Beats News

Slow trippy acid by Tight Pants. "Action increase the screaming this crazy guy with tight pants is another EP. Because he fights evil with his synth-sword of Samurai reincarnation has some say. Trump only dance if maybe he beats these world would hate. Tight Pants! Tight Pants! Yoga ! Tight Pants!"

Maar, the duo of Michael Vallera (Immune's Cleared and solo works in Opal Tapes) and Joseph Clayton Mills (Haptic), returns with Absolute Delay. The title, defined as the interval between transmission and reception of a signal, encapsulates their aesthetic of fissures, broken patterns, and spatial dislocation. Expanding on the palette that characterized their debut Ceto (Umor Rex 2014), Maar draws even more deeply on their influences—in particular, the warped atmospherics of dub and the severity of minimalist composition—to create something that defies easy classification. Translucent drones and traces of field recordings are deployed to create shifting degrees of focus, while flickering electronics are pieced together in a disorienting mosaic

freshly repressed.

As a part of the early independent music movement, PoL occupies a special niche in electronic, experimental and ambient genres. Following recent vinyl reissues of his 1983 Palace of Lights cassette, Music Works for Industry, and a compilation of early cassette tracks on VOD's acclaimed American Cassette Culture, PoL has reissued Marc Barreca's first album for the label, the 1980 release Twilight, as part of an ongoing program of documenting the roots of the Pacific Northwest independent impulse.

A-TON ist eine neue Edition und Plattform des Berghain-Inhouse-Labels Ostgut Ton und konzentriert sich auf Ambient-, Archiv- und andere Musiken, abweichend von den
clubfokussierten Veröffentlichungen des Hauptlabels. Darüber hinaus markiert das erste Release auf A-TON - Chronicles | - den Beginn einer Serie von Veröffentlichungen Luke Slaters unter dessen Alias The 7th Plain und präsentiert geremastertes, zuvor veröffentlichtes als auch bislang ungehörtes Archivmaterial.

Zuerst erschienen auf General Production Recordings zwischen 1993 und 1996, lotete Slaters The 7th Plain die sich stärker ausbreitenden Facetten von Ambientmusik aus und trieb sie gleichzeitig an die Genregrenzen, indem sich The 7th Plain nicht auf beatbefreite Synthflächen beschränkte, sondern treibende Progressionen, nuancierte Rhythmen und raffinierte Melodien mit einbezog. The 7th Plains außerweltliche Musik entzog sich somit der genauen musikalischen Einordnung, nachzuhören auf den beiden Alben The 4 Cornered Room und My Yellow Wise Rug (beide GPR, 1994) - emotionale, gespenstische und eskapistische Musik, bei Erstveröffentlichung vorwärtsdenkende Alben, die in Rückbetrachtung die Zeit besiegt haben.

Ursprünglich aufgenommen in Slaters Spacestation Ø, nun für A-TON komplett geremastert, zeigt Chronicles | die futuristische Ästhetik und musikalische Agenda der Neunziger in einem zeitgenössischen Kontext, ohne Nostalgie aber mit dem Wissen um die Zeitlosigkeit dieser Musik. Mit sieben originären Stücken und einem unveröffentlichten Ken Ishii-Remix klingt The 7th Plain so beseelt und relevant wie eh und je.

Während "Boundaries" (von My Yellow Wise Rug), "Grace" und "Surface Bound" (beide von The 4 Cornered Room) Slater-Aficionados bekannt sein dürften, sind "The Super 8", "T Funk States", "Slip 7 Sideways" und "Chords Are Dirty" bislang ebenso unveröffentlicht wie der zuvor erwähnte Remix von Ken Ishiis "Extra".

Mit Chronicles | erweitert The 7th Plain die Wärme und Kälte analoger Synthesizermusik auf das digitale Zeitalter: Während A-TON Chronicles | als Doppel-LP und CD
veröffentlicht, wird die Musik selbst in verschiedenen Digitalformaten zum ersten Mal überhaupt erhältlich sein - wodurch The 7th Plain einer neuen Generation von Hörern zugänglich wird, die die Vielfalt elektronischer Musikgeschichte erst für sich entdecken.

