Beats News

Hidden Orchestra's 'Dawn Chorus Remixes' follows the illuminating 'Dawn Chorus' album, reworking producer and composer Joe Acheson's latest album of immersive field recordings and expansive soundscapes into an journey through electronica, deep house and ambient psychedelia. Fronted by Wingbeats (Max Cooper Remix)', 'Dawn Chorus Remixes' features reworkings from Max Cooper, Matthew Herbert, Throwing Snow, The Physics House Band, Nuage, Floex, Nostalgia 77, Wrongtom and Skalpel.

Built around a collection of birdsong and other field recordings captured over many years across diverse locations around the UK and abroad, the snapshots within 'Dawn Chorus' intertwine for a transporting listen. The 'Dawn Chorus Remixes' album revisits this vast source material, reinterpreting the structure of the tracks and uncovering new layers of hidden sounds and instruments for the listeners, sometimes unearthing entire musical progressions that bring the tracks into clearer focus.

Max Cooper provides his take on Wingbeats, focussing on the synchronised recordings of birds beating their wings, to reveal a beautiful chord structure hidden amongst the rhythms. Matthew Herbert applies intricate electronic components with a purist house beat on Stone' which follows into The Lizard', remixed by Polish duo Skalpel who were an early influence of Acheson's. Electronic producer Floex transforms 'Still' with layers of oscillating synths, while Wrongtom provides a dub remix and The Physics House Band deliver ambient and progressive sounds for their rework of Long Orchard'.

Key Marketing Points:
- Remixes from high profile acts such as Max Cooper, Matthew Herbert, Floex, Throwing Snow, The Physics House Band, Skalpel and more.
- Available on 2x LP, housed in reverse board sleeve with silver embossed foil title and printed inner-sleeves. Cover art comes from acclaimed artist and printmaker, Norman Ackroyd.
- European AV 'Dawn Chorus' Tour starts November 20th 2017.
- Radio support for 'Dawn Chorus' from Lauren Laverne (BBC 6Music), Nemone (6Music), Huey Morgan (BBC 6Music), Gideon Coe (BBC 6Music), Jamie Cullum (BBC R2) + more
- Previous press support from The Arts Desk, Clash, The Independent, The Guardian, Line Of Best Fit, Blues & Soul, Record Collector, DJ Mag

Praise for the original Dawn Chorus album
You could just listen to that forevermore, couldn't you' MARY ANNE HOBBS (BBC 6MUSIC)
Such a beautiful project' - LAUREN LAVERNE
Out of this world' - THE LINE OF BEST FIT
Gorgeous' - NEMONE (BBC 6MUSIC)

Pressing of 300 on vinyl only

Next up and equally fabulous is the great, and hotly anticipated, new album from Polypores. The artist's third full length for the label following a private press style, mailorder release earlier the year and first album proper The Fialka Transmissions' in 2016.

Polypores aka Stephen James Buckley makes haunted space music using an ever-expanding mound of synthesizers, samplers, and old tape recorders. Bleak, icy drones give way to 1970's Sci-Fi synth lines, throbbing bass rumbles ominously beneath a psychedelic haze of wistful melody and disembodied voices.

The Impossibility' was inspired by the destruction of the planet Earth by the human race, the early works of JG Ballard, Tarkovsky's Stalker', conspiracy theories, and places where the rules of time and space are brought into question. It was written and recorded in January 2017.

A wonderful album, which comes dressed in a Nick Taylor designed sleeve looks certain to follow the trend set by all previous releases for both artist and label, and sell out instantly.

