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Tsampikos Fronas aka June takes a departure from his dance orientated earlier work. Recorded between 2018 and 2020, Window of Time sees the Berlin-based producer explore sparser arrangements than his previous releases.

The record unravels like a dystopian cyberpunk novel, something akin to William Gibson’s Neuromancer. Both the title track and ‘Stratagem / Predator’ create an increasing tension that builds through repetitive sequences. The arpeggiated synths on ‘Year 2092’ evoke images of sprawling metropolitan city scapes, while the claustrophobic mood of ‘The Master of Electricity’, the first track written for the album, wouldn’t go amiss on a soundtrack to a sci-fi thriller like Blade Runner.

Created using modular synthesizers, analog sequencers and analog polyphonic synths, Window of Time eschews melody in favour of cold, pulsating rhythms. Combined with haunting choral toplines and minimalistic flourishes, such as those on album closer ‘Elegy’, June invites the listener on a free dive into their subconscious; to navigate boundless, unexplored territories.

For his first release with Artificial Dance, Black Merlin aka George Thompson takes a departure from the hard-wearing techno and intricate field recording work that he has come to be known for. Scape One is a fifteen-minute psychedelic diversion recorded in one continuous live session. While the track’s sonic characteristics may echo dance music from the turn of the millennium, its pulsating rhythm is more suggestive of the slowly evolving landscapes seen outside of a train window as opposed to raves from the late ‘90s.

Appearing on the B-side is Gordon Pohl’s remix of Scape One. Like its source material, this track is long and subtle in the way it develops over time, but Pohl dissects the most salient elements of the original to construct a new rhythmic urgency. The high frequency accent that guides the remix does so at a speed that recalls the rotations of Brion Gysin’s stroboscopic Dream Machine, which taps into your brain’s alpha waves, aiding drug-free hallucinations.

Pohl and Thompson are frequent collaborators and release music together as Karamika. While Scape One is not a collaboration in the strict sense, there is plenty of crossover in the working methodology of the two musicians, especially when it comes to constructing uncomplicated arrangements.

The repetitive nature of their respective tracks locks the listener into a contradictory sensation of travelling whilst staying seemingly motionless. This sensation is not altogether uncommon, but in this instance it’s not quotidian either. The result is a record that unravels slowly, leaving space for the listener to home in on all the available information and, in the process, discover elements that can be just as unnerving as they are satisfying.

Nearly twenty years on from his last solo sortie, Tommy Gillard reemerges as Curved Needle with “Rain Of Molten Iron” - a new six-tracker scoping out the confines between hi-octane body music and FX-riddled experimentation.

After spending most of the decade working in the studio with Oliver Ho alias Broken English Club as Zov Zov, the West London-based producer reignites the flame of trueschool horror electronics with five cuts heaving us into a furnace of post-apocalyptic machine talk by the scruff of the neck, complimented by a remix from Broken English Club.

Half of Manie Sans Délire, June, turns up on Artificial Dance with his anticipated new mini-album, ‘Horizons’ - following on from his studio companion Trenton Chase’s ‘Planar Array’ released earlier in 2020. True to the signature synth-splattered sound of his and his duo, June’s newest wave-imbued manifesto has us swimming amidst an organized chaos of roughly extruded keyboard wizardry, punk-minded drum programming and a retro-futuristic headspace.

Scanning out the gap between Italo, new wave, EBM and new beat, ‘Horizons’ shifts seamlessly from forward-moving, arpeggio-laden circuitry (‘JW’, ‘Infinity Room') to hi-intensity body music (’New Horizons’), through ambientoid spaced-out sonic explorations (‘Uncharted Territories’) and quirky downtempo chuggers (‘Reverie’, ‘Psychic Process’). A kaleidoscope of rhythmic tricks and shape-shifting mirages, June’s scope-expanding six-track voyage vows to play mind games with its listener till all lights have gone off.

