Beats News

Experimental meltdown of bass musicians exploring all kind of evolutions inna unapropriatte form that finally apperas to be apropriate... A masterpiece of msuci to dig future beats... Again !

Alkisah REMIXED is the album curated by Les Ateliers Claus and Kiosk radio (both based in Brussels) and is created with the stems of the Alkisah album by Indonesian duo Senyawa. Alkisah is co-released by a multitude of independent record labels from all over the globe each and to extend this collaboration we decided to involve our musical family.

Six artists were invited to tell ‘Alkisah’ stories into different possibilities and produce unique speculative works. This remix LP brings a variety of musical genres and shines a different and surprising light on Senyawa’s compositional works. Going from a musique-concrète approach, towards dub and dance floor bangers highlighting the timelessness of Senyawa their music.

Remixes are delivered by Sugai Ken (jap), Celine Gillain (b), Sagat (b), Tolouse Low Trax (ger), Dntel (usa), Front de Cadeaux (it/b)

Coils is the latest offering from Santa Ana, CA native Evan Geesman. Fresh from the success of his previous digital-only release Lengua, with co-signs from Bandcamp's Head Curator Andrew Jervis and Osunlade, his new work finds him delving deeper into his production palette interspersed with his songwriter's aesthetic, resulting in a decidedly denser sonic soundscape than its predecessor.

Born and raised in Santa Ana, CA Evan Geesman has been writing and recording songs since his early teens. From folk songs recorded on a 4 track in his parents' garage to recent collaborations with local electronic beat collective GRN+GLD, Evan's unique and prolific musical output have established him as both a singer songwriter and electronic/new beat producer.

While Evan's previous material crossed several genres and had more of an experimental bent with influences varying from Aphex Twin, Wu-Tang, Mahavishnu Orchestra and world folk music, Coils represents a natural synthesis of his beat heavy electronic compositions and strong songwriting sensibilities. Many of the songs recorded over the last year began as guitar compositions, which were then painstakingly recreated electronically, building layers of arrangements consisting of electronic instruments, field recordings and his own vocals over an acoustic foundation. When asked to describe the album's underlying theme, he cites how suffocating life in the modern world can be with the internet, TV, technology and the increasingly overwhelming speed of communication. Using music as a medium to convey this accurate yet unfortunate depiction of living in modernity, Coils doesn't succumb to the dourness, it finds a way to remind those who listen that life can be softer.

Once upon a time, two operators stared at their screens. They sat silently for hours, their whole being dedicated to the task they had been assigned to. Days and nights passed in the same monotonous manner. Suddenly signals showed up on their monitors. Alarms started to ring. Both reacted at the same speed and did what they were supposed to do. Controls and commands were entered, as was protocol. After observing these waves for 61:01 minutes, everything became quiet again. What they had just witnessed made them wonder. For the first time they addressed each other. "The data is transferring through our system," announced the first. “Let us both check how this can be interpreted.” The second validated the response. Together, they looked at what had been recorded. Ideas raced through their complicated minds until they realized simultaneously: sounds! They listened. “Is this an unknown language?” one asked. “This is the first time this has been heard throughout our history,” the other answered. They listened again and again. “This electricity has been arranged to form a cohesive entity,” the first said. “Why would machines be used to create that?” the second mused. Something had awakened inside of them, an obsessive curiosity they had never experienced before. They did not understand and were blown away by the beauty of it. “Do you think it could have been left by humans before us?” one whispered. “If it was, these would be Major Signals,” the other concluded. As they processed these thoughts, the two artificial intelligences sat still.

Repress

When I was 22 I managed to acquire Techno Animal’s Demonoid 12” at a local record store, Rocking Horse Records. I can still recall the intensities of sound that marked the first moments of listening to it. The sense of bass as a tactile surface, that rolling groove and the howling sine waves and dub sirens that scorched with a type of sonic burning sensation that to this day makes my hairs stand on end. A year later I heard Ice’s Bad Blood, from there I discovered The Bug through a release on Wordsound, a band called God, a sound movement called isolationism and much more; all of these projects had one nexus point - Kevin Richard Martin.

In 2015, Kevin and I book-ended a series of concerts at Berghain for CTM festival. For his performance, Kevin debuted a new work I’d heard very little about called ’Sirens’. I remember two things distinctly about the performance. The first thing is he opened the set with a blazing passage of bass and dub sirens that instantly transported me back to those initial moments of encountering his work. The second was the feeling of absolute, crushing bass. Not before, or since, have I felt a sense of sound pressure like this. Unlike his other work with The Bug for example, the consistent bass carrying in the space was literally breathtaking and there were moments when it seemed difficult to see clearly as my eye sockets were vibrating in a way I’d never experienced.

