Beats News

Japan is our first collaboration. The ambient sounds on this record are fragments from our month-long stay in Japan during spring 2015: hundreds of Tokyo ravens in Yoyogi park, an old song found in an old man's small shop in Kyoto, the bird-like traffic signals in Naha blending with the distorted voice of a man with a megaphone and a message...
Back in Stockholm, these sounds became documentary elements in our music as well as sources for creating new sounds. The small, beautiful bowl we'd brought home went to pieces, and the sonic character of the ceramic pieces turned into a delicate drone.

Recorded in Japan and Sweden 2015-2016 by Elin Franze´n and Andreas Tilliander.
Side A contains a remixed version of »Iris (Familiar)« by Fourcolor featuring Moskitoo, published by 12k in 2011. The project was accomplished with support from Musikverket.

2x12"

Franck Kartell's third full length release on Bass Agenda Recordings sees him continuing to do what he has done since he began this creative trajectory of making concept driven albums; pushing himself, his art and your experience as a listener, into new realms.

As with his last album La jette d'Orly, this next chapter in Kartell's adventures in creativity is inspired and influenced by the cinematic works and writing of Chris Marker.

Following on from sell out albums 'Afterlife' and 'La jette d'Orly' the new double vinyl album 'Coincidences' immerses you in 12 distinct scenes, painted with sound.

To transport a listener to another plain within seconds is not easy, yet it is something Franck Kartell achieves here not once but 12 times in a row; sustaining the illusion of escape throughout each track, cradling your mind as it experiences beauty, majesty, fear, darkness, peace and wonder.
Supported by Thomas H Green (The Arts Desk), Dave Clarke (including best Electro of 2016), Timeline music and many more.

What is Amateur Space Jazz One could call it a Lo-Fi Minimal Wavish version of Cosmic Space Jazz and anything closely related to it...from spiritual soul, G-FUNK, ethiopian jazz to ambient and everything in between...no knowledge of musical theory is required...Played with a D.I.Y punk approach on crappy digital synthesizers - preferably with dubious renditions of real instruments. Warmed up to the right temperature with some offbeat effectsbox. Multitracking is a technique widely used...to Create a "one person band with all its members oneself's multidimensional copies in time."....... Comes with a 24 page graphic novel written and drawn by Danny Wolfers himself and a Nightwind Amateur Space Jazz gummy domed sticker.......Let's enter world of Amateur Space Jazz!!!

Horisontal Mambo is a new sublabel from Full Pupp. Although Horisontal"refers to laying down and Mambo"is an exotic Cuban dancestyle, there will likely not be any ambient mambo records coming out on Horisontal Mambo". Or actually, there might be... Starting out as a very irregular listening session in my hometown of Hamar almost 15 years ago then later(and still very irregular) in Oslo the idea was to cater good music to a sitting and mostly hungover drinking crowd...We(me + Magnus International)do these jams' occasionally during summer as a outdoor pre Full Pupp-party warm up at our regular venue BLÅ. Everything from medieval lute and harp records, underwater sounds via Elton John, Grateful Dead to Basic Channel and ECM albums gets an airing... nothing is sacred This openminded music policy' we now turn into a label. The first records on offer is: Prins Thomas reinterpreted by norwegian jazz virtuoso Bugge Wesseltoft , here! The artwork is done by Eirik Seu Stokkmo, Mastering done at Schnittstelle Prins Thomas, Asker

From a sporadic late-nineties outlet for the work of label founder David Sumner aka Function and his contemporaries, Infrastructure has re-emerged in the last two years as a busy and consistent platform for modern electronic music. Re-launching with a collaboration between Sumner and long-time colleague Ed Davenport aka Inland, the pair released Function/Inland's ambient techno EP 'Odeon / Rhyl' as INF-012 in May of 2014, marking a new wave of material on the label which had been dormant since Sumner's first material on Sandwell District emerged in 2007.
In the two years following the pair have orchestrated 10 vinyl releases, including a debut album by Techno anonym Post Scriptum, two singles from young avant-garde composer Campbell Irvine, a double pack reissue of classic acid pioneer-tracks from Mark Archer's Trackman guise, a crossover single by Cassegrain & Tin Man, and more. Both Post Scriptum and Campbell Irvine released their debut material on Infrastructure, discovering and promoting new raw talent is high on the agenda.
Now Infrastructure introduces it's next milestone - Facticity. A 4 x 12'' vinyl box set, CD and digital format compilation featuring 15 tracks by key artists, label colleagues and new faces. Facticity represents the foundations of what Infrastructure stands for - a manifesto for 2016 and beyond.
Function, Inland, Function/Inland, Campbell Irvine, Post Scriptum, Cassegrain & Tin Man, Rrose, Efdemin, Vatican Shadow, Silent Servant, Blue Hour, Steve Bicknell and Cleric all feature, spinning a narrative ranging from lush, ambient electronics and post-club diversions, to contemporary club techno and back again.
Infrastructure regularly works with up-and-coming artists on cover artwork. Respected young Swiss artist Julian Charrière provided the iconic greyscale cover for Post Scriptum's debut LP (INF-020), and London based photographer Guy Archard's work featured on Campbell Irvine's 'Reunion of Two Bodies' Maxi-EP (INF-018).
Now the celebrated British fine-artist Robert NcNally has been invited to submit original artwork for Facticity. Selected by Jake and Dinos Chapman to show work at the prestigious Flowers Gallery in London, and commissioned by Damien Hurst to provide work for his private collection, Robert's incredibly detailed large scale pencil drawings are attracting serious interest in the modern art world.
McNally's cover image was selected from a series of works based on adapted antique post cards. Its anti-establishment, censorship-related overtones are clear to see, as is the stark use of contrast - thick layers obscure the fading original, re-appropriating it. Setting the tone for this carefully compiled collection of new music, rich in subtexts and sub-genres, a special edition print of the cover artwork will be included in the first 500 copies of Facticity.