Following his debut LP in June 2017, Trenton Chase returns with “Planar Array”, a 7 track LP on Artificial Dance. As half of Manie Sans Délire and the co-owner of June records, he’s known for his uncompromising sound that touches a wide range of genres. The release is heavy-hitting with distorted vocals, industrial textures and dagger-like synths, a satisfying array of wave, EBM and experimental music. From Transit Decay with the clunky bassline and depth at its core to the aggressive electronics in Narked. From the title track, Planar Array’s melodic high synths to the dreamy contracting offbeat of Doppler Shift. Trenton Chase brings the smoke out of the machine, progressively getting harder, faster and more destructive.

Since forming in 2006 post-punk experimentalists Sebastian Melmoth have been on a thoughtful and adventurous musical journey. In a constant state of aural evolution, the London-based four-piece has a delivered a string of albums and EPs that variously touch on everything from garage-rock, grunge and lo-fi pop, to electro, new wave, dark ambient and music concrete, all the while drawing on a myriad of literary and artistic influences.

The band’s first release for Artificial Dance digs deep into their admirable and eye-opening catalogue and draws together some of the Amsterdam-based label’s favourites from the more electronic end of the band’s output. Entitled “The Dynamics of Vanity” – a comment on Western culture’s obsession with rehashing the past and the band’s own in-built distrust of artistic naval-gazing – the set is not a ‘best of’ retrospective but rather a ‘sort of’ selection of stylistically interconnected cuts that gives a very specific snapshot of the band’s work.

Check for example “Icarus”, a drowsy, hypnotic and sample-laden soundscape that effortlessly joins the dots between post-rock, pitched-down electronica and early morning ambient, or the slowly unfurling throb of thought-provoking opener “The Engineering of Consent”, a swelling, melancholic post-jazz meditation on propaganda and governmental mind control featuring spoken word samples from William S Burroughs in conversation with Brion Gysin, Timothy Leary, Les Levine and Robert Anton Wilson.

The showcased songs are typically hard-to-pin-down, too, with the re-imagined gothic horror break-up cut “Prosopagnosia’ and slow-burn audio addition of “Waiting For Godot” being joined by the wide-eyed morning dream-pop hallucinations of “Seeds (Descent Into Decadence)”. It all adds up to a collection that expertly showcases one engaging thread – of many – running through Sebastian Melmoth’s esoteric body of work.

Spearheaded by James Dean Brown (also known from Perlon's Narcotic Syntax) and Victor Sol, and featuring other rotating members, Hypnobeat is a true product of the open-ended spirit of DIY music that proliferated in the 1980s. The prescient project championed deft, machine-powered rhythm programming as its modus operandi long before the practice would become a dominant global cultural form. Since Hypnobeat was revived in 2012 with Helena Hauff joining JDB on stage for improvised live performances based on one 707 and three 808s, there have been a string of archival releases shining a light on the early and more recently recorded works of this forward-thinking venture.

This latest collection for Artificial Dance comprises three freshly unearthed iterations. Long-form A-side track 'Polychrome Desert' is a pure percussive exercise, programmed and recorded by JDB in 1986 with a chain of three 808s filling out a stereo panorama. The intention was to create a pure, meditative rhythm drawing on African influences and reinterpreted through what was then the music technology of the future. 'Spies In Malaysia' is a live recording from a concert Hypnobeat performed in 1985. Its lurid melodic passages and crunchy percussive blasts formed the closing track of the set, which was met with rapturous response. Recorded in the same year, 'Sumatra Railway' was the product of an impromptu session between JDB and Victor Sol. The song finds the pair exploring a more shadowy, surf-inspired sound, laden with echo and freewheeling through seven minutes of sun-kissed, subtly tropical subversion.

With each successive release, the plot surrounding Hypnobeat thickens in a tangle of 1/4' jack cables and ancient effect pedals. From its shifting line-up to the diverse sonic repertoire, it remains one of the wondrous plants of German electronic music in the pre-techno era.

Jason Letkiewicz has always swum against the musical tides, flitting between different solo pseudonyms (including Steve Summers, Death Commando and Alan Hurst) and collaborative projects (most notably Mutant Beat Dance) in order to explore different aspects of his leftfield inspirations. With his latest release, a first full-length outing for Artificial Dance entitled Mirage Information, the Chicago-based artist is operating under an alias that celebrates this approach: Opposing Currents.