Sirens, which documents the intensities surrounding the delivery and early days of his first child, carries in it a sense of deep affect. The album, unlike the live work, traces out a dynamic sound world that is both tender and caustic. It charts the emotional rollercoaster that is the arrival of parenthood, heightened through the complex circumstances of his wife's emergency procedures during the birth and two further life threatening operations for his son, in the first month of the child's life. Within each piece, microcosms of sensation unfold, Kevin clearly and deftly manoeuvres us through the tumultuous journey. Seconds become hours, and hours become seconds; Sirens somehow creates a sense of time that is without anchor and is foggy in a way that is profoundly unique (and frankly pleasurable).

Kevin Richard Martin has remained a point of constant inspiration for me over several decades now. To have the opportunity to share his first ever solo recording, one that arguably opens an entirely new side of his practice, brings me the utmost pride. His work has impacted so very much on me at various points and I know I am not alone in this situation. His new work, Sirens is a life journey transposed into sound that is truly personal, but effortlessly universal. It is the start of a new chapter for Kevin and one that I know will only strengthen his place as one of the critical voices in contemporary electronic music.

- Lawrence English, March 2019

Otherworldly and anomalous, hushed and hallucinatory, Pauline Anna Strom’s unique style of inner space music reaches across time to futures and pasts far from our own. Trans-Millenia Music compiles eighty minutes of Strom’s most evocative work, composed and recorded between 1982 and 1988, for the first authorized overview of the enigmatic Bay Area composer. Pauline Anna Strom introduced her music to the world in 1982 with Trans-Millenia Consort, a collection of transportive synthesizer music providing listeners a vessel to break beyond temporal limits into a world of pulsing, mercurial tonalities and charged, embryonic waveforms. Strom’s solicitation into the unknown continued through a half dozen more stellar releases during the decade, which, despite their singularity and mastery, slipped into the more obscure annals of want lists and bootleg editions. Though Strom’s work developed during the dawn of San Francisco’s influential new age and ambient scenes, her music remains non-programmatic, an adventurous tangent diverting from the era’s ideological tropes. The artist’s own path to creative maturation was atypical. Raised by her Catholic family in Louisiana and Kentucky, she was tragically deprived of sight due to complications from a premature birth. This impairment would sensitize her to listenable worlds with great acuity and creative engagement, the loss becoming a formative aspect of Strom’s spiritualist take on the power of music. Recalling her youth, Strom says she was “a loner and heretic.” Seeking solace and solidarity, she moved to the mecca of California’s counter culture with her husband, a G.I., who was assigned duty in the Bay Area during the decline of the Vietnam War. Having dabbled with piano as a teen, Pauline’s passion for music reignited when synthesizers became central to the serene scene of San Fran FM radio in the mid-70s. Inspired by the electronic music of the instrument’s early ambassadors (Klaus Schulze, Brian Eno, Tangerine Dream), Strom purchased a Tascam 4-track recorder and a small array of synths (Yamaha DX7, TX816, CS-10) to navigate her own universe of space music. As she gained confidence to share her creations beyond the walls of the apartment where she meticulously crafted under headphones day and night, Strom took on the artistic identity of the ‘consort,’ spiriting listeners through epochs described by her evocative musical passages. From this moment and represented within Trans-Millenia Music, Strom proves to be a delicate melodist and meticulous colorist, as well as a sound designer of great drama and inspired energy. The celestial sounds evoke the uncertainty of pre-physical and primordial elements, creating an impression of a world beyond access that Strom has always felt was hers. In the collection’s liner notes Strom recounts, “I have always been in touch with the past more than the present.” Apart from its mysteries, Strom’s curiosity for the non-present was also suffused with a social bent. She believed that humanity was confined by its inability to access the people of the future, therefore suffering in a kind of group solipsism. Designing a world of music that rooted itself in all times but the present, Strom’s alter ego, the Trans-Millenia Consort, became a musical activist for triggering this state of heightened consciousness. Exemplary passages highlighted in Trans-Millenia Music were selected from the three full-lengths originally issued on vinyl in addition to a group of four full-lengths self-released on cassette. This substantive body of work challenges the canonization of new age and ambient music as one-size-fits-all categories. Strom’s music induces a dynamic range of listening that captivates and intrigues, a cinematic experience rather than a meditation for passive listening. An open invitation to earlier worlds and a trans-temporal philosophy for living, Pauline Anna Strom’s Trans-Millenia Musicis available originally November 10, 2017 on double LP, Vinyl edition feature original artwork by visionary Karma Moffett, printed inner sleeves and booklet with extensive liner notes scribed by Britt Brown.