"The Girl and the Chameleon" will probably fall under the genre tags of acid, electro and techno but it is so much more. Witschkowski has been responsible for exemplary electronics throughout his career and this latest is undeniably some of his best. The album sees The Exaltics don a dust mask. Warehouse parties, strobe lights and fog machines and the 90s underground acid scene are definite influences. But there's more. Across thirteen tracks and two slabs of wax the Jena artist takes you on a journey into his world. Gnarled and clinical grooves, caustic 303 encounters, depraved dancefloor destroyers and soothing machine music. A sonic trek through tough and taut textures with touches of tenderness. An album that shows a depth of ability, an enviable talent and a knowledge of how to break floorboards.

The flawed wonders that Yair Elazar Glotman puts forth on his latest opus I Know No Weekend are the coldest dreams you would ever wish to immerse yourself in. They recall echoes of echoes, forced into slowly struggling shapes, ghosts of memories, whispers of life from another dimension. Shamanic-repetitive beats shift slowly beneath echoing bells and fragments of past transmissions. Overwhelmingly, one is taken into upon a winding mental path, with no clear resolution in sight, although the journey is ever-evolving and new.

The listener perceives a great mechanism at the edges of this mass of sound, a machinery of blackened iron that grinds ceaselessly, opening vast spaces to the ear. Howling winds caress the nerves like ground glass, opening up the long limits of the Void. These are the siining harmonics of entropy

* A lover's memory. Centuries of thought dissolved into unusual dimensions, creating a new language woven from the fragment of a mad entity. Amorphous at first, it evolves to become as piercing as glass. caught in a patient

Samuel van Dijk is an electronic music producer, sound designer and media artist from the Netherlands, having released electronic music under a variety of projects, namely, Mohlao and VC-118A. With his current project Multicast Dynamics he creates ever-evolving sound textures culminating in intriguing soundscapes while preserving a tranquil cinematic atmosphere. Drawing inspiration from nature, technology, film and fiction, his music productions, live sets and audiovisual work presents a carefully arranged, recorded and processed body of work, using a vast amount of layered sound textures, field recordings and live improvisation. In May 2015, Denovali Records released the first two albums of a four part series by Multicast Dynamics, conceptually linked by our undeniable connection with nature and its wide range of landscapes, colors and movement. The third album called SCANDINAVIA followed in October 2015.

The album series moves from an evolutionary to a cosmological scale: Starting from dry land filled with light and streams, to the constantly changing surfaces of the oceans, into a frozen and murky underwater world, finally up to the arrival in an interstellar space and the cosmos. With this concept Multicast Dynamics explores organic and aqueous worlds in a dreamlike and spiritual appearance.

'Outer Envelopes' is the fourth and final installment in the four part album series. It is a continuation of exploring, written on a grid of time by constructing auditive scenes. Technically the album was composed using noise generators, home-made modular synthesizers and experiments with voltages - in short, by combining analogue and digital technology. The album is complimentary to the previous three albums and their logical continuation at the same time. Focused on the animated world of sound, van Dijk transmits celestial soundwaves to discover new uncharted sonic territories. He sends a time capsule out into a fictional space, exploring the unknown and placing sonic beacons which create eerie soundscapes and detailed textures.

Vinyl Only!
We've been meaning to put out some music by our friend Harald ever since we started this wee operation five years ago. Imagine our joy now that we're ready to release not one, but two masterful records signed Mr. Björk! Solemn chord improvisations recorded in the secret gardens of Nacka pair up with a shameless yet humble cover version of a techno evergreen on this perfect little vinyl exclusive record, beautifully designed by Malin Gabriella Nordin. This 7'' single is released synchronously with the 12''/digital Fritids EP

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 CD1 features the 10 tracks of the album as below, CD2 is live".