Bubbling up from his post-everything cesspit, $hit & $hine cups another killer album boff to the grill of Diagonal with Total $hit!, his second LP and 3rd full release for Powell and Jaime Williams' indomitable imprint.
A rancid ruck of rock 'n roll and industrial entrails squeezed for sustenance and sploshed with classic '80s disco, Total $hit! is nothing if not a definitive Craig Clouse record, insistently playful, scatty and demented in equal measures, but with a couldn't care less attitude that's always refreshing and welcome around these parts.
Following his grindcore lash Teardrops for Riot Season, this one is a return to the heavy truckin' styles last heard on Everybody's A Fuckin Expert with Mego and Good White Good Green for Glasgow's Heated Heads, depositing nine examples of his nonchalant style at its most distended, unsettling and, funnily enough, its most funked-up and effective.
He makes a big entrance with the blind-drunk swagger of Hot Shovel trammelling rabid tribal drums, grunts and pitched voices in a febrile hot mess, before Chklt Shk possibly betrays his no f**ks attitude with some of his canniest, adroit tweaks applied to what sounds like Anthony Shakir and MMM fighting over the last cubicle after a plate of bad seafood, then it's back to twisted smiles and buckie-sloshing skank with the acrid disco nip of Long Island City.
The record's longest, murkiest section follows with the Jacko-shampling Dodge Pot dispensing a slimy hot streak of flatulent mongrel boogie that perhaps outstays its welcome, hence the entrance of two squabbling lasses who tell it where to go, which leaves us with a version of the recumbent coke standard White Horse ready for the knacker's yard, plus a trio of saltier, off-the-wrist jags that only serve to agitate and infect the sore he's been prodding at 'til this point.
Let's be fair: Total $hit! is not big or clever but, it is messy and fun, like the soundtrack to a lock-in at a boozer exclusively full of mad c*nts who were chucked out of every other place.

No-No 5 starts off with a deep clanking off-stepper pending from sub heavy bass rolling to spaceously round acid. B1 & B2 remixes by Norways techno old-schoolers Subtil: an ambient take first, then a tunneling & whirling techno remix. 4 track signature EP with versatile but very typical Club No-No sound!

On Kings Chambers sixth release Samo DJ brings his cheap Streetboxx sampler to Hidden Operators studio and they team up for some dancehall beat making and live mixing under the (obvious) name Streetboxxer.

Samo DJs releases on labels like L.I.E.S, The Trilogy Tapes, and of course his own Born Free label. But this ragga infused EP will not come as a surprise for those who have heard his excellent dancehall mix for Red Light Radio earlier this year.

ORO 004 - IVVVO - When I Feel You Wet 12" Vinyl + Digital Release date: October 2015 Mastered by Sam @ Precise Distributed by Kudos Press Enquiries: Jack@hemlockrecordings.co.uk A: When I Feel You Wet The second ORO vinyl release this autumn comes from London based techno producer IVVVO. Following the album 'All Shades of White' on Opal tapes the enigmatic artist has maintained a steady release schedule issuing several well received EPs on Crème Organisation, Public Information, Danse Noir and Fourth Wave.

Appearing on a limited vinyl run (with first copies shipping in a vinyl outer sleeve) IVVVO beams thirteen minutes of brooding doom techno around the darker corners of the dancefloor.

And his new single proves his point. With his third album Comic just around the corner, these three tracks introduce you to Moritz Friedrichs latest electronic action adventure. The single edit of - Comic' teases the laid-back rave vibes of the album, while - Always Du' is an all too beautiful combination of weird synth grooves and divine piano playing. Same goes for - Where Was I', but here Friedrich takes the track to truly surrealist realms. Yep, quite sophisticated, but also a shit load of fun.

Improv hypnotist Aaron Dilloway induces a mind-bending session for Copenhagen's Cejero label with a steeply mesmerising suite of mechanical loops unspooling from an elusive axis. Where 'The Gag File', issued earlier this year on NYC's Dais, incorporated sickly pop elements, there's less of that frivolity here as he grinds down to a seasick and interminably funky sort of rhythmic noise.
In case you're new to Dilloway's oeuvre, he's essentially one of the North American noise scene's most distinguished operators. His track record of over 100 releases for almost as many labels connects everyone from his old band, Wolf Eyes, to Kevin Drumm and Robert Turman, defiantly going with and against the grain of American counterculture with a stomach for the most nauseating yet compelling sounds.
Switches is a strong demonstration of Dilloway at his most uncompromising and discomfiting.
Like a swim thru the bubbling belly acid of American culture, he pursues the original extremities of NON and Turman along his own parallel narrative, using subtly morphing repetition and abrasive attrition as tactics to seduce and beguile even the most hard-headed listeners.
The A-side yields a full spectrum of his style ranging from palpitating, palsied loops and tonal abrasion in Switch 2, to something like an American take on The Caretaker's current descent into oblivion with the wilting, elusive phrases buried in Switch 17, while Switch 15 resembles some kind of burnt-out doom dub.
Meanwhile the B-side catches Dilloway at his most obtuse/playful with the snagged loops of Switch 11/12, which, once you get over the urge to nudge the needle out of its rut, seeps in with a viscerally psychedelic effect for its cranky, lurching duration, before Switch 1 locks off something like DJ Screw or Indignant Senility, with half a bar of f*ck-knows-what loping into a brambly haze around its progressively melting axis...'