Smalltown Supersound mint a highly promising new jazz label, Le Jazz Non Series with a mighty opening gambit by techno mutant Pavel Milyakov (Buttechno) and explorative sax player Bendik Giske.
Both strongly regarded in their respective scenes - Milyakov for his dare-to-be-different techno, and Giske for a remarkable debut LP ’Surrender’- the pairing here surpasses each of their respective repertoire to date with a burningly intense form of hybrid electro-jazz that feels vitally restless and searching.
Produced remotely over the course of 12 months between Berlin and Moscow,, the album’s seven pieces portray the duo at an early crest of their collaborative, creative powers, revelling in the thrill of invention and innovation with Giske’s physical, improvised prowess matched for fleeting unpredictability by Milyakov’s bespoke modular systems.
The results are tangibly brittle but in an immersive, world-building fashion that speaks to the openness and mutuality of their visions, removing any excess fat and never testing attention spans, they move in quick steps between searingly emotive bursts of energy and naggingly rhythmic jags, skipping from peaks of breathtaking flightiness to cavernous skronk and ghost-in-the-machine divinations with elemental logic and dexterity

Olive Vinyl

Newly remastered by Rashad Becker for this vinyl edition, ‘Everything Is Already There’ is an incredible feat - a sprawling, hour-long, 12 track album recorded in the space of a week in 2020 and now easily one of the most inspiring records we’ve heard during this now year-long pandemic-haze. It’s an intimate fever-dream made real, a summoning of rich and complex spirits that reminds us of Giuseppe Ielasi & Nicola Ratti’s Bellows, Dean Blunt x Hype Williams, Ry Cooder’s Paris Texas, Ulla (who plays saxophone on two tracks under the Foamy
alias), Grouper, Laurel Halo - a tapestry of suggestive, humid mood music for our time.
Beloved for her tapes and LPs with everyone from sferic to The Trilogy Tapes and Motion Ward, as well as her role running Radio.syg.ma, Perila’s productions and curatorial work have been central to the emergence of a new ambient rhizome in Berlin in recent years. The hushed but fractious patchwork of 12 cuts she deploys on
‘Everything Is Already There’, however, speaks to the breadth and sensuous subtleties of her style, embracing opiated shoegaze, queasy concréte, and blushing ambient soul in a waking-daydream of a session that revels in the pleasures of locating and nourishing the inner life.
Arriving not long since Perila’s action in Critical Amnesia’s ‘ambient supergroup’ with her pals, Exael, Huerco S., Ol, VTGNike, and uon, it contains some of the most detailed and textured work in her small but precious catalogue. She emerges like a ragged spirit from the viscous tronics of ‘Time Swamp’, and shapeshifts from urgent street-corner poetry in ‘Pocket Full Of Nothing’ to take in damaged ambient blues recalling Loren Connors on ‘Riot In A Cornfield’, with her descriptive sensitivities in lushest, illusive effect on the likes of ‘On A Roof’ and the gauzy aerial drift of ‘Reality Scan

Poole Music is thrilled to announce its inaugural commission, the Habu, the latest full-length from Belgium’s Lieven Martens. For the better part of two decades, Martens has been expanding his Aloha-bedecked musical vision, transitioning from the basement tape environments of his Dolphins into the Future project to the rich compositional tapestries of more recent post-exotica modernist works.

The Habu represents a true culmination of these identities in one of his most ambitious works to date. The album’s three pieces cast an omniverous net that explores those fragile tendriles between imagined and real, natural and fabricated, unity and chaos; concrete sounds enabling abstract inner landscapes. With the ecstatic revelry of Marco Polo returning to his queen, Lieven brings us gems from all corners of the navigable world: tales of an impossibly guilded Portugese palace, a fertility tonic conjured from a poisionous serpent, a simulacrum of Honolulu. At a moment when the world is more geographically isolated than it has been in generations, Martens’ the Habu is a welcome odyssey, a Charybdian travelogue of the psyche. About face.