Marking six years of Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement's cultish, elemental output, Dominick
Fernow (Prurient) gives the project's first ever release a vinyl pressing for the first time, coiling up two extended tracts of impure, unnatural gloom ranking amongst his most cherished works.
When RSE was first conceived with Fallen Leaves Camouflaged Behind Tropical Flowers in 2011, the project was shrouded in a veil of mystery which left many fiends guessing to its provenance - it seemed too far reduced to be identified as Fernow's work, but also didn't easily resonate with anyone of Hospital Productions' usual suspects, instead holding a unique line of stygian slow
techno that sounded like some our bleakest, febrile fantasies come to life.
Soon enough RSE's creator and navigator was indeed revealed to be Fernow, and the project became regarded among his most prized golems by those in the know, not least because it was starkly defined in contrast to his myriad other pseudonyms - Vatican Shadow, Prurient, Christian Cosmos, Force Publique Congo, and so on - by dint of its perceived restraint and glowering minimalism.
Perhaps because of that stringent, meditative asceticism, the hypnotic grip of RSE has remained undiminished and perhaps as strong as ever on this new vinyl edition, where the Predator heartbeat and keening tonal groans of Life Would Transform sound more pensive and narcotically effective than ever, and the the borderland industrial chug and clag of Skull Covered In Moss seems to be seated deeper into its dank gloom, emulating a location recording of a burial-by-mud in some godforsaken no-man's-land, with lurking parakeets and mechanical birds awaiting their turn on your soon-to-be carrion.

Green Vinyl

This is the second in a reissue series of Dominick Fernow's early work as Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement, casting spells from the 'Green Amulet Crafts Supernatural Qualities' (2011) tape onto vinyl for the first time and steadily closing the gap in your RSE collection.
Something like the soundtrack to one of Ballard's prophetic visions of sunken cities, this second RSE incursion was initially released in an edition of 63 tapes in 2011 and found Fernow dwelling in a dread-fuelled, paranoid headspace.
In aesthetic, it forms an oblique inversion of Prurient's saturated noise assaults or a sort of chopped and screwed adjunct to Vatican Shadow, perhaps best located closest to his Force Publique Congo output, but with fathoms more negative space and those full sunken subbass charges.
A Slave Boy That Died An Awful Death For Not Keepng His Owner's Horses. He Helps People Who Are Looking For Lost Things fills the A-side, pinpointing a location that could easily be an overgrown traffic island as some Nigerian mangroves in oil country, overrun by local scallies or machete wielding pirates, both scared witless, who could well be the B-side's An Old Hag That Wears Shoes And Stomps Over People's Stomachs At Night Making Them Breathless, as is common to local
legends of Manchester's southern edgelands and the Niger Delta.
Thanks to Paul Corley's sensitive remaster and CGB's lacquer cut, the subbass has been perfectly translated to the vinyl for total immersion, sounding stronger, wider than the tape or digital versions ever did, and in the process rendering RSE's magick at its most tangible.
Ask many Fernow/Prurient/Vatican Shadow fiends and they'll likely cosign - this is some of the dankest, most precious work in Fernow's sprawling catalogue..

Following their much-acclaimed surprise debut album VERMONT from 2014, Motor City Drum Ensemble's Danilo Plessow and Innervisions' Marcus Worgull reunite for more synth daydreaming on the suitably titled II'. The new outing continues where the first full-length left off, strolling further down the luminous and undulating path that the duo turned into, influenced in equal measures by kosmische, krautrock, minimal wave and synth soundtracks.
This latest batch of instrumental cuts opens with the strictly balearic vibe of NORDERNEY, a softly swinging, light-footed recording with a keen sense for structure. Featuring a guest performance from Robbert Van Der Bildt (aka Kaap) on guitar, it's a telling starting point for the album that - similar to Vermont's self-titled debut - successfully navigates between economic, careful studio arrangements and playful, incidental exploration further pushing into jam session territory. Van Der Bildt's guitar returns on the plucky, curious UFER, where Vermont showcase a renewed sense for jazz-like improvisation - same as on the cuts DSCHUNA, CHANANG and WENIK, which also include contributions from Dermot O'Mahony and Tadhg Murphy on strings.
Still, Vermont's synth contraptions remain the album's main attraction, with the extensive array of gear encompassing an entire panopticon of analog bling - from Arp Oddysey and Moog Prodigy to Fender Rhodes, Juno and Prophet, list-studying gear heads will find lots to drool upon. Consequently, tracks like CHEMTRAILS, UNRUH or GEBIRGE err on the machine side of things, expertly interweaving arpeggiated sequences for maximum atmospheric effect. Foreboding, slightly menacing synth motives as on SKORBUT or CHEMTRAILS are perfectly balanced with the casual ambient of HALLO VON DER ANDEREN SEITE and the nostalgic warmth of DEMUT - while the gentle push of the masterful KI-BOU even carries a whiff of classic deep house, linking the Vermont project to Plessow and Worgull's main careers as dance floor movers and shakers.
Continually intriguing, immersive and texturally rich, each one of Vermont's new pieces betray the experience, precision and determination of the producers involved - while opening up Worgull and Plessow'a vocabulary for patient experimentation and subtle discoveries. A musical treat for synth aficionados - and everyone else, if you ask us.

World-renowned as one of experimental music's most vital and impressionistic composers of the past few decades, William Basinski's tape loop works have been especially influential, particularly on the historic series, The Disintegration Loops, where distorted, orchestral tape samples burrow deep into the listener's psyche through meditative repetition. On his new album, A Shadow In Time, Basinski plunges deeper than ever for the plaintive, solitary eulogy to David Bowie, aptly titled For David Robert Jones.' Conversely, the title track, A Shadow In Time,' is a subtle, celestial escalation of melody and drone. The result is one of the most truly transcendent pieces of music he has ever committed to - or wrung from - tape.

Boomkat Editions is humbled to offer the first ever vinyl edition of Spellwauerynsherde, a masterpiece from LA-based artist Akira Rabelais. It comprises a suite of seven medieval choral pieces which have been sublimated and recomposed via Rabelais' self-built Argeïphontes Lyre software. The results arguably stand as one of the 21st century's greatest musical enigmas and could be said to presage contemporary obsessions with
processed vocals in a deeply uncanny manner, enduring to resonate with up-to-the-moment music as much as the record's distant roots in the seminal works of 12th century German mystic and composer Hildegard von Bingen, and the writings of John Milton, among others.
Spellwauerynsherde has always been crying out for a vinyl issue and Rabelais has done the piece proud with this sensitive new version allowing its seven parts to gently flow in sequence over both sides, with the added shroud of vinyl infidelity lending a beautifully subtle patina of detachment which perhaps only serves to heighten the paradoxical - both temporal, spatial and timbral - nature of the record's ethereal vestibules and elusive,
illusory sonic spectres.
In remodelling these ancient works of art, Rabelais performs a sort of hypermodern animism on ostensibly dead musical material - dead as in hardly anyone knows or plays them in the modern age - imbuing them with a contemporary relevance through the
process of his bespoke software (which is freely available to download) which serves to faithfully render, open-up new dimensions and plasmic aspects from work which is now
nearly a millennia old - so old you can't even call it classical music!
For us at the least, Spellwauerynsherde has pretty much set a benchmark for experiments with ancient composition and computer music - each immersion in this vinyl is akin to floating thru the mists of time and sends shivers down our spine just even thinking or writing about it, never mind listening.
We practically guarantee that Spellwauerynsherde is one of the most magickal, perplexing and strangely life-giving records that you'll ever hear.