Always a firm favourite round these parts. COULDWORK is semi-compilation album, featuring some old and some new sounds that summarize Foodman's path leading into 2015. It straddles the lines between experimental footwork, vapor-collage music, and modern minimal electronics.

Orange Milk has championed some of the wild electronics coming from Japan's underground, and now present Koeosaeme, aka Ryu Yoshikawa, who perfectly encapsulates this frenetic hybrid sound.

It's complex music that evolves with each listen without feeling overstuffed or unnecessarily burdened by too many notes - a difficult balance to achieve. The music is rhythmic and features tenuous footwork connections, but to call it dance or club music would be misleading, it's an exciting hybrid that's still finding a place in the world.

Over the last twenty five years Robin Rimbaud - Scanner has traversed the 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. Today he announces his first studio album since 2009, 'Fibolae', set for release on December 1st 2017 via the independent label run by Anna von Hausswolff, Pomperipossa Records.. With a catalogue busy with commissions, soundtracks and strange projects this is the first studio album since 2009's Rockets, 'Unto the Edge of Rockets' (Bine Music). In this time much has changed - he lost his entire family and left the comfort of a familiar city, London, to live in a former textile factory in the UK to re-invent his life. 'Fibolae' offers up a world that splinters between melancholia and penetrating energy. Combining digital technologies, software and live instrumentation it is both a rhetoric of mourning and a celebration of music to empower. Warm, organic, sensual, passionate and frequently angry, it's an album that radiates with possibilities. As to the meaning of the title, 'Fibolae' There is none. It was a word that appeared to Scanner in a dream, at a time of great challenges in his life. The fact that his unconscious mind could conjure up such inventions that offer no history and context was appealing and yet it was suggestive, playful and open.

Garbage Boy - Tenchun, is amalgamated sound slop representing a conscious blob who is painfully trickling down the stairs as it oozes to its death. As the blob shrieks its final words and accepts death a beautiful computerized ominous soundtrack emerges.

qwizzzz - suuuun Four - The aliens show up to pick up the dead oozing blob that just died. A discussion occurs, and they celebrate the death of the ooze with a rave on the alien ship, the rave ceremony concludes with a song from their leader.

Olfactory Nerve is a recent moniker of Thessaloniki-based artist Photis Houliaras, who's been actively conducting experiments and releasing albums on tape under his mysterious guise Le Fonte Son. Influenced primarily by synth electronic music and psychedelic mysticism, the Greek electronic composer is injecting new ideas into something in the ballpark of the unknown rarities from the underground cassette scene.
'Orfeo', his first album for Details Sound, offers a diverse range of original and magnetic output with a naive experimental heart.

Experimental Dancefloor music, unformated and still ... exploring sweet and sour... First tune, called Oppression is a Revered techno kick Doom tune. Secodn track is a sweet shy volumed kick at 220 BPM still...And third A side track, Lobotomie Croissante is an obsessional Industrial broke npsychedelic track, a bit in the Olschool little 7'' witch i cant remember the name of^^ B side opens on Mutation, a 170 BPM speed techno/trie dark tune very new wavy ambiance... Special and precise ! Then comes an ambient dark indus tune called Ondes Robotiques. Terminal is a break electronica hard tune, in a AFX Ant-zenized style. Terminal is the name... good anme to close this EP. A record in a rare style nawadays , offering a real variety of unformated sounds, not so hard but still hard enough to be dancefloor ! MASTERPIECE !!