Watching Abul Mogard’s Live performance in Atonal Festival 2017 and his releases on Not Waving’s Ecstatic record label were somewhat of a milestone in Malka Tuti’s sonic aesthetics. His ability to touch us with those pulsating sonic textures com-ing out of his modular machine inspired us in MTHQ for years to come. We were more then happy that Mogard chose to contact Tapan about their album and eventually deciding to remix not one but two track from the Belgrade duo… It was like a circle coming to a close.

On the A-side Mogard take the original 17 minute sax infused piece that is EUROPA and drenches it with drones and low freq pulses and atmosphere, creating a some sort of a post apoca-lyptic intense atmospheric soundtrack. The effect of drowning the horns from the original track in a sea of drones and pads, contributes to the over all impression of listening to a distant memory of music… fitting for days like these....

On the B-side Mogard takes it to the next level, capturing a line from Tapan's original collaboration with Jerusalem In My Heart's Radwan Ghazi Moumneh, and passing it through his modular system, amalgamating an epic piece of tension build ups and repetitive movements...

The original artwork was made by artist Marja de Sanctis and adapted, as always, to the sleeve by Morey Talmor.

“Gyropedie,” Anne Guthrie’s third record for Students of Decay, takes us further into her hermetic practice, wherein expertly captured field recordings, French horn, and electronics are woven into potent and richly imagined electroacoustic environments. In Guthrie’s own words, “Quite literally a record of pilgrimage from East to West. Remnants of Midwest and East Coast soundmarks, instruments sold to lighten the travel load, sketched out and then buried under the new. Winter birds and crunching snow, frozen playgrounds, broken synths - I spent a year decoupaging over this, but of course it's still there. A second moon appears occasionally in the daytime, and there are frequent, murky transmissions. California has something alien about it I'm still trying to grasp. Primarily vintage, unabashed, corny, I find myself becoming an impressionist.”

Anne Guthrie is an acoustician, composer, and French horn player. She studied music composition and english at the University of Iowa and architectural acoustics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where she completed her Ph.D in 2014. Her music combines her knowledge of acoustics and contemporary composition/improvisation. Her electronic music has focused on exploiting the natural acoustic phenomena of unique architectural spaces through minimal processing of field recordings. Her composition has focused on the orchestration of non-musical sounds, speech in particular. Her French horn playing has focused on electronic processing and extended techniques used in improvisatory settings, as a soloist and with Fraufraulein and Delicate Sen, among others. Her acoustics research has focused on the use of ambisonics for stage acoustics.

Frequency Domain extends a warm welcome to the Apologist for their first release since 2006's 'Sorry Dub', a much sought-after 7", cheekily reimagining the theme from 80s BBC sitcom Sorry! as a delicious slice of Basic Channel-esque electronic dub. 'Air Foundry' converges at the crossroads of electronica, dub, electro and techno, with eight elegantly atmospheric tracks written for Frequency Domain in 2019. The full album will be released on cassette and digital formats, while this limited six-track mini LP version is first Frequency Domain release available on vinyl.

Inhabited Shadows” is the new album by pioneering, Berlin-based techno artist Headless Horseman. This is his most daring and emotional release to date: the culmination of live performance, studio experimentation, and global exploration.

A total sonic experience, “Inhabited Shadows” takes listeners on a deeply personal journey through Headless Horseman’s creative brain. Dark industrial synths and broken beats form the spinal chord. A spirit of lightness and compassion guides the way forward.

From its opening, the album sets hard edges and metallic surfaces against dense and delicate textures. A-tonal figures and percussive attacks merge with melodic flights and soulful rhythms. Classical counterpoint and cinematic soundscapes conspire together. The result is discordant joy.

Headless Horseman’s vitality comes from his determination to remain open and vulnerable as an artist. “Inhabited Shadows”, recorded over eight months in 2019, reflects a period of intensive growth. Each of its nine tracks ventures into uncharted territory, embracing many moods, changing climates, old ghosts, and new risks.

“Over years of trials and tribulations, music has been the antidote”, says Headless Horseman. “I’ve learned to live in shadows and darkness. Now I’m chipping off pieces of my shell and portraying directly how I feel without compromise. I still inhabit shadows, but I can move back and forth between darkness and light.”