For several years now, The Void* (pronounced: The Void Pointers) have been developing their own sound idiom at the cutting edge of ambient, live electronics, drones and post-rock. The trio, consisting of Roald Dillewijn, Eric Magnee and Tijs Ham, chooses to build their own instruments to accomplish this. Both the coding of software and hardware tinkering are used to knead their sonic universe. 'Values' is released by three(!) collaborating record labels from The Netherlands: Lomechanik, Esc.rec. and Shipwrec. This album fits seamlessly into the catalogues of all three labels. Both musically and aesthetically, because the packaging of this 12" vinyl is stunningly beautiful, as usual.

After his manifold debut in 2009, followed by a second album "True Life / In Flames" with focus on the grand piano, Dial Records is pleased to announce Christian Naujoks's third solo album WAVE, a dedication to one of the artist's essential instruments: the electric guitar.
Inspired by The Durutti Collumn, John Fahey, Vincent Gallo, Azalia Snail and David Grubbs, and many others, Christian Naujoks breaks the boundaries between songwriting and minimalism, folk music and contemporary art. The recordings at Electric Avenue Studios were accompanied by engineering master Tobias Levin, known for his works on Kreidler, Faust, Felix Kubin, Pantha Du Prince & The Bell Laboratory, just to name a few. With WAVE Naujoks and Levin created a sound-seductive state of the art production, ten post-minimalist guitar pieces with an appearance of the artist's signature piano style on two of the songs.
Christian Naujoks recently worked on productions with his band Sky Walking (with RVDS and Lawrence) and released a piano tape on Martin Hossbach's imprint. After a series of concerts at Berlin's Berghain and HAU, the Golden Pudel Club in Hamburg, performances and collaborations around the globe including Israel, Mexico, Vietnam and the Philippines, he returned back to his studio in Hamburg in 2015 where the WAVE started.

* Rose is presented as a clear laser etched vinyl edition featuring artwork by Mark Titchner. The record is released by Omne a new London based sound and text based publishing platform.
* Grumbling Fur present the music for Mark Titchner's film installation Rose. Developed as meeting point between Daniel O'Sullivan and Alexander Tucker's collaborative music project and Titchner's expanded moving image and text based works the project was initially presented at Dilston Grove in London during summer 2014.
* The music continues Grumbling Fur's immersion into a haunting legacy of British folk and outsider electronics, bringing these worlds together within an enveloping field of sensory speech and sounds evoking both transcendent bliss and introspective paranoia. The music mirrors Rose's thematic influence's, drawing from the desires of individual hope and aspiration as well as interrogation techniques found in the declassified CIA Kubark manual.

Severence is an electronic sound artist who lives in spain.

Mensch 003 experiments with various forms of chaotic sound & signal generation to create dense chaotic sound fields and other more relaxed ambient soundscapes.
All tracks were recorded live in one take using a eurorack modular synth, a mixing desk and various effects pedals (no overdubs or post processing in the computer).

On limited edition compact disc. Part two of Atom™'s minimalist, ambient magnum opus, airdrops you into a void of undulating sonic modulation with nothing but the dream of silent huskies for company. Schmidt has always been a maestro of harnessing non-repetitive repetition and on 'Texturen II' he takes that to a psychedelic extreme, constructing a smooth, digital crystal within the stereo field. Almost imperceptible sheets of binary sleet superimpose themselves on flows of deep, glacial pulse-width gestures. The ensemble is minimal but ever-fluctuating, expansive but hyper-detailed. A frozen mirage. Here, the vistas are endless, the peaks illusory, the troughs few and the symmetries pure. Eat your rations, try to keep moving and don't go snow blind.