Through the Sparkle is a collaboration between French ensemble Astrïd and American pianist and composer Rachel Grimes.
Rachel Grimes is best known for her chamber music project Rachel's, a hugely influential group formed in 1991 in Louisville, Kentucky, releasing six studio albums between 1995 and 2005. She has also released a string of contemporary classical works in recent years on labels such as Temporary Residence. Astrïd is a collective of four musicians based in Nantes, releasing records on Rune Grammofon and Home Normal.
After years of mail and email back and forth over the ocean, from Nantes to Kentucky, astrïd invited Rachel to come for a residency to make music together and play shows in France. They gathered for a few days, here and there, in 2012 and 2013 to write songs in Cyril and Vanina's home studio in the countryside.
The compositions found on Through the Sparkle glow with a unique, connected energy and a pure, instinctive musical understanding. Considered contributions from all sides allow the pieces to unfurl naturally. Each note and phrase feels like it simply couldn't be placed anywhere else in the album.
Charming, gentle and cinematic sounds are found here in abundance. Melodies circle and reveal themselves without force, allowing the listener to focus and explore the depths of what is on offer. Musically, Through the Sparkle is an expansive and evocative album. There is a presence to be felt throughout, from Cyril Secq's emotive tremelo'd guitars of M5 to the darker, more haunting mood of The Theme, to the tension in Mossgrove & Seaweed. Strings and woodwind coalesce around intricate piano and guitar movements creating a wealth of harmony and melancholy.
Through the Sparkle is a record of miniature symphonies, of elegant restraint. A gracious and generous offering from a group of musicians at one with each other and at the top of their game.
- Artwork by Gizeh's in-house art dept. SmilingPaperGhosts
- Rachel Grimes - previously of The Rachel's - this record will certainly appeal to fans of the band
- Astrïd will tour in October to support the release
- Both artists have released on such labels as: Temporary Residence, Nome Normal, Touch & Go, Rune

This is the first vinyl issue of the classic third loscil album originally released in May of 2004. From the original onesheet:

First Narrows is the third Loscil album and the first in which Scott Morgan uses real instruments and input from other musicians. Using sound sources that ranged from sampled instruments to miscellaneous lo-fi mini-cassette recordings, Morgan generated music on computer by custom programming sequencing and processing designed so that no two performances of the patches would be exactly the same. In turn, Jason Zumpano on fender rhodes piano, Tim Loewen on guitar and Nyla Rany on cello improvised over those electronic sequences. Morgan then edited and mixed the live and premixed sections together.

First Narrows is named after the first gap to the entrance of the Burrard Inlet, over which the Lions Gate Bridge spans; the main entrance into Vancouver from the Pacific Ocean. By including a loscil track on their compilation of Canadian electronica alongside artists like Tim Hecker, Polmo Polpo, Ghislain Poirier and Thomas Jirku, the intr_version label confirmed that Loscil deserves placement among the unique practitioners of electronic sound arrangement.
*bonus track

Two years on from the release of his debut album called 'Natureboy', Dario Rojo Guerra, aka Natureboy Flako, is back with a new six-song Mini Album EP on Five Easy Pieces.

Two years on from the release of his debut album called 'Natureboy', Dario Rojo Guerra, aka Natureboy Flako, is back with a new six-song EP on Five Easy Pieces. 'Natureboy Flako' is a self-titled collection of music culled from over 200 recording sessions since Guerra moved from London to Berlin in late 2015. It's the first work that unites the artistic identity of Flako with that of the Natureboy persona at the heart of his debut album, and is the debut for a new artist name: Natureboy Flako. Moving away from the live instrumentation of his debut LP, 'Natureboy Flako' is the most electronic-sounding record he's made, using old analogue equipment such as Korg's MS-20, ARP Odyssey and Roland's SH-2000 synthesisers, as well as new instruments such as Arturia's MiniBrute. Where previous songs relied on overdubs, most of these songs were recorded in one take, with little overdubbing, making it his most live record to date. As with 2015's album 'Natureboy', the six-song EP sees Guerra searching for musical balance. Both sides of the record offer contrasting energies, with the A-side featuring some of the heaviest tracks he's made and the cinematic B-side made up of more reflective compositions. However, both sides are equally propulsive, with driving arpeggios forming the backbone of much of the EP.

Over the last twenty give years Robin Rimbaud - Scanner has traversedthe experimental terrain between sound, space and image, connecting a bewilderingly diverse array of genres - a partial list would include sound design, film scores, computer music, avant garde, contemporary composition, large-scale multimedia performances, product design, architecture, fashion design, rock music and jazz.With a catalogue busy with commissions, soundtracks and studio releases it's extremely rare to find a new studio recording, so The Great Crater stands out by measure of this. Invited by the label Glacial Movements to create a new album he focused on the tale of strange circles appearing in Antarctica. Flying overhead in 2014 a group of scientists spotted a circular formation of 2km diameter. For a time it was thought that it could be the scar left by a crashing meteorite but in fact it was quite another story. Investigating the circle on foot in January 2016 scientists found a 3metre deep depression, with vertical well-like shafts in the middle. Drilling into the ice they found multiple lakes beneath the surface, as part of a 'hot spot' or melting ice sheet. There is growing concern that it could lead to further disintegration. The album explores an immersive, fragile and moving exploration of themes inspired by this simple tale. At moments the ice moves and a sonic scar if formed, at others the chill wind blows across the exposed water. The Great Crater offers up the voice of a unique composer in an ever unsettled global landscape.