Stand closer when you have something to say documents two separate elaborations upon a single physical space: a studio in Los Angeles, California with concrete floors and large, wooden firehouse-style doors that face a moderately busy street. Tasting Menu—a trio of multi-instrumentalists Tim Feeney, Cody Putman, and Cassia Streb—give attention to the room by rubbing its surfaces; opening and closing its portals; allowing its natural resonances; and moving about it spatially, left to right and front to back. These two collective improvisations—“while shaking the box” and “i heard glass breaking,” recorded April 3rd and 18th of 2020, respectively—are full of texture, haze, sadness, motion, color, mischief, disjuncture, and gel, while leaving little trace of the slightly less welcome substance that is performer ego.

The ensemble took the album’s titular phrase as a sort of text score, a prompt inspired by the common bluegrass one-mic recording technique where an instrumentalist or vocalist in an ensemble positions their body closer to the room’s mic as they begin to take the lead line in a song. In this case, however, the performers do not have their mind towards a lead/rhythm ensemble relationship, but instead towards the establishment and curation of a gestalt texture, welcoming and incorporating all other sound present within the room and hearing it as a singular whole. In such a setup, each performer projects their listening, playing to the imagined ears of a future listener as represented by a stereo recording device. With each performer effectively playing producer on the spot, the recording has more in common with a collage work than a more typical documentation of a group improvisation might.

By nature of their site-engaging performances Tasting Menu’s slight oeuvre emphasizes the scenes and sounds of Los Angeles and the areas immediately surrounding. For instance, the ensemble’s 2020 release for Full Spectrum, Mueller Tunnel is “a site-specific performance that was recorded on-location within” its namesake tunnel, “located in the Angeles Mountains, roughly 20 miles north of Pasadena, California.” Accompanied by a beautiful book featuring photo documentation by Eric Basta and graphic transcriptions by the ensemble’s own Cassia Streb, the project carries a distinctive dry and rocky spaciousness unique to the Southern California landscape.

Following that, the first track on Stand closer when you have something to say was recorded during a rare Los Angeles thunderstorm. Rain in L.A. has a somewhat intoxicating effect. As the city’s toxic layer reaches land via precipitation, the city’s streets slicken with built up auto oil, trash makes its way to the shoreline, and recently scorched hillsides fall prey to floods and mudslides. These are the odd symptoms of a drought-stricken city at last finding long overdue nourishment and coming to life, like a body rejecting water after becoming dehydrated. Luckily, the city is already a slow wash of tan and gray hues with little organizing structure, so its inhabitants aren’t oblivious to the noisy static affect that a storm might bring. The trio engages in an Angeleno way, opening doors and letting the storm’s roar sweep the structure, not giving space for it and not competing with it, but playing within it, playing rough around it.

It’s only within the album’s final quarter that any ensemble member plays a pitched instrument. The eventual appearance of tone is somewhat startling following nearly an hour of noise-based textures, but the sudden harmony lends a proper cadence, an uncanny resolution which allows the listener’s own space to speak. For this listener—who does most of her work out of a garage in Los Angeles, CA—, that space happens to also be a small room with concrete floors and a large door which is often open to whatever weather the city might bring. - Leah Levinson (Happiness Journal, Tone Glow, Soap Ear)

' Far away and yet so close: the first release of „dispari“, a freshly launched venture
by Hamburg based artist Phuong-Dan, is transitionally sublime. The vinyl record
composes inherently different, distinct elements into one bewildering story arc.
There is no A or B side; endlessly endless, both sides transmit transcendence. One
side brings An Afterthought – an almost eight minute long infinite, ambient musing
by Greek producer Anatolian Weapons. The short-termed opposition features
French composer Hector Zazou with US-American artist Laurie Anderson, diving for
a brief 53 seconds Into Your Dreams. Two disparate sides, which manifest
„dispari’s“ desire to follow the extensive path of music and not the narrow road of
style. It hopes to open doors for a variety of outlooks on the language of sound and
beyond. For „dispari“, any format appears interesting, and with the potential for
collaboration. Interdisciplinary projects in disparate media natures like text and
film, or simply unfathomable phenomena, are all possible future propositions.
Maybe the next signals will come as an auditory publication, an art space
performance, or just as a night in a bar, where dissimilar atoms dance for similar
desires. For now, length eats briefness and brevity defeats the epic in a dream of
strange disparity, walking on weightless soles, aglow in starry zones. '
Michael Leuffen