Cologne based Jens-Uwe Beyer is releasing this new EP just weeks after his album - The Emissary was published on Kompakt's new sub-label Pop Ambient.
While - The Emissary was completed by Beyer on his home island of Fehmarn in the Baltic Sea, - Amor dark pink tencel satin suit is very much a collaborative eort. And on exceeding simple classi"cations.You'll get this the moment John Stanier (Battles, Ex-Helmet) jumps in with his remarkable drumming on - White oversized #ame yarn bolero with John Stanier . Stanier plays the bouncer at the entrance of your dark alleyway club... and suddenly the goose bumps you were feeling for the last minutes on our skin explode.With music this intense, there's little time to ponder the classi"cation. And when Stanier is done, there is nothing more than a long goodbye in the air, accompanied by the drums and you breathing in and out slowly.That John and Jens-Uwe are long time collaborators through the out"t - Cologne Tape explains why this makes so much sense, despite feeling unheard of before.If Side A takes 8 minutes of its 13 minutes running time to hit the peak, the 12-minute-long B-side gets down to business by the third. Collaborator on - Navy stamp degrade print print oversized viscose hulpil with Barnt is another Cologne Tape member, Beyer's Magazine label partner and neighbour Barnt.Circles everywhere, those ones where you worry they might crash into each other anytime. There is a straight base drum and a snare that somehow bring back memories of the times when industrial was as much of a sound as of a political position - truth be told, these guys don't seem to do conventional. Thomas Venker.

Deconstructing Happiness. Shopping as a new Religion. 24 hour delivery web stores. Famous people making prog rock albums as a cure against depression. Glossy magazines selling lifestyle as entertainment. Rich people driving state-sponsored electronic cars. Four holidays a year spent on the other side of the World. Media whores selling their "burn out "story to the highest buyer. Television selling fiction as truth. Everyone seems more than ready to go all Faustian, help sell some advertisements to magazines, get enough "almost popular" likes on your favorite hipster page. OK, this is a new record by Red Stars Over Tokyo: One that feels like a transition to a new phase. If it finds you, I hope you like it. Maybe I'll make another record in another two years, maybe I'll catch some glimmer of sunlight, somewhere.

Recommended for fans of Scandinavian synth pop, Baeleric disco sunsets, shortwave disintegration loops, deep digi-dub, and Todd Terje. Edition of 200.

After his manifold debut in 2009, followed by a second album "True Life / In Flames" with focus on the grand piano, Dial Records is pleased to announce Christian Naujoks's third solo album WAVE, a dedication to one of the artist's essential instruments: the electric guitar.
Inspired by The Durutti Collumn, John Fahey, Vincent Gallo, Azalia Snail and David Grubbs, and many others, Christian Naujoks breaks the boundaries between songwriting and minimalism, folk music and contemporary art. The recordings at Electric Avenue Studios were accompanied by engineering master Tobias Levin, known for his works on Kreidler, Faust, Felix Kubin, Pantha Du Prince & The Bell Laboratory, just to name a few. With WAVE Naujoks and Levin created a sound-seductive state of the art production, ten post-minimalist guitar pieces with an appearance of the artist's signature piano style on two of the songs.
Christian Naujoks recently worked on productions with his band Sky Walking (with RVDS and Lawrence) and released a piano tape on Martin Hossbach's imprint. After a series of concerts at Berlin's Berghain and HAU, the Golden Pudel Club in Hamburg, performances and collaborations around the globe including Israel, Mexico, Vietnam and the Philippines, he returned back to his studio in Hamburg in 2015 where the WAVE started.

Micha³ Wolski is a Polish musician, music journalist, radio DJ and tireless promoter of dub techno aesthetics. Eight extended compositions on his new record La Mer' (Sea) recall those special moments when sound becomes a movement of a kinetic sculpture, an abstract painting, or a cinematic report from the Arctic solitude. Personal and introvert, yet simultaneously carrying certain universal message (cosmic loneliness molecular life), sound space created by Wolski manages to seduce listener and inhale her/him for whole 75 minutes. Associations with sculptural work with matter are not purely arbitrary. On his fourth full-length, artist consciously shapes complex and saturated form, further developing - on evidence on his earlier releases - penchant for exploring darker alleys of synthesis and sound design. In his varied and consistent narration, one can find a whole range of references to noblest protoplasts such as Pan Sonic, Rhythm & Sound, or even Vatican Shadow's desert manipulation. However, the key to album's consistency does not rely on the power of quote, it rather manifests itself in sheer scale and depth of imagined atmospheres and non-existent geographies. But Wolski's constructs are much more than a set of sea sound fantasies. La Mer' is a highly individualist vision of new worlds of listening AND hearing, truly deep acoustic ecology in time of overall hiss.