We Release Whatever The Fuck We Want Records is honored to announce the reissue of extraterrestrial cult classic THE SOUND OF THE UFOs, a collaborative effort between Swiss jazz and electronic music icon Bruno Spoerri and innovative drummer extraordinaire Reto Weber, available on vinyl for the first time since 1978, housed in a 350g jacket and packed with all new liner notes.

Recorded live in Zurich in March 1978, THE SOUND OF THE UFOs finds Bruno & Reto improvising with a vast array of classic and customized synths and percussions from all corners of the globe (and the galaxy!). It's cosmic free jazz in audio gear heaven with a heavy dose of ambient, krautrock, primitive proto-techno vibes, and experimental space disco with a musique concrète mentality - anything's possible when a jazzman and a percussionist obsessed with finding new sounds collide and explore uncharted sonic territories! This groundbreaking gem is the ideal companion piece to Bruno Spoerri's highly coveted VOICE OF TAURUS LP.

Still very active recording, touring and collaborating (Julian Sartorius, Franz Treichler of Young Gods, Marco Repetto of Grauzone, Roger Girod...), Bruno Spoerri is an award-winning mythical figure of Swiss music, whose career started in the 1950s and covers jazz, electronic music, film and tv work, and everything in between. Improvisational maestro and synthesizer mega-connoisseur, Mr. Spoerri has influenced an entire generation of producers and musicians - hell, even Jay-Z sampled him!

The band project Drums Off Chaos was one of the central and on-going projects of the recently deceased drummer Jaki Liebezeit (who is normally associated first and foremost with the Cologne-based band CAN). In the early 1980s he had initiated an - at first - loose collective of drummers, who created a rhythmic concept on the basis of simple, strictly binding codes that enabled expansive improvisations.

Over the years the ensemble became smaller and refined its collaboration marked by repetitive patterns and their variation. You have to play monotonous,' a membr of the audience had already told Liebezeit in the 1960s. He took this to heart and there was hardly any other formation where he could bring this concept to life as regularly and with as much inspiration as in Drums Off Chaos.
During a development spanning more than three decades, this extra-ordinary band, which never saw itself as such, made numerous recordings but rarely any releases. However, in the last few months of his life Jaki Liebezeit, with colleagues Reiner Linke, Maf Retter and Manos Tsangaris, earmarked some tracks for imminent release on vinyl and CD - on different compilations. Liebezeit's death is all the more reason to go ahead with this plan.

Parisian veteran Dj Deep and Romain Poncet (well known for his Traumer allias) released their first Sergie Rezza album on Desire records in 2015, the album received heavy support from Dixon, Laurent Garnier, Hunee, Antal to name a few. They now decided to start Sergie Rezza's own imprint. Sergie Rezza's sound is heavilly influenced by Ambient, Electronica, Dub, Jazz, Industrial, Funk, and also Techno and House roots. This is the second release on their newly created imprint.

Superb, expert neo-minimalism from the retiring Berliner — veteran of collaborations like Vilod (with Ricardo Villalobos), the Moritz Von Oswald Trio, NSI and Sun Electric — making a rare, treasurable solo foray. Six tracks ranging from oscillatory steppers to eerie hauntings. Beautifully sleeved, too.

Atomnation co-founder Pascal Terstappen presents 'For', his fourth longplayer as Applescal to date and a redefinition of his coveted sound. If you've been following this producer's output over the years, you're likely to be aware of his meticulously built tracks and remixes in which
playful percussion structures and otherworldly melodies fuse into compositions that float somewhere between the sofa and the dancefloor. Applescal's previous album 'Dreaming In Key' found excellent support in the press (Pitchfork 7,6, Xlr8r 7,5, Drowned In Sound 7) and got played
by DJ's such as Gilles Peterson, Laurent Garnier & Daniel Avery.
'For's' content, the new album, still transmits that organic and careless sound of Applescal's earlier work, but this time round things seem to
be dipping more frequently into deeper and darker waters. Many will recognize Applescal's signature sound in tracks such as 'Like You Do', 'Matter' and 'Overseas', with dreamscape synthesizers and sparkling grooves being the main ingredients, but 'For' also sees the producer drawing from a new sound palette, an even more mature one perhaps, bravely redefining his sound while staying true to the roots of his earlier work.