Robin Rimbaud, alias Scanner (1964, London, UK) is a composer whose work traverses the experimental terrain between sound, space and image, creating absorbing, multilayered sound pieces that twist technology in unconventional ways, connecting a bewilderingly diverse array of genres. Since 1991 he has been intensely active in sonic art, producing concerts, installations and recordings, the albums Mass Observation (1994), Delivery (1997), and The Garden is Full of Metal (1998) hailed by critics as innovative and inspirational works of contemporary electronic music.Committed to working with cutting edge practitioners he has collaborated on projects with Bryan Ferry, Wayne MacGregor, Merce Cunningham, Mike Kelley, Miroslaw Balka, Torres, Michael Nyman, Carsten Nicolai, Steve McQueen, Stella McCartney, Laurie Anderson and Hussein Chalayan, amongst others.He scored the hit musical comedy Kirikou & Karaba (2007), designed the sound for the Philips Wake-Up Light (2009), and campaigns for Nike Hyperfuse (2011), Chanel (2012), Sprint Telephones (2012) and Stella McCartney (2016). For the UK Olympics Scanner scored The Big Dance in Trafalgar Square for 1000 dancers and the re-opening of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, in the company of Queen Beatrix. He continues to tour his show Live_Transmission: Joy Division Reworked, a striking audiovisual show with Heritage Orchestra. In 2014 he was Visiting Artist at MIT in Cambridge USA. In 2015 he premiered his score to Dutch National Ballet's and ISH's new production Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, and in 2016 installed his Water Drops sound work in Rijeka Airport in Croatia, Ghosts at Cliveden National Trust UK, and scored the world's first ever Virtual Reality ballet with Dutch National Ballet in summer 2016. His work can be heard on permanent display in the Science Museum London (Sound Curtains), the Raymond Poincaré hospital in Garches, France as part of the bereavement suite (Channel of Flight), The Darwin Centre at the Natural History Museum London and the Northern Neuro Disability Services Centre in Newcastle UK (Turning Light). Sedition Artworks distribute his digital film works online. He has presented projects throughout the United States, South America, Asia, Australia and Europe, and performed and created works in many of the world's most prestigious spaces including SFMOMA USA, Hayward Gallery London, Pompidou Centre Paris, Tate Modern & Tate Britain London, Palais des Beaux-Arts Lille, Kunsthalle Vienna, Bolshoi Theatre Moscow, Hanoi Opera House Vietnam and the Royal Opera House London.

finally repressed!
One of Marc Romboy´s biggest tracks of all times is without any doubt - Iceland' from 2008, a homage he is paying to one of the countries he´s totally in love with.

In order to celebrate the 10 yrs of Systematic in an extraordinary way this is the third limited picture disc in one go featuring two brand new interpretations of Marc´s milestone track made by the French Techno godfather Laurent Garnier in person and of course Iceland´s number one Electronica figureheads Gusgus.

While Garnier convinces again with a uncompromising and rough Techno journey, Gusgus surprise with an untypical remix, featuring an ambient sound environment which brings you to Iceland while you just close your eyes...

The LP is the first volume on 'The Encyclopedia of Civilizations', a collection of split LP's just started atAbstrakce where selected artists offer their own insight into fascinating ancient cultures. In this volume music is inspired by ancient Egypt and comes with a 10-page booklet with images and texts explaining historic facts. The texts written by Juan Ruiz -an Spanish archeologist and researcher- in a half scientific/half poetic way rounds the music and transports you to the Ancient Egypt to get the whole listening experience. The careful design of the edition also helps: Egyptian colors (sand, electric blue, gold) and a sleeve printed in the old way, letterpressed with metal movable type as Gutemberg used to do it. Jürgen Müller is the pseudonym previously used by Norm Chambers (aka Panabrite) for the album 'Science of the sea', presented as an archival find by Digitalis Recordings in 2011. The album was supposed to be a reissue of early 80's songs recorded by a a self-taught composer who was studying oceanic science and playing some music on his houseboat, dreaming to sell the compositions to film and TVcompanies. Now Jürgen comes back and this time there's no romantic misterious story to tell, just some astonishing modular ambient songs influenced by library music, kosmische, minimalism or new age. Songsthat refer to artists such as Mort Garson or contemporaries as M. Geddes Gengras or Jonathan Fitoussi.
Jonas Reinhardt is a Brooklyn based musician with releases in labels such as Not Not Fun, Kranky, The great pop supplement, Further or VCO records. His side is also influenced by kosmische but in a different code, more trippy and psychedelic. Deeper and darker atmospheres that remind to musicians such as Klaus Schulze, Steve Hauschildt or synthetist Steve Moore. Songs full of synth arpeggios and reverbered sound waves that create Egyptian dream visions.

Venerable virtuoso guitarist Mike Cooper evokes rich imagery and narrative through simple means - lap steel guitar, FX and imagination - on a particularly personal, compelling solo journey for Room 40; an elegy to formative influences, acknowledging departed friends in beautifully affective style.
If you've ever heard a Mike Cooper album you'll already no doubt be familiar with his peculiar kind of alchemy, taking traditional Pacific music and re-factoring it with electronic treatments influenced by his love of radio art and sound installations.
Now 75 years old - his music sounds utterly contemporary, situated somewhere between Takoma,
Exotica, 4th World and Ambient musics; always with a minimal, evocative signature that honestly sounds quite unlike anything or anyone you'll have heard before.
His inspiration for this album, recounted below, provides heartbreaking context for the sounds you'll hear on 'Raft', but suffice to say that this album has once again convinced us that Cooper is one of the most inspirational and consistently brilliant artists working on the scene today, long may his reign continue.

First time ever on vinyl, deluxe 2LP with custom die cut wide spine and interchangeable heavy weight inner sleeves featuring previously unpublished artwork and photographs from 1982..
Recorded in 1982 and eventually released in 2009 on CD via William Basinski's own 2062 label, 92982 has become one of Basinski's most celebrated works. Finally available on vinyl for the first time, the album has been remastered from the original master tapes, and packaged in an exquisite custom die-cut package with interchangeable heavyweight inner sleeves featuring previously unpublished artwork and photographs from 1982. "You can't help but wonder why this music, recorded so long ago, is only just surfacing. Was the world not ready for WIlliam Basinski in 1982, or was WIlliam Basinski simply not ready to hand himself over to an audience at that point Whatever the reasoning, we're certainly reaping the benefits of the influential ambient composer's stockpile, and 92982 proves to be a real highlight in his output of recent years. Despite the minimalist essence of Basinski's oeuvre there's a pronounced sense of variety, diversity and depth at work in these four tracks, with each taking on its own specific persona. Essential."

Benjamin Wynn a.k.a. Deru is an Emmy Award-winning composer, sound designer and producer. Deru grew up in Chicago, where his earliest influences came across the airwaves of the legendary University of Chicago radio station, WHPK. Listening to hip-hop and specifically its use of static in music, Wynn began his first forays into manipulating sound. He continued his sonic explorations at the California Institute of the Arts, where he
studied synthesis, digital signal processing, acoustics, music theory and composition, and earned a Bachelor's degree in Music Technology. While at CalArts, Ben also delved into world music,
studying Balinese gamelan, African drumming and hand percussion. His multi-layered musical sensibility combines hip-hop, electronic, world music and classical composition.