It's an alias he's used once before - for a track featured on Chronditic Sound's 2015 cassette compilation Non-Christian Referent - but Mirage Information sounds like an artistic rebirth. Densely layered, mind-altering and often intense, the album's seven tracks update the Cold War paranoia and pulsating electronics of EBM and industrial music for today's complex and chaotic political climate.

Throughout, Letkiewicz smothers off-kilter drum machine rhythms and throbbing, body-jacking synthesizer basslines in untold layers of hazy audio detail, creating a dystopian sound soup out of which alien electronic melodies, psychedelic acid lines and barely audible vocals emerge. At times, such as on angry opener 'Lying Awake', the extra-terrestrial 'Dissolve' and foreboding 'Shallow Grave', we're invited to dance in the darkness in celebration of impending doom. On other occasions, such as the poignant and melancholic closing cut 'It Awaits', Letkiewicz simply seems exasperated at the chaos that is life in the 21st century. It makes for a genuinely arresting and thought-provoking listen.

Earlier in the year, Red Light Radio co-founder Hugo van Hejiningen and Identified Patient joined forces to debut their new musical project, Stallion's Stud. Artificial Dance is ready to release the first fruits of the duo's studio collaboration.
The four-track EP digs deep into their shared love of electronics, post-punk era experimentation, DIY music culture and dubbed-out drum machine rhythms. The results are undeniably dark and intoxicating, with former punk singer Hugo fronting proceedings via mind-altering vocals and twisted lyrical flows.

Opener 'Promising Promises' sets the tone for what follows, with Hugo's spoken vocals wrapping themselves around ricocheting industrial dub rhythms and raw, delay-laden electronics. The delay trails to oblivion remain a force to be reckoned with on the creepy, fuzz-fuelled cold-wave doom of 'Instrumental Aria', while the throbbing and clanking 'Unpredictable' and 'Voice of No' ratchet up the intensity by several notches via end-of-days guitars, heavyweight bass and face-melting percussion.

Having Previously Released Some Rare Solo Material From Ende Shneafliet Member Hanjo Erkamp Aka Dr. C. Stein, Artificial Dance Is Now Serving Up Something Special From The Cult Dutch Minimal Wave Band's Lesser-known Side Project, King Ende Shneafliet. The Result Is The First Ever Vinyl Release Of Tracks From The Outfit's Cult Dimension Mix Series.
Adding king' To Their Name In Honour Of Original Dub Maestro King Tubby, King Ende Shneafliet Produced Far More Experimental And Out-there Material Than Their Better-known Big Brother. They Released Their First Cassette, Dimension Mix Chapter I In 1981 Via Cult Label Trumpett, With Batches Of Follow-up Material Trickling Out On Various Obscure Tapes And Later Cd-rs Up To The Year 2000.

Artificial Dance's First Dip Into The Dimension Mix Archives - A Second Vinyl Volume Will Follow Later In The Year - Features Selections From Chapter Ii (1999), Which Was Originally Recorded Between 1981 And '88. The Magical, Mind-altering Music Is Raw, Lo-fi, Spaced-out And Forward-thinking, Combining Effects-laden, Sample-heavy Sound Collages And Reverberating Ambient Soundscapes With Pulsating Proto-electro Jams, Moody Minimal Wave Instrumentals And Kosmiche-influenced Throw-downs. It Effectively Joins The Dots Between Early-80s, Diy Electronic Exploration And Dub Soundsystem Culture.

Having debuted with a fine EP by Job Sifre, Artificial Dance has returned to the source for release number two. The 12' pays tribute to one of the most influential figures of original DIY electronic music scene of Holland, Hanjo Erkamp.
During the first half of the 1980s, Erkamp had a hand in some of the most experimental and forward-thinking releases on the now legendary cassette label, Trumpett. Famously, he was a member of two of the label's key bands - industrial outfit Doxa Sinistra and new wave combo Ende Shneafliet - but during the period he also recorded a swathe of solo tracks as C. Stein, most of which only saw the light of day decades later.

La Bombe Plastique', a thrillingly spacey and futurist cut rich in proto-techno rhythms, intergalactic electronic motifs and drowsy choral vocals. For this timely reissue, the superb original version comes accompanied by a fresh re-edit created primarily for DJ use.