After having established their rule over the 12" format and turning your run-of-the-mill dance EP into a miniature opera in its own right, BLOND:ISH were bound to come up with a debut full-length at some point - but even so, WELCOME TO THE PRESENT drops as a major surprise: flexing the psychedelic and spiritual influences that already informed their LOVERS IN LIMBO EP (KOMPAKT 253), INWARD VISIONS (KOMPAKT 268) and WUNDERKAMMER (KOMPAKT 308), this new material presents itself not so much as the collection of DJ-ready peak-time bangers that some would've expected, but as what we admiringly would call a total trip. It sees the duo embark on a universal journey, departing from the club comfort zone and exploring the deeper shades of world electronica from within. Here, each track is part of a bigger story, accomplishing its role in a vibrant, colourful mix of electronic moods, field recordings, traditional instruments and polyglot vocals - a masterfully crafted and fully intoxicating soundscape unlike any other album debut out there.

Things start off in the most unassuming manner, when opener SHY GRASS lives up to its name and gently introduces a few fleeting chords to what sounds like the recording of casual child banter. The first real bass drum takes its sweet time to hit - and when it does, it does so like the wind caressing your cheek. It's a soothing, unadulterated chill-out vibe greeting the listener, followed by new age gem LOS PENSIAMENTOS and an aerial, highly immersive revamp of BLOND:ISH's classic club cut LUCY'S AFFAIR. It's only half-way through lead single ENDLESS GAMES - itself morphed into a special album-only version - that we indeed meet the first actual club beat. That's not an accident, but a very deliberate aesthetic choice - the result of what seems like the duo's very own alchemic procedure turning water into wine, and a multitude of disparate folkloric snippets into a blueprint for a unique new kind of ambient-infused dance floor.

Ambient techno exponent, A Sagittariun, fires off another full-length album transmission this April on his own Elastic Dreams label. 'Elasticity' is the Bristol based artist's second long player, and the follow up to his acclaimed 2013 debut, 'Dream Ritual'. Having last released a trio of singles in early 2015 (for Hypercolour, Secret Sundaze and Elastic Dreams), 'Elasticity' marks a return for A Sagittariun, and fans of the slippery and elastic sounds that hallmarked his debut album will not be disappointed. 'Dream Ritual' helped firmly establish A Sagittariun as an artist whose musical chops and integrity operate largely outside of the mainstream and a producer who chooses to put the music firmly center stage, whilst opting to remain relatively anonymous within the music scene. A Sagittariun explains, Elasticity was recorded over quite a short period, but the sketches and ideas have been germinating for some time, so sonically it's very coherent and consistent and moves in a way that I personally like albums to move in, with a narrative and flow that holds you right to the end. The recipe for Elasticity was always to be malleable and pliable with the sounds and tempos, for me it's all about the listening experience, and creating a landscape and a world within that one can really get deep into and explore, it's optimistic and progressive music for the head, heart and feet. I really do advise the listener to don headphones and take the trip with me".

Born in Canada, Fatima Camara was raised in a large Portuguese family where traditional song and dance were as integral to her family gatherings as food, laughter, and wine. Before We Sleep, her debut album, is as a collage of the diverse musical inuences that have dened each chapter of her storied life: bass guitar lines wrought with the new wave sound that marked her formative adolescence, drums that echo the electronic music she migrated to during her early adulthood in Toronto's dance music scene, and an overriding melancholy that signals the conicted feelings she has when considering the thin layer of dust that has collected upon her chair at the family dinner table since she made her move to Berlin.
Apart from music, Fatima appreciates happy accidents, blended horizons, and unlit corners.