* Cosmopolis is an electronic music release from artist Fonemi. This work is inspired by the novel Cosmopolis by Don DeLillo, a book that tells of a modern odyssey along the streets of a great metropolis. The four pieces here, composition of Cosmopolis, sounds as the soundtrack of an introspective journey rich in ancestral suggestions and forgotten rituals recalls over time. The undervalued atmospheres that characterise the whole work seem to be held in suspension by a percussive magma that marks the passage of the past that becomes present. Cosmopolis is a fluid that carries our lost memories.

* Cosmopolis: a tribal and primitive dance, a propitiatory rite that has been handed down unchanged over the centuries.

* Fiori carnivori: what you do not expect, the flower, a symbol of delicacy and sensitivity that turns into an inexorable predator.

* Verso Casa: the return from a long journey, the lights that illuminate the asphalt and the distant flashes of unidentified cities.

* Tra Le Rovine: an ancient song, a prayer that exorcises a universal omen.

Sunkissed Grooves & Blissed Out Moods - Blank & Jones present the soundtrack for the summer with their tenth RELAX installment. 20 new songs inspire with their unique mix of warm acoustic sounds and subtle electronic finesse. The handpicked guest vocalists Coralie Clement, Jason Caesar, Emma Brammer and Zoe Dee give the Balearic Vibes the special note.

A totally unexpected and absorbing side of electro-acoustic-jazz and dark electronics from this new 8 piece ensemble; reaching into bass depths and pop dimensions via microscopic miniature sounds and widescreen vistas. A huge recommendation if you're into Supersilent, Arve Henriksen, Deathprod, Gruppo Di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, Luigi Nono, Rashad Becker!

Basic calculations tell us that eight players are more than Supersilent's three, but like the Norwegian trio, this ensemble's music sounds much greater than the sum of its parts. This becomes especially evident once we factor in their 9th player - Matthias Erb manning the Klanggestalter; a semi-organic array of amps, filters and live algorithms used for 'neutralising the difference of acoustic and electric instruments' in a manner comparable with the 'Audiovirus' deployed by Supersilent's Helge Sten (Deathprod).

The nine players here each bring a fluency in pop, jazz, or contemporary musics to the table, as well as a couple of technical and post-production roles, in effect dealing with a democracy of pluralities and diversity. The way they consolidate them within morphing psychoacoustic parameters is nothing short of compelling.

The unfathomable dimensions of their sound are gradually revealed in the unfurling sound field of Erster Teil (First Part), morphing the sound stage from the hushed glow of electric guitar and Richard Koch's Henriksen-esque trumpet to the spatter of extended techniques against shifting backdrops which become the foreground, only to recede and leave the listener suspended in a sublime state, unsure of where they are or what to expect next. In this sense, Martyn Heyne of Efterklang's 'mix fuzz and fairy dust' comes into play in a way comparable to the lighting guy's role in film or opera dramaturgy.

The 2nd movement, Zweiter Teil finds those experimental urges in dizzier flight, veering with almost schizoid form between the animalistic tussle of skillful abstraction and more urgent, controlled swells of percussion and vibes with an effect recalling Gruppo Di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza at full, psychoactive flex, whilst a 3rd movement Dritter Teil affords the widest angled perspective, zooming out to a melancholic plateau rendered in sliding, oily streaks of pitching trumpet strewn with windswept percussion which coalesces into a febrile scuffle sounding something like one of Rashad Becker's noumenal Dances turned tempestuous, with drinks thrown, tables overturned and tents burned in the cranky finale.

(en) While the last Kompakt offering from legendary Russian synthesists SCSI-9 dates back to 2008, when the duo released their album Easy As Down' (KOMPAKT CD 068), co-founder and techno/house virtuoso ANTON KUBIKOV kept himself busy cultivating his own label Pro-Tez Records - and establishing a career as solo artist with a clear penchant for dub-infused soundscapes and ambient music. WHATNESS is Kubikov's first solo full-length under his proper name, weaving airy and iridescent sonic tapestry that takes up where his excellent contributions to our Pop Ambient compilations left off.
ANTON KUBIKOV's special ear for ambience and tonal spaces was always an integral part of SCSI-9's musical DNA that would alternate between tight dance workouts and vast melodic range - but it's as a solo artist that he truly started to explore these spaces, following mysterious sonic trails into foggy, reverb-heavy territory. Kubikov's contributions to the several instalments of our Pop Ambient compilation series announced the arrival of a promising new project in our talent pool - a promise more than satisfied with the immersive sound bath of first solo outing WHATNESS.
Going from the richly layered electronic drones of LIQUID MIRROR or ENTRANCE to the lush ambient dub of OTHER THE SEA and KURT'S FOREST, or the minimalist, evocative piano of OKTOBER and PIA, the album covers lots of stylistic ground, but remains committed to its overall aesthetic of misty mountains and serene valleys. With the endearing APRIL, a true Pop Ambient classic from the 2016 compilation (KOMPAKT 345 CD 128) makes a welcome return, priming the canvas for the subtle bass throb of NORTH and its charming synth bell orchestra. Masterfully refining and extending his sonic pallet on WHATNESS, ANTON KUBIKOV can claim his spot among the very best of today's ambient composers.
(de) Obwohl die letzte Kompakt-Offerte aus dem Studio der legendären russichen Synthesizeristen SCSI-9 schon eine Weile zurückliegt - 2008, um genau zu sein, mit dem Album Easy As Down' (KOMPAKT CD 068) -, hat Co-Gründer und Techno/House-Virtuose ANTON KUBIKOV nicht auf der faulen Haut geaalt, sondern sein eigenes Label Pro-Tez Records gepflegt - und eine Karriere als Solo-Künstler mit klarem Drang zur verdubbten Tonlandschaft und Ambient-Musik in die Wege geleitet. WHATNESS ist seine erste Solo-Album-Veröffentlichung unter eigenem Namen und webt einen luftigen wie schillernden Klangteppich, der genau da weitermacht, wo Kubikovs exzellente Beiträge zu unserer Pop Ambient Compilation-Reihe aufgehört haben.
ANTON KUBIKOVs besonderes Ohr für Ambientes und tonale Räume war schon immer integraler Bestandteil von SCSI-9s musikalischer DNA, die gerne zwischen fokussierter Tanzathletik und ausufernden Melodieräumen changiert - doch erst als Solo-Künstler macht er sich daran, diese Räume wirklich auszuloten und geheimnisvollen Klangspuren in neblige, hallende Gegenden zu folgen. Kubikovs Gastspiele auf mehreren Ausgaben unserer Pop Ambient-Serie deuteten auf ein vielverprechendes neues Projekt im Talentpool hin - ein Versprechen, das mit dem mitreissenden Klangbad von WHATNESS mehr als erfüllt wird.
Von den reichhaltig verschichteten elektronischen Drones von LIQUID MIRROR oder ENTRANCE zum üppigen Ambient-Dub von OTHER THE SEA und KURT'S FOREST, oder dem minimalistischen, andeutungsreichen Klavierspiel auf OKTOBER und PIA erstreckt sich das Album über viel Stilgebiet, bleibt aber der eigenen Ästhetik dunstiger Gebirgszüge und einsamer Täler true. Mit dem überaus reizenden APRIL macht ausserdem ein echter Pop Ambient-Klassiker von der 2016er Ausgabe (KOMPAKT 345 CD 128) seine Aufwartung und bereitet den Boden für den subtil pochenden Bass von NORTH nebst charmantem Synthieglockenorchester. Meisterhaft veredelt und aufgebohrt, ist ANTON KUBIKOVs Klangpalette auf WHATNESS Grund genug ihm einen Platz zwischen den besten Ambientkomponisten unserer Tage zu sichern.