Urpa i musell (Snout and claw in Catalan) is a record label that was conceived almost unconsciously throughout years of long lunchtime conversations at Discos Paradiso, a record store in Barcelona.The label begins their journey with the reissue of El Sueño de Hyparco's Ambientes Hormonales, originally released in 1990 on the Spanish label Hyades Arts.Drawing on the Berlin School, particularly Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream, as a main musical reference, and having emerged from the cassette movement, Ambientes Hormonales represents the missing link between the 80s New Music movement in Madrid and the beginnings in the 90s of contemporary electronic music in Spain.
First edition of 500, in original artwork, with new insert with liner notes by Antonio Dyaz aka Klaus Böhlmann

Durban's 23 year-old producer Emo Kid has announced he is to release eight-track debut EP, 'Gqomtera', through Gqom Oh! on September 22nd. Although titled 'Gqomtera', which Emo Kid explains is a slang term he and others use for the music, the record actually explores Sgubhu — another strain of South African dance music that shares many stylistic parallels with Gqom, though is always written with a 4x4 beat. Like DJ Lag before him, an artist widely considered the king of Gqom, Emo Kid is also considered a pioneer in Durban; 'Some people call me the Sgubhu king, but I'm just happy they're enjoying my music', he says. Based in Inanda, in the Etafuleni area township in Durban, Emo Kid's house looks out over an area called Isandlwana — the spot where the Zulu army famously defeated the British Army in the Battle Of Isandlwana in 1879. It is from this backdrop that he has written the majority of his music over the last few years, including new record 'Gqomtera'. At eight tracks long, 'Gqomtera' provides a comprehensive overview of the Sgubhu sound, with the aim of taking the listener on their own 'Durban Journey'. 'I wanted to show the uniqueness of my own style which I would describe as more musical', Emo Kid explains, 'you can feel the music when you listen but it still hits hard with that Gqom flavour.' That Gqom flavour, powered by hard, fast, uncompromising drums, provides a solid core from which everything else functions. Bright, shimmering trance synths feature on 'Futuristic Gqom', while on 'Enkwarini' — 'another word for a party or fantastic get together' — vocalist Fawell skips over light, playful Sgubhu rhythms. There's also space for harder, deeper cuts like 'Ground Shaker', cut with a twinkling melody line, the charging pace and power of 'Insimbi Yase Dubane' and the anthemic 'Asbambeki' featuring local crew TLC Fam, translating loosely to being unstoppable; 'It means you can't catch us basically', Emo Kid says proudly, 'On the dance floor, you can't touch us, we're on fire.' Capturing the raw, street sounds of his city, Emo Kid is the latest Durban artist to take the music global and with 'Gqomtera', put Sgubhu firmly on the map.

A quick split between H.J. and A.N. One freaky-deaky drum tool that operates on it own wave in space and time on the A, and the other side - a snappy, hazy ode(s) to the Rhodes.

Limited edition of 250 copies! The Frat (aka The Frat Band, Autofrat) was a short lived electro funk outfit under the leadership of songwriter and producer Jeffrey Singleton. Jeffrey is best known as producer/writer on the excellent O.T. Sykes - First Love LP from 1981. Little is known about his own group apart from the band containing members Joe White, Ted White, Brigette Travis, Hugh Gray, Carlett Martin, Robert Singleton and Joey White. Only a few hands full of original copies of this excellent 7' single are known to have survived which makes this re-issue a true and most welcome feast for funk, boogie and electro fans. The music is licensed directly from original owner Jeffrey Singleton and is deliciously remastered from the best possible sources available.

Aga Wilk (aka 77™) is back with this new EP. A-side includes three songs full of analog synths, cold bass lines and vocoder vocals. B-side is reserved for some remixes. First by Flemming Dalum, a DJ and producer based in Denmark and devoted to Italo Disco. Second one by David Carreta, famous french DJ and producer. And the last one by Fotoplastikon, a cult underground project from Poland.