Dave Harrington's long-standing musical career is impressive and varied, yet the New York-native has never released an album of his own work. Today, Harrington is pleased to announce his first solo endeavor, Dave Harrington Group, and the release of his debut album, Become Alive, which will be released April 15th on Other People. With today's announcement, Harrington offers up the first taste of the album with its title track - listen below Dave Harrington grew up immersed in jazz, from his father's love of it, to later studying with Kelvyn Bell, Brad Jones, JD Parran, Daniel Bernard Roumain, and Dave Zinno. Upon his return to NYC after university, Harrington dove headfirst into his hometown of New York's musical underworld, where scenes and bands rub together and cross-pollinate with abandon. From there, he fell into the electronic music milieu, collaborating with Nicolas Jaar on Darkside's celebrated blending of techno, prog-rock and space disco. For Become Alive, Harrington was inspired by the classic jazz albums of the late 60s and early 70s, which experimented with contemporary studio recording techniques and effects. He assembled about a dozen players and recorded days of improvised material, later manipulating it into something that, while fundamentally live, takes full advantage of Harrington's penchant for electronic manipulations of organic sound - the same conceptual approach he takes with his heavily effected and live-sampling guitar work, applied to an entire group. Each track is the unique product of Harrington's unorthodox musical make-up - jazz training and ability, a collaborative, free-minded spirit, and a personal vision of mixing and post-production techniques to tie it together.

cover by emi winter
About ten years ago Toshiya Kawasaki founded his label Mule Musiq in Tokyo. The launch was driven by his desire to introduce the world to the music of Kuniyuki Takahashi aka Koss - one of the most multi-layered contemporary musicians of Japan.

That was down in 2005 and ever since Mule Musiq emerged, gave birth to sub labels and built up a colourful artist family that consists of musicians like DJ Sprinkles, Eddie C or Lawrence. Who always stayed and continued to evolve in terms of mastery, musicality and freedom of artistic speech is Kuniyuki.

As a producer his love for music was never caged in a singular style or genre. Under his own name, as Koss or in collaborative works with musicians like Henrik Schwarz or Marcus Henriksson and Sebastian Mullaert aka Minilogue he explored many different musical languages - from house and techno to ambient, jazz and classical.

As a listener he also loves a variety of styles ranging from old 4AD and Factory Records releases to industrial bands like SPK and Test Dept, producers like Brian Eno or Daniel Lanois and pianists like Bill Evans, Abdullah Ibrahim and Lyle Mays.

They all left a hidden mark on his music without ever been copied. Traces of the three mentioned jazz piano masters can now be heard and felt while listening to 'Silence', his latest, fifth solo album under his moniker Koss.

Its title is an announcement, as the listener does not find any club groove, overwhelming bass power or rhythmic dance attraction on it. Nevertheless all twelve tracks are very rhythmical and groove gently.

At large the piano plays a key role even tough most of the music has been created electronically. It's quite and calm melodies are diving in smooth electronic spheres and field recordings or get embraced by low-key percussions and reduced string elements. As usual Koss's music is not overcharged in order to leave much space between the notes.

A technique that enlarges the silence and sharpens the ear for sounds that float between and above it. Everything was produced in-depth in his very own private studio while using music making computer software, a Roland System-1, Jupiter-8 and the dynamic percussion synth Korg wavedrum.

Nothing that is audible is written, as Koss likes to improvise to get surprised while playing. Only later, after he has been totally absorbed by what his mind and soul performed he adds some detailed fixing for the better sounding.

His initial plan was to produce a real acoustic sounding album, but then the electronics joint softly and Koss found intuitively a simple and deep balance for both sonic worlds.

If you ask the producer and sound designer from the town Sapporo what else inspired him for his latest ambient acoustic adventures he names Mule Musiq maker Toshiya Kawasaki, who always plays to him his recent favourite music from around the world when they both meet to share their music passion.

He also tells that landscapes have an impact on his quiet art as they give him energy and silence in a Ying and Yang sense. One of his new tracks is also called 'Ancient Train' and functions as an allusion to his album 'Ancient Rain' from 2008 in the sense that for Koss the process of making music never really stops and that all his older works continue to gleam in his latest.

A wide range of inspirational zones that together work as an overall superstructure out of which Koss originates very distinct personal arrangements. They are deep, minimal and offer much to explore. If you surrender yourself to 'Silence' all heartfelt manufactured tracks will percolate through the entire body and spread what the title of his youngest album stands for.
 