Light shed in the darkness of the May new moon, 2016.

Supported by Alan Backdrop, Luigi Tozzi, Evigt Morker, Amandra, Antonio de Angelis, Arnaud le Texier, Dubit, Gianluca Meloni, Exium, Iori, Rasmus Hedlund, Stefan Vincent, Stephanie Sykes, Takaaki Itoh, Unam Zetineb, Vilix, Eric Cloutier, Sandra Mosh, Attemporal, Sam KDC, Periskop, Shaded Explorer, Mogano, Ryuji Takeuchi, The Noisemaker.

'We're very proud to present this new single on Help! The A-side, Gratitude, is a track recorded in 2014 by DJ Central in Rubber Studios, Aarhus. If it wasn't for the support and encouragement of fellow Regelbau-homies Kasper Skov and DJ Sports, this piece of energetic dancemusic wouldn't have seen the light of day. The long, vivid, ambient penta-tune on the 2nd face was recorded during same summer in Amsterdam by Ask Your Hands (Tobias Sachse, KAAP, Bobby van Putten, DJ Sports and Central). Releases like this don't thread everybody's needle but we're gonna throw it against the wall and see if it sticks.'

Limited to 75 Tapes

Hippie Priest returns to Argot to release his second album, See It Through. Having made great strides at dialing in his production and strengthening his songwriting since the release of Gaia Variants in 2016, the young Champaign-based producer focuses his sophomore longplayer around a narrative approach. 'See It Through is a day in the life of a lioness", says Hippie Priest, 'Beginning with the soft ambience of waking up in the morning, leading up to an intense hunt in the middle, and into evening revelry and eventual slumber". The album's 11 tracks cover a large stretch of sonic ground to tell this story. Its glowing opener, 'Umbrella Keeper' gives way to widescreen stompers 'Thorn' and 'Quicksand' that clear the way for more contemplative moments like 'Crystal' or 'Cherry Blossom". One can't help but imagine a dramatic hunt while listening to 'Are You Okay' or carnivorous displays on 'Desire". Even tender scenes are possible with closers 'Tanuki' and 'Tired Lioness", gorgeous movements in which Hippie Priest's melodic profficiencies shine brightest. Vital Sales Points: - Second album from the up-and-coming young producer from central Illinois

In the midst of a busy year, full of wildly-varied accomplishments, David Lieske (aka Carsten Jost) has surprised us all with an unannounced 11-track full-length album on Dial-- his first since 2000's "You Don't Need A Weatherman..." In the interim he's kept busy curating countless releases on Dial, the label he co-runs with Peter "Lawrence" Kersten, celebrated a 15 year label anniversary with an all-encompassing 2LP/various artists'

compilation, released a gallery-edition album of his black ambient collaboration Misanthrope CA with Robert Kulisek, "Deathbridge" and launched a new magazine project (also with Kulisek) named after the speed of light i.e. "299792458m/s". All this activity, even after his recent trans-atlantic relocation from Berlin to New York City, mainly to open the American branch of Mathew Gallery has surely taken us all by welcome surprise.
Out of all of the Dial house and techno artists, Carsten Jost has always represented the most precise brand of exquisitely doom-laden house, laced with equally strong doses of melancholy and beauty. Here on "Perishable Tactics", Lieske runs through his distinctively stealthy low-slung beat-mospheres, leaning towards a decidedly low-lit and sultry space, but mixed with a fresh, gently arc-ing feeling of romance and dare I say itLove() Tellingly he's seen it fit to include 2007's "Love"-one of his best e.p. tracks from a split release with Efdemin. But while "Love" represents a climbing and yearning towards a place where love might reside, the remaining new tracks debuting here seem to represent a place where this love actually exists. This feeling is woven into his deep, medium tempo, detroit-inflected house rhythms, accented with crystalline keys, disembodied voices at times and gently soaring strings. While anger may be less in the forefront here it is important to notice that these tracks are ripe with the balance of joy and unease inherent in house. There is definitely a newfound languidity here that feels particularly like a moment shared by two (perhaps amongst many) but the atmosphere still remains decidedly pensive. See "Ambush" with it's strolling beat, moody yet sweet chords and chilling atmosphere later joined by thunder cracking in an almost-approving-manner a safe-distance away.
Of course diehard fans will find satisfaction knowing that Lieske's delectable angst hasn't completely abated. Title track "Perishable Tactics" takes a disarmingly peaceful setting and rolls a heavy fog over it to herald a sure-to-arrive fate that awaits us all. (See also "Army Green".). But with "Dawn Patrol" the whispering hi-hat and gently clanking rhythm offset by rolling strings marries the old and new Carsten Jost most successfully. All of this atmosphere bookended by ambient intro and outro tracks by Misanthrope CA make for a perfectly foreboding, elegant and deliciously dark new album release by Carsten Jost.

One month after the release of 981 Mb RSD EP, we are glad to introduce you to the new Molecule's album: 60° 43' Nord (Deluxe Edition). Some would associate the sounds of the waves to heat and relaxation and rest assured, we're part of them. That being so, some others visualize the sea as a wide playground from which they can pick up the echos to turn them into a deep sound. That is precisely the case of Molecule who decided to record the wild voices of the Atlantic Ocean aboard a 90 metres long fishing boat. The result is made of powerful and danceable techno beats ("8 ZL 40), tracks that will take you directly to the Atlantic's depths ("Abysses"), and harmonious moments of time off ("Le Jardin' or Soleil Bleu"). The whole of the tracks is captivating and flows naturally as we listen to it. You'll find the song Hébrides, present on the 981 Mb EP, as well as the original version of Rockall that you might have heard already as a live version. If you never had the chance to jump onto a 90 metres fishing boat, take your chance, Molecule is inviting you to get on his... The CD included in the LP version features the 10 tracks of the album.

