The Death Of Rave Techno | Minimal | Tech-House 4 Items

William Gibson’s prophetic sci-fi novel Neuromancer inspires Mumdance, Logos and Shapednoise to sensational new heights on their 2nd EP in The Sprawl trilogy for The Death of Rave. The trio’s EP2 is all about “Data Flow”, or the relay of information between software, hardware and its human agents, triangulating The Sprawl as biologic semiconductors in a quantum network of emerging AI consciousness, parsing their corrupted memory flashbacks of physical ecstasy, excess and synaptic muscle memory into premonitory visions of future hardcore rave.

RAVE026 is a double hammer of blitzkrieg gabber and seething acid trance/schranz from Service Animal (Vereker) and Crime Unit, featuring material previously issued on impossible-to-find tapes by the cult, DIY label; Live Adult Entertainment. The punkish reputation of Live Adult Entertainment precedes them as one of the underground’s keenest yet elusive operations to emerge in recent years. Based in Thessaloniki, a port city in northern Greece, they’ve released some 28 tapes, CDR’s and lathe cut vinyl of musick ranging from psy-trance to industrial noise and concrète since 2017, and always in editions ranging from zero to 20 tops, leading to feverish and frustrated reactions from those listeners who’ve chanced upon their YouTube videos before they get taken down. Finally, this 12” features the first readily available and properly mastered LAE material on a physical format.

Captured Entities’ is the debut album of deeply raw house and psycho-jit-jazz by Detroit producer and DJ, Howard Thomas aka H-Fusion. Spanning the breadth of Howard’s hands-on, tracky style - from beatless cosmic jazz audities to slamming 170bpm missiles and heart-grabbing house - it’s arguably one of the most distinctive, dare-to-be-different albums from the 313 in recent memory. The fruit of more than 5 years of communication between Howard and The Death of Rave, ‘Captured Entities’ expands on the ruffneck, asymmetric slant of his killer 2005-2012 productions for Sound Signature and Fit - as played by everyone from Kyle Hall to Kassem Mosse - across 11 unruly numbers united by an intuitive, jazz-wise approach to his synths and MPC2000. While his sound may remind of many Detroit greats such as Omar-S, Damon Peterson/8088, and Urban Tribe/DJ Stingray, Howard can’t help but sound like himself, and his debut album is best defined by its classically driven yet singular Detroit soul clinamen.

‘Traditional Music of South London' is the riveting new masterwork by Dale Cornish, a survey of recent and ancient folklore spanning deep house concrète, industrial dubstep and folk musiks inspired by urban gay mythology and reminding us of everything from Tricky to Jandek, DJ Sprinkles to Leslie Winer, Wasteland, Coil and Wanda Group to Andy Stott.

Since emerging as part of London’s shouty electroclash movement in the mid ‘00s, and assuming the role of deconstructed rave pioneer and poet in 2011, Dale Cornish has been (lo)key to new movements in electronic music’s underbelly for the best part of this century. His 12th LP, proper, ‘Traditional Music of South London’ feels like Dale’s definitive record; a confident testament to artistic maturity that comes with doing your thing against the grain over decades, and a potent expansion on ideas chiselled during his run of releases with the inspirational (now sadly defunct) label, Entr’acte, who helped foster Dale’s explorations of concrète rave and industrial pop tropes during the ‘10s..

On one level the album reads as a deep topography or psychosexual-geography of London’s lost gay club haunts, with the meat-motoring deep house of ‘Great Storm’ recalling DJ Sprinkles taking Loefah to the darkroom in its concrète carved and flesh trembling 8:08 perfection; or more literally in ‘Foxhole’, with Dale’s deliciously Croydon-toned accent describing urban gay mythologies with pungent lyrics about rotten fox cadavers synced to drily ricocheting hand claps, while the tight swinge of his “requiem for all the dead gay venues” in the gut-level bass of ‘Hoist Crash Fort’, and the playful evocation of “internecine conflict within the gays - live!” on ‘Palace Intrigue’ just utterly slap like nothing else.

Yet it’s in the LP’s slower, bloozier and folky vocal bits that Dale’s dare- to-differ character comes into its own. The clandestine skulk of ‘My Geography’ portrays him like a modern Jandek traversing London’s brutalist-meets-semi rural meridian, and at its gooier core flashes of folk-classical brilliance such as the groggy ‘Norman Lewis’ give way to the writhing foley orgy of ‘Crowd Scene’, while the naked, one-take end of szn paean of ‘scy BFR Hnh’ and slurred, Tricky-esque confessional ’Shout Outs’ consolidate and temper the conflicting aspects of his persona with a deep burning pathos in the LP’s fading phosphorescence.

In an era of overproduction and imitation-not-innovation, Dale’s strikingly original, sensually brutalist industro-folk-dance-pop critically cocks a snook at conventional, careerist music while embracing its heartical truths. An extremely personal record certain to resonate with those who believe art in music still matters, we love it to death.