To be remixed by Mala is a rare honour, and one that is perfectly in line with Dubkasm's ethos of always moving forward while staying true to dub's versioning tradition. This 10" cut of 'Victory' - with dreamy, deep bass, Mala's unique percussion style, and the anthemic horns that helped make the original a huge hit - has been exclusive to Mala and Dubkasm sets for a over year. The accompanying video, with its aerial shots of Bristol and close-ups of the musicians has already been an enormous success. The eerie, echo-drenched b-side, 'Stealth' is an all-new, never heard before track. Paying homage to the classic Xterminator sound, with its heavy drums and transistor trickery, it's a driving, powerful tune.

Reissue of 'lost' post-punk recordings (1979-1983) from the mysterious Orior.

DDS keep everyone on their toes with Orior's previously unheard and revelatory batch of bleak and brooding post-punk experiments, recorded in London and recently salvaged from some attic.

Orior's sole 7' release, the Elevation EP (1979) for the obscure Crystal Groove label.

The material is indeed special, in some respects typical of the era - lots of experimental drum machine experiments and so on, but also posessesd of a totally unexpected character: there are moments that recall the dense atmospheric pieces of Angelo Badalamenti, others that evoke classic Vangelis, or indeed the eerie soundscapes of Leyland Kirby. There are passages that bring to mind Bruce Gilbert's Dome project, and parallels can be drawn with the Fourth World ambience of Jon Hassel and Brian Eno, as well as early Coil.

Sam Kidel's debut for The Death of Rave is a deft subversion of muzak's meaning, application and affect, employing government call centres as unwitting agents in a stroke of Cagean and Kafkaesque compositional genius. It's a remarkably innovative, emotive and incisive 20 minute sound piece (with an additional 20 minute version on the other side) that reflects and refracts an aspect of the modern world in a way that arguably few other records have achieved.
In aesthetic, Disruptive Muzak highlights a range of ambient, electro-acoustic and aleatoric composition techniques intersecting classical minimalism, dub and vaporwave spheres, all whilst revealing a spectrum of regional British accents commonly heard in call centres, yet seldom heard on record, certainly in this context
However, from other angles it's not difficult to hear Disruptive Muzak's tacit questioning of our relationship with music and technology, economics and socio-politics in the UK right now: in the midst of right wing policy delivering swingeing benefits cuts and zero-hours contracts which damage those on the margins
most, and a scenario where corporate composition and electronic sound form the blithely ubiquitous backdrop to capitalist realism.
By subtly but straight-facedly inverting the delivery and reception of muzak, Kidel subverts its meaning,
hypnotically suspending the listener in its lush, lingering sub bass swoops and piano motifs but, paradoxically beckoning the call centre staff and us listeners to pay attention to the subtext of what is normally considered background sound or noise.
Make no mistake, though: the artist is definitely not taking the piss out of call centre workers, if anything he's highlighting a dreamy melancholy and detachment in their tedious roles and tortuous systems, one known from first-hand experience. We really don't want to give it all away, but the way in which Kidel executes
the idea, both musically and conceptually by the time the final receiver drops the line, is little short of breathtakingly emotive and cathartic. Really not too early to call this record a classic in the making.
This piece came about during a research project into Muzak in 2015. The Muzak Corporation (recently rebranded as Mood Media) designs background music that can be used by businesses, factories, shopping centres or government offices to ensure that employees, clients and members of the public are upbeat and co-operative. Research by the Muzak Corporation found that Muzak must sound familiar, predictable, and
non-disruptive to be effective.
Drawing from this research, I composed a series of pieces that I call Disruptive Muzak. These pieces share a similar sound palette to Muzak, but their structure is less familiar, less predictable and more disruptive. To test these compositions I called up government offices that use Muzak in their telephone queues and played them down the phone instead of my voice. The music I played and the officials' responses were recorded and
assembled into the piece that you hear on Side A. Side B contains the music only, that can be used to DIY. - Sam Kidel, 2016

Aether Series is home for bass heavy and DJ-friendly experimental music and sound art. The first release of the series is Ikola's mini-LP titled 'Core', originally recorded for 'Machine Soul - the documentary film' soundtrack. The film focuses on pioneering Finnish electronic music artists such as Mika Vainio, Jori Hulkkonen and Jimi Tenor. The score is composed as a tribute to their work and is now released as an independent piece on vinyl.