*The LP was mastered for vinyl by James Plotkin and is housed in a custom letterpressed jacket printed by Stumptown Printers.

- Nordra has toured/played with artists such as Demdike Stare, Jenny Hval, SUMAC, Yves Tumor, Juliana Huxtable, Sissy Spacek, Nate Young, Deafheaven, Daniel Menche, Sound Cipher, WAND, etc.

Pinprick guitar lines, swaths of ethereal brass, sub-bass thuds, the clatter of distorted percussion, fever dream lullaby melodies - it can be difficult to discern what sounds we're hearing over the course of Nordra's eponymous debut given the strange and unorthodox context of their combination. And while many tech savvy artists have managed to build strange symphonies and texturally curious electronic exercises within the lonely confines of user-friendly software, those in-the-box tactics don't line up with the mission statement of Monika Khot, the mastermind behind Nordra. "The record has a lot to do with the loss of information from analog to digital conversion, which is then in turn paired with static and dynamic though discrepancies."Across the album's four hallucinatory tracks, it becomes abundantly clear that Khot is a musical mastermind, able to navigate multiple stylistic and tonal shifts while nimbly switching between wildly divergent instruments over the course of a single song, all while maintaining a singular cohesive vision.

REPRESSED !!

EXO2 is a delicious selection of exotics that will grow on you the more you water them and give them the fresh grounding of your soul. May we kindly invite all listeners to adjust their velocity and let the music take over for there is a tantalizing glimpse of another world to be explored in each rhythmic harmony. Enjoy the journey!

New work for artist MCENDOZ, an album from the atmospheric lounge with unique sound for a trip around the world, exploring the sounds of every territory. For this new project, Medioli uses the collaboration of Marco Rosetti on guitars, Fabrizio Benevelli on sax, Marco Tonelli on the trombone, Gabriele Bolognesi on the flute, Cinzia Di Nuzzo on the violin, Marco Remondini on the cello, Annibale Guarini on the owl, Elena Giardina, Heron Borelli, Daniela "Dhany" Galli, and Cinzia Di Nuzzo to the voices. In total 16 tracks for a collection album!

Super Bossa Compilation, a Collection of Unpublished and Revisited in Perfect Style Lounge / Bossanova .

Andrew Hargreaves (The Boats, Tape Loop Orchestra) presents his striking first works for dance with Pose Plastique; the unrequited, roiling musique concrète score to choreography by Belgian dancer Anaïs Ureel.
Pose Plastique marks bends and loops in time as the first release under Andrew's government name since 2010's Avant Garde for ONO, following a period of belligerent industrial rhythms and abstracted electronics with a much more refined sense of biokinetic movement captured within stark, echoic space.
Pushing himself beyond usual comfort zones, and using a kinetograph score of movements which was effectively illegible to Andrew, the results of Pose Plastique reveal a keen sensitivity towards supple and super spacious sound design, eschewing any sort of 'incessant pounding', as he initially feared he was supposed to, in favour of a series of diffused rhythmic triggers and physical gestures that mirror elements of Ostgut Ton's Masse works for dance as much as Jeff Mills' most abstract techno navigations and the plonging, weightless meters of Bernard Parmegiani's seminal GRM works.
As these things go, the commission never fully manifested. Anaïs ended up disenchanted by dance (not due to Andrew's music, we might add!) and eventually moved to New Zealand. Fast forward a few years and Andrew made the decision to edit the recordings for this 31 minute release, simultaneously offering encrypted instructions for movement to any willing bodies, while its free-floating sequence of rhythmic and tonal structures act as a hugely absorbing listen in their own right.
It's perhaps testament to Andrew's gifted, mutable compositional skills and musical vision that Pose Plastique works in its own right. By his own admission, Andrew's not really a dancer, but but he's clearly attuned to what makes abstract dance music tick, and to the integral connection between living bodies and machines,
and the way they've become conditioned by electronics ever since the explosion of avant-garde electronic music in the '60s, to the impulses of disco and new wave, and its contemporary application.

* Denver's Gila, a producer supported by Benji B on BBC Radio 1 from the outset of his solo career, debuts on Benji's Deviation label with new six-track EP, 'Pick Six'.

* First making waves as part of US rap group, Gorgeous Children, it was Benji's support on Radio 1 that first alerted XL Recordings to his intricate and abstract beat-making. It was through XL that he released his debut EP, 'Genkidama', in 2016 — a release that saw Gila score a support slot at Metro Boomin's sold-out show at Koko in London and earmark him as one of the year's most exciting breakout acts.

* 'Pick Six' builds on the territory explored in 'Genkidama' and sees Gila continue to toy with hardbody US rap production techniques and sound palettes, casting them into a hazy, tripped-out flux all of his own making. From the sino tones of fluttery, dreamscape opener 'Swirl Suit' to booming, 808 heaters like title-track 'Pick Six', this is an EP that sits firmly in its own lane, redefining the boundaries of rap inspired club music.

* Gila plays with atmosphere too, none more so on ghoulish and pensive, 'Psycho Dabber', or the rippling 'Frost On Leaf', spotlighting a deftness in and around the rougher edges of his work that lends itself to being enjoyed both in and away-from-the-club.

* 'Pick Six' has become something of a club phenomenon, inciting a wave of intrigue everytime it gets dropped in a dance; until now, only a handful of DJs (Benji B, Flying Lotus, Hudson Mohawke, Kode 9) have had the pleasure of playing it.

* A natural fit at Deviation, 'Pick Six' marks the best yet from Gila — a producer very much on the rise.

