that sets up the whole track. Lex & Locke seem to be total masters of a ‘free-style funky synth lead’, and we’re treated to another slice of this particularly tasty pie in ‘Nine Palms’. Whereas Balandra is the late-night stake-out, Nine Palms is the final act where Lex & Locke high five each other following another successful bust. The Pacifica EP has a wonderfully intimate and assured vibe about it and is sure to feature in many a summer soundtrack. This release also proves that Samosa Records aren’t afraid to go off the beaten path occasionally - and when it’s this good we’re more than happy to follow. Grab this amazing cut of wax while you can!

Ste ‘Esteban’ Hendry (Black Light Disco)

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Lamin Fofana

Darkwater

Box Set | 2017 | EU | Original (Project: Mooncircle)

Release: 2021 / US – Original

Genre: Electronic & Dance

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Release Text:

High in the tower, where I sit above the loud complaining of the human sea, I know many souls that toss and whirl and pass, but none there are that intrigue me more than the Souls of White Folk.

Of them I am singularly clairvoyant. I see in and through them. I view them from unusual points of vantage. Not as a foreigner do I come, for I am native, not foreign, bone of their thought and flesh of their language. Mine is not the knowledge of the traveler or the colonial composite of dear memories, words and wonder. Nor yet is my knowledge that which servants have of masters, or mass of class, or capitalist of artisan. Rather I see these souls undressed and from the back and side. I see the working of their entrails. I know their thoughts and they know that I know. This knowledge makes them now embarrassed, now furious. They deny my right to live and be and call me misbirth! My word is to them mere bitterness and my soul, pessimism. And yet as they preach and strut and shout and threaten, crouching as they clutch at rags of facts and fancies to hide their nakedness, they go twisting, flying by my tired eyes and I see them ever stripped,—ugly, human.

The discovery of personal whiteness among the world's peoples is a very modern thing,—a nineteenth and twentieth century matter, indeed. The ancient world would have laughed at such a distinction. The Middle Age regarded skin color with mild curiosity; and even up into the eighteenth century we were hammering our national manikins into one, great, Universal Man, with fine frenzy which ignored color and race even more than birth. Today we have changed all that, and the world in a sudden, emotional conversion has discovered that it is white and by that token, wonderful!

This assumption that of all the hues of God whiteness alone is inherently and obviously better than brownness or tan leads to curious acts; even the sweeter souls of the dominant world as they discourse with me on weather, weal, and woe are continually playing above their actual words an obligato of tune and tone, saying:

"My poor, un-white thing! Weep not nor rage. I know, too well, that the curse of God lies heavy on you. Why? That is not for me to say, but be brave! Do your work in your lowly sphere, praying the good Lord that into heaven above, where all is love, you may, one day, be born—white!"

I do not laugh. I am quite straight-faced as I ask soberly:

"But what on earth is whiteness that one should so desire it?" Then always, somehow, some way, silently but clearly, I am given to understand that whiteness is the ownership of the earth forever and ever, Amen!

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Project: Mooncircle

15th Anniversary Box

59,99 €*