Third chapter by HomeMadeZucchero very own Meze is a 4 dimension disengaged statement. Wide ambiances wrap mental bass lines and saturated dynamics in a minimalistic melodics drama. Tempered by icy harmonic pads and human shreds.

Combining motoric beats with rapturous melodies, North East London Boy / Girl duo Deeds make a fervent, synth heavy mould of electronic music. Influences range from electronic film scores, Ambient and Synthwave music, through to Post-Punk and House. Debut release on London label Snap, Crackle & Pop takes off with title track Disorder encapsulating all of these elements through the filter of a contemporary electronic landscape. Video Dreams goes from heavenly synth melodies into kicked out guitar jams, while the frenetic and brooding tones of Unknown sit more firmly on dance floor territory. On the b-side Swedish electronic favourite The Filed deliver a trippy ambient take with acid influences whilst San Francisco's Dark Entries and Honey Soundsystem collaborator Bezier explores other worlds in a ten minute voyage through futuristic and almost euphoric synth landscapes.

Once encountered, the exquisite, low key charms of Craig Tattersall, Andrew Johnson and Nicola Hodgkinson's band, The Remote Viewer, leave an impression that lingers long after their records stop playing. A decade since departing with I Can't Believe It's Not Better [2008], Other ideas recalls their lower case sound as you've never heard it, presenting ten previously unreleased songs drawn from minidiscs 'before the last functioning
MD player in Prestwich gave up the ghost', and pressed to vinyl.
Perhaps the greatest champions of drizzly, Lancastrian mood music ever known, The Remote Viewer formed as a splinter group from Leeds-based Hood with their eponymous 1999 debut, taking the opportunity to pursue a fragile, downbeat strain of electronic songcraft and experimentation that quietly held steady against the grain of much electronica during that era. Over the course of four albums and four EPs, they addressed ambient pop music's barest essentials with a succinct blend of miserablism and refined, adroit technicality that they could safely call their own, and more or less sprang a whole scene of copycats in their wake.Us. In happier times is The Remote Viewer's typically ambiguous title for this collection; ten grainy and richly evocative pieces of haptic scrabble and jaded gestures as inviting as a warm brew and a 2-bar heater on a p*ss wet night. It's the sound of glacial english valleys after-hours, finding them animating ambient embers and wilting pop hooks with clipped, Teutonic glitches and subby pulses. The results form a curious and emotionally intelligent adjunct to then-contemporary dance or pop musics, a sound best received on punctured sofas in small coffee shops and living rooms, one which will forever remind us of wet mornings back at the turn of the century.
With the flickering fizz of Tonight it feels like Spain we hear all three members in intimate dialogue, opening a session that variously takes in SND-like garage minimalism and what sounds like Muslimgauze fever-dreaming in 2-step on Complaining of feeling unwell, or a pre-echo of autonomic D&B in the Arovane-esque nerve pinch of The Sound of old Helmshore, whereas This old face dates me is like a prickly Arran to the suave, cashmere gentility of To Rococo Rot, and the crackling group harmonies of lullaby closer When it was over forms possibly the loveliest finale to any record you'll find this year.

Sub Rosa presents two rare tracks by Coil, originally commitioned by Sub Rosa in the late 80s / early 90s and now finally released on vinyl!

"Another Brown World" (12:09 min) was written by John Balance and Peter Christopherson, produced and mixed by Coil, and recorded by Danny Hyde at Threshold House, London in the Summer of 1989. The vocals were recorded at the Animist Monastery situated at the Summit of Mount Popa in Pagan, Burma.

"Baby Food" (12:32 min) was written and performed by Coil: Danny Hyde (essentials) Peter Christopherson (fundamentals), and John Balance (vibrant rays of spiritual psychosis). This track is the first to utilize the recording process known as "Sidereal Sound", a continuation and advancement of the deep listening theories as demonstrated on the album Love's Secret Domain (1991). Recorded in a storm in London in the summer of 1993.