Timo Van Lujik (Af Ursin) and Andrew Chalk regroup their quiet energies alongside Tom James
Scott (guitar) and Daisuke Suzuki (korogi) with the tenderly spectral and folksy ambient strokes
of Balayes De La Main Du Hasard for Chalk's private imprint; Faraway Press.
Intimacy, modesty and attention to detail are key to the sound of Elodie and all carefully in check on
this, their 11th recording together since 2011. Absorbing cues from minimal classical, ethereal folk
and even wistful traces of country music, they effectively transmute those inspirations to locate a
gently luminous middle distance sound, one which seems occupy the space between the speakers
and the ears with a quality best compared to the last shaft of dying light in a darkened room.
It's perhaps an overused phrase on these pages, but the effect of their music inside is decidedly
dreamlike. They seem to prise sounds from warm, hazy air, rendering an array of shimmering,
mirage-like extractions through a combination of super refined instrumental techniques and
ineffable levels of empathy, enabling them to conjure very particular out-of-body sensations and
an incredibly lush sort of spectral intangibility.
The way they layer and suspend the elements in their compositions is little short of magical,
bringing the sense of space and detail of a '60s jazz record into the ambient realm with a
ghostly sleight of hand that coolly short circuits and makes much modern classical sound totally
overwrought by comparison, and likewise lends a folk wise delicacy to ambient music which
doesn't come with the usual, cloying tropes.
It's sound like a fine, refreshing mist in hot weather, or a sort of temporal balm for these
accelerated times

We like to let our artists speak for themselves about their music whenever possible so asked Penelope to tell us about her album -

'In 2016. I rented out a small piano studio in East London for nearly the whole year and set out to write an introspective, trendless, and mostly beatless album. Inspired by albums from This Mortal Coil and Scott Walker, who also sought freedom to work outside of the expectations of their previous work, I limited the instrumentation to mostly an acoustic piano and effects, which left space to expose a lot of emotional vulnerabilities about myself and people close to me. Writing lullabies about being a mother in a dystopian world, with pensive words about swimming against the current as a female artist, I felt free enough to tell untold truths that I've never felt comfortable talking about within music. Free, liberated, empowered. naked.'

Philippe Hallais returns to Modern Love with a new album, the first under his own name following his label debut as Low Jack with Lighthouse Stories in early 2016.
It's by some distance his most important work to date, setting aside the squashed dancefloor productions of his Low Jack Alias for an album of emotive, indefinable ambient pieces.
After working through different subcultural musical languages as Low Jack, this time Philippe takes inspiration from the TV biopics of high-performance athletes for an album of exceptional
emotive impact; somewhere between pastiche, tragedy and electronic futurism.
Fascinated by the sports documentaries mass-produced by the US TV channel ESPN, Hallais transcribed and amplified its dramatic recipes. These form the material of tearful soap operas
which develop the same narrative ad nauseam; the rise to the top, the betrayal, decline, salvation, comeback and, ultimately, nostalgia and regret. The TV formatting reduces the life of these high level athletes to a generic tale, transforming them into impersonators of their own lives through extreme use of editing, slow motion and musical themes.
Divided into four sides (and eleven tracks) acting as parts in a greek tragedy, the album delves into the dislocations of the mythology of sports and its achievement in mass entertainment; whereby the hero becomes a dispensable and mimetic body. Hallais delves into this unusual portrayal of triviality and disaster, naivety and cynicism that make the real life and ordeals of the hero indistinguishable from their scripted form on TV.
This obsession with storytelling and the creation of bigger than life characters forms the narrative of 'An American Hero', a parable for our times.

Necessary first vinyl edition of Hollywood Medieval, the debut album of psychogeographic dramaturgy by Manchester-born soundtrack composer, Maxwell Sterling. It was initially issued
as a digital release on LA-based Memory No.36 Recordings in 2016 to a round of acclaim from Fact Magazine and The Wire and has now been re-mastered by Matt Colton for this vinyl edition.
It sounds as plasticky sensuous as it should, and arguably looks worthy of a wall or pedestal in a Bel-Air or Moss Side pad thanks to its striking bespoke cover art collage by radical feminist and
Manchester punk legend, Linder (Sterling), aka Maxwell's mum.
Hollywood Medieval is an album about the glaring disparities and elaborate, underlying convolutions the composer observed and felt while working as a nanny for wealthy parents during his film composition studies at UCLA in the early part of the 2010s. Using an augmented palette of classic DX7 and Juno 60 synths along with a severely warped bank of library samples and iPhone recordings, it spells out a queasily evocative simulacra of the city in flux, animating a sort of Ballardian tableaux that's hyper-descriptive in its rendering of the hazy, dosed-up, and often
delirious transitions between Hollywood's glamour and grime, using LA's gurning facades and ostentatious wealth as prompts for a richly visual side of sawn-off emotive signposts and jazz-
taut turns of phrase that vividly etch on the memory in neon freehand.
From the dizzying sugar rush of the opening sequence, Hollywood Medieval I, to its spiralling counterpoint in Hollywood Medieval II, the album is an inception-like concerto, with Maxwell smartly subverting the film score composer's role by placing the music centre stage and allowing the narration to be carried by virtuosic flourishes owing to the artist's classical and jazz music
schooling,
In a sense, Hollywood Medieval resonates with the way Sam Kidel subverted the nature of ambient music on Disruptive Muzak (RAVE014), and offers an alternative, lucid view of the hazy LA offered by Delroy Edwards' Teenage Tapes (RAVE005), and likewise, works like a present diagnosis of the dystopian future worlds dreamed up in The Sprawl's dystopian, widescreen visions on EP1
(RAVE013), effectively broadening and illuminating The Death of Rave's own sonic hauntology.

The sferic label bubbles up from Manchester city centre with Echium's debut suite of charming ambient gestures, neatly expanded by empathetic, weightless house remixes
from local cuties, Perfume Advert and Space Afrika.
Their mutual first move, Synthetic Space (sferic 001) positions both Echium and sferic within a well rooted tradition of Berlin kosmische, dub and Detroit techno-informed electronics emanating from the rainy city, convecting a wistful spirit that resonates with Martin Hannett's work for The Durutti Column as much as J.S. Zeiter's mutable dub techno and the humbly mannered moves of the CCO and meandyou. labels.
Its eight original tracks oscillate between effervescent tones and grained electronics with a carefully realised, cybernetic nuance, locating a lush balance of haptic nudge and detached process that really gets under the skin in altered states. It's active in the opening cut, Blended Textures' swirl of arid chords and frothing acid, and smudged deeply into the glowing pores of Juum and the noumenal bleep space of Looum, and aching with a
lovebot sentience in the Shinichi Atobe-esque title track, all on the A-side, whereas the the B-side subtly edges up the bass to tactile, insistent degrees with the air-stepping
Ethereal and Activation beauties giving way to the arabesque vignette, Jazz Interlude.
Special mention, then for the remixes, with Salford's Perfume Advert playing to their Anxiety Support Group tendencies with nervously deferred but soothing results, and the ascendent Space Afrika duo hustling a rolling, heads-down Tribalist Dub version that leaves the disc simmering for another spin ahead of their debut LP, as promised for sferic in the near future.