Room40 present a trio of newly mastered recordings by Swans guitarist Norman Westberg, including a pair made and self-released in 2012, plus a new piece Lost Mine, to continue a fine relationship begun in 2015 with their issue of Westberg's expansive 13 album.

So titled after undergoing an MRI scan due to hearing loss caused by aural misadventure', the three pieces render coruscating scapes of a particularly scorched, strung-out and American ilk, that pay testament to 30 years experience playing with the one of the world's loudest, noisiest rock groups.

They are rolling, long-form, solo meditations on electric guitar and amplifier, rounding up the 15 minutes of ferric, almost ecclesiastically-charged air in MRI, whilst the 20 minutes of chinning top lines in 410 Stairs reveals a rich harmonic spectrum from a variety of delays and incidental room recordings, and Lost Mine sweeps us into the ether with a most sanguine 18 and half minutes of low-lying drones and thizzing, astringent and bittersweet timbre, apparently recorded as an echo of the processes that led to the original recordings.'ho of the processes that led to the original recordings.'

Beautifully Made LP Vinyl Package: LP (160 gr colored vinyl, mp3 download code
Through dense layers of noise, brittle beats, found sounds and a general haze, Francis Harris returns to his own Scissor and Thread imprint, with the aid of frequent collaborator, and longtime friend, guitarist Gabe Hedrick, under the guise Aris Kindt. Following Harris' 2014 sophomore solo album, Minutes of Sleep,' (named Electronic Album of the Year by Mojo Magazine,) the duo's quintessential album debut, Floods,' takes as its focus, the late author W.G. Sebald's profound interpretation of Rembrandt's 1632 master work, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp. Floods' is a sonic journey into the heart of the body, a bold rejuvenation of Adriaan Adriaanszoon (Aris Kindt), once a mere cadaver on a cold metal slab, now a living breathing human at the heart of a creative shift in vantage point from object to active subject. Much in the same way Rembrandt intended with the painting itself, Floods' attempts to subvert the listeners memory of a moment. Written within a span of over a year using an 808, a modular eurorack and two guitars, Floods' was mixed at Keyclub Recording Company in late August with Engineer Bill Skibbe. The album charts new territory for both Harris and Hedrick, melding a long history with electronic music and youthful love for indie noise, weaving in and out of near silence and sheering walls of sound with a gentle and constant heartbeat at its core. The dream-like murk of album opener Now Grey' sets the tone with thick pads, distant, ghostly guitar work and fragmented drums. On the title track, dubby chords set the tone, as subdued toms amble forward, with a crackling of fire nearby, as a dense sounds echo and swirl around into a climactic frenzy. Blue Sky Shoes' hypnotizes with its submerged strings

A welcome, unexpected dose of dark ambient composition from Lee Bannon in Dedekind Cut mode for Hospital Productions, diverting the vibes of last year's collaboraton with Rabit to a more detached, OOBE space just behind the ears, above the head.
American Zen finds its centre in quivering, pensive drones and fractured small sounds, but is rent with an oceanic sense of scale, deploying splashes of distant percussion, extreme panned vocal snippets and slowly escalating harmonic space perfused by crackling radiowaves and that intangible timbre of an old TV turned on somewhere, but you can't quite pick out its location.
It unfolds at a glacial pace in five parts, crossing lines/waves comparable with Chino Amobi & Rabit's ultraviolent mixtape, the nostalgic Americana yearn of Torn Hawk, and even The Caretaker's hallowed aether zones, perpetually out of reach, submerged or hardly there, but feeling as though he's right there, breathing quietly in the background and watching you listen.
Excellent stuff, perhaps the most interesting of Bannon's releases we've heard so far.