These two pieces were commissioned by Sub Rosa for these two specific projects: Myths 4 - Sinople Twilight In Çatal Hüyük (1989) and Chaos In Expansion (1993)

Produced in 2014, Wahalla is the collaboration between Dean Blunt (Hype Williams - Babyfather - Blue Iverson...)- and visual / folk artist Joanne Robertson. Created in the same year of Blunt's Black Metal and Skin Fade releases - this eight-track release coincides with the time Robertson was recording for her 2015 album Black Moon Days.(Feeding Tube Records) Originally released on social media (Mediafire/YouTube) early 2017, "Wahalla" is now available for the first time on a physical format. (Vinyl only) Joanne Robertson is a frequent Blunt Collaborator. Both collaborated memorably on 'Imperial Gold', a highlight from Blunt'sThe Redeemer and several other Blunt releases. Wahalla is the second collaboration between Joanne Robertson and the Paris based label Textile Rds nine years after the critically acclaimed «the lighter» album. Stricly Limited Vinyl only release No Download Code

Kanker Kommando can be defined as a 'whatever-kind-of-band' formed in the 80's by Hendrik Laevens and Jaak Perquy. This fine compilation by the Knotwilg label illustrates the 'Low-tech' approach of Kanker Kommando: transforming the limitations (musical, technical) into an opportunity to do something completely different.

Metaclaw is blazed studio session that time could have forgotten...but Offen Music didn't. A glorious downbeat synth plodder/head nodder from the minds of three very muscial friends.. features remixes from Gordon Pohl and Glib'r.. TIP!

The good ship Ransom Note sails on!

Continuing our commitment to releasing the finest dance music from planet Earth, our latest missive comes from fresh-faced Belgian kit freak Placid One. Squeezing out analogue techno from a studio full of synths that burble and shimmer and croak, Placid's lead track 'C Balloon' is a drum-less masterpiece, an arpeggiating ascent into a chrome-plated future. The track belongs in the lineage of the emotional best of Detroit, as mysterious as it is melancholic, it's a vision of computer blues for the 21st century.

It's followed by 'Bombay Persuasion', a jitter of broken tech-funk building to a rumbling throb of bass, and 'Life', which chops up classic breakbeats with late night acid secrets. All three tracks combine Placid One's youthful exuberance with a yearning for the hardware mentasm of early Brit pioneers, the ghosts of Aphex Twin, Orbital and Kirk Degiorgio can be heard echoing through their grooves.

On remix duties we have Deutschland's finest Cass. who provides a blissed out reimagining of 'C Balloon', unravelling its synths into an epic of found sounds and ambient drift. This is followed by a floor ready refix from Ransom Note favourite Timothy 'Heretic' Clerkin, who rolls 'C Balloon' into a warm house jam, all classic synth hits and sun-rising acid bubbles.

Novo Line reprises the meter-messing genius of his Movements album with the Dyad mini LP - a brilliantly uncompromising follow-up for Ecstatic. Exclusively using the tools of '88/'89 professional recording set-ups - namely the Atari ST, but with a slight algorithmic alteration.
While it's increasingly hard to find new tricks in old gear, especially with the resurgence of hardware fetishism and the ubiquity of DAWs, that's exactly what Nat Fowler has been doing for the best part of a decade as Novo Line. By, in his own words, 'misusing one algorithmic composition program (not, by a longshot, a professional music production tool of any epoch) contained in 208kb of data on a 3.5' floppy disk',
He generates and explores new permutations of old music which, ironically enough, sound fresher or at least more innovative than a lot of new music in circulation right now.
Inputting ever-changing parameters of melody, and 29 year old algorithms, the machine's voice is live-mixed and presented un-rendered as maxed-out waveforms via 1MB RAM, resulting in a severely compressed and combusting effect that leave mastering and sound engineers the world over scratching their heads in puzzlement. However, the effect is equally enthralling to anyone whose ears have become overly accustomed to contemporary emulations of 'space' in electronic music, and genuinely sound unique in relief of the contemporary field.
The release poses a playful question: can a record be ambivalent as to which speed it should be played
Celebrating vinyl and futhermore physical media, the listener is encouraged to find their exact speed of preference with the RPM toggle and pitch slider, that nearly forgotten joy in modifying speed in real time without a CPU mediating between the listener and sound; some tracks stumble heavily at 33rpm like boulders in the tumble dry, while others flash by at 45. In the taut, recoiling thud of Monad, thru the frenetic pop edit of Ennead to the 'floor-curdling prong of Dyad Marcia on the front, to the forceful New Beat mutation Tetrad, and the mind bending Melpomenean Dyad which closes the LP, its some heavily challenging but deeply satisfying gear that seriously yet playfully messes with convention.
Essentially Novo Line is revelling in the pure spirit of computer music and the sonification of dance music as we know it - born in the '88/'89 phenomenon of techno-house music, including its Industrial/EBM precedents, and its New Beat/Euro House offshoots. And like John McCusker's delectable artwork of a beige room and monitors interwoven with tubular, computer generated follies, Novo Line provides a captivating perspective that shortcircuits nostalgia's illness to result in a killer vaccine against/for convention.

No matter where the winds may blow, what storms may come or what pirates will do, the Transatlantyk ship is still sailing.
Navigated for the last three years by Zambon out of Berlin, ultimately avoiding the shallow waters of the generic and constantly patrolling the seas in search of exciting sounds.
After all that sailing the label just had to replenish its ranks with some fresh faces - those still capable of voyaging into the unknown.

Joining the crew is a young gun TAMTEN, who by day serves as a vinyl pusher in Warsaw's finest Side One record store.
What he does by night is not the matter of this short text, but we are sure he does a lot of it.
Hence his love for all things distant - from subaquatic pads and floating riffs, to new-age-y siren voices, otherworldly effects and percussion drenched in reverb.Â

There is a lot of similarly distant, sun-bleached material on this five tracker, full of a druggy and hippy Balearic feel.
Beautiful ambient jam 'Przebudzenie' is the stand out track, but 'Znaki Czasu' is equally as good with its simple, yet memorable melody, reminding of dawns and sunsets on some God forsaken beach.
Sultry deepness of 'Nieznajoma' is followed by enchanting digital exotica of 'Wyrocznia' and wavey trip-hop cut 'Po Burzy'.

Overall its one of the strongest EPs that Transatlantyk managed to co-opt into its growing catalogue. Definitely one for the dreamers.

Time for something a little different from Public Release.
EYE O is the convergence of a few Bay Area stalwarts—Kevin Woodruff, formerly of Tussle, and Jason Schwartz—and 'Deux O & Debut" is their first studio-recorded public offering. The five-track, fifty-minute- long LP is a weaving journey through a pastiche of styles that're all nephews, cousins, brothers, sisters of one another. Kraut-rooted motorik drums reconfigure into more complicated math-y patterns; razor-sharp dance-punk guitars stretch out and dissolve into dubby post-rock atmospherics; synth loops you'd more commonly find in house tracks get grafted onto fuzzy psychedelic breakdowns; hard rock licks lock into chunky industrial grooves.Less for dancefloor destruction and more for trippy weekenders, the instrumental record manages to both be a focused, cerebral, conceptual hunk of fat to chew on and a spaced-out, intuitive ride through the cosmos. For use during those off-kilter small hours of the night just as much as it is vision quests and introspective weekends. It's rare that an outpouring of so much can feel so simple and sublime.

Selected Music from the album 'Brian Damage' , originally out in 1980. Comes with both versions from the 'Aeo' cut on the A side - check!

The 1980s. Neo-liberal excess. Crumbling communism. Military juntas ruling with an iron fist. And of course, freaked out music. Contort Yourself are turning back the clock and returning to an unholy fount of inspiration with "80s Underground Cassette Culture Volume 1." A buffet of beaten up and brutalised tracks are on offer from unknown outfits and respected experimenters. Across two LPs expect to find noise reductions, post punk bitterness, no wave grunts, distortion soaked strings and vocals lost in a hail of pain. A road map into the weird and wild world of DIY back alley artists who, armed with only a tape and an idea, gave the established music norms a sharp fist to the throat..