ww.dispari.de

Mekanik Kommando was a post punk / New Wave band from Nijmegen, the Netherlands founded in 1979 by Peter van Vliet and Laszlo Panyigay. The duo became a quartet with the addition of Simon van Vliet and Mirjam van Hout. The name Mekanik Kommando comes from the album ?Mekan?k Destrukt?w Kommand?h? by the French progressive rock band Magma. Inspired by a DIY ethos, Kraftwerk and Magma, the band began recording songs at home using two tape recorders. Their demo cassette was discovered by Wally van Middendorp of Minny Pops and owner of Plurex Records, who booked them for a gig at Paradiso in Amsterdam. In 1981 they were asked to contribute music on a flexidisc for the first issue of newly established magazine Vinyl. In the summer of that year the band recorded their debut album ?It Would Be Quiet In The Woods If Only A Few Birds Sing? released on Torso. In February 1982 the band secured five days of studio time at Salisbury Sound in Dordrecht. The end result was the mini-album ?Dancing Elephants? released on Torso later that year. Musically, the five songs are a mix between cold wave, experimental electronic and industrial pop. The band utilized two bass guitars plus a Korg 770, KR-55 drum machine, violin, effects, metals and plastics. Lyrics explore themes of decay and morality, hypnotically spoken on top of playfully metallic sounds. All songs have been mastered by George Horn at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. Each EP is housed in a replica of the original jacket, which features artwork by the group members, and includes a 4-page booklet with lyrics and notes designed by Eloise Leigh.

First time available on vinyl LP (with limited edition color variants - black and clear) and on digital formats.- Artwork packaging by artist J.S. Aurelius (Ascetic House) with reflective linear notes by Ragnar Grippe. - LP comes with download

Recorded between the release of Sand (1977) and Lost Secrets(1981), Symphonic Songs is a formerly unreleased work that chronicles the dynamic shift and development in experimental Swedish composer Ragnar Grippe's canon.

Following his seminal release Sandin 1977, Swedish experimental composer Ragnar Grippe worked on various art and performance commissions, often returning to Stockholm during the summer months to focus his efforts on his compositional practice. It was there at the famed EMS Studioswhere he began employing the Buchla synthesizer and the facilities multi-tracking capabilities as new instruments to map his mining of sound and movement.

During the late 1970's, Grippe formed a creative collaboration with choreographer Susan Buirge, specifically writing compositions for her works Restes and Tamis, thus pushing Grippe to start working in a more intricate studio environment. These passages inspired Grippe into a more complex layering process that focused more on placement and structure, rather than the aural floods and flourishes of his previous Sand album, eventually germinating in his first full 24-track composition entitled Orchestra.

After debuting Orchestra in 1980 at the Electronic Music Festival in Stockholm, Grippe holed up at EMS Studios with those lessons and the fussy Buchla synthesizer, in which Grippe affectionately recalls needed to be tuned and calibrated every 20-30 minutes. He emerged with a new commission for Susan Buirge later formally titled Symphonic Songs and used in her avant-garde theater piece Ci-Déla which debuted in Paris in 1981.Symphonic Songsshowcased Grippe's sound au courant, pushing dense against sparse, calm into cacophonous, using each track as its own intersecting plane. Using the machinations of studio and structure to drive Symphonic Songs' voice, Grippe culled a haunting, often cinematic electronic work that dots and darts into unexpected corners with curious aplomb.

Listen to the words, both terms have their root in classical music, but not in its form but because now I had so many more stems or voices that could be played simultaneously compared to my earlier pieces. Coming from a classical background, but with big nostrils for pop and jazz music, I can now see a thread in which classical got a new costume, dressed up in Buchla synthesizer and real bass sounds Grippe says. Since its live theater debut over 37 years ago, Dais Records releases for the first time Symphonic Songs, one of Grippe's most ambitious compositions, as a deluxe double vinyl LP (with limited edition color variants) and on digital formats. Artwork packaging by artist J.S. Aurelius (Ascetic House) with reflective linear notes by Ragnar Grippe. e

You Can See Your Own Way Out is the first collaborative record between Ilyas Ahmed (Geographic North, Immune, Mie Music) and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma (Shelter Press, Mexican Summer, Type). Long-time friends and satellites orbiting the same communities and scenes, You Can See's inception was never really a question of if, but when. Combining Ahmed's explorative guitar/synth-work and Cantu-Ledesma's field recording, sound processing and electronics, the result presents as a book of short stories or vignettes highlighting their individual strengths. At times evoking pastoral landscapes, others frayed edges of disintegrating photographs, there's always the suggestion of a forked path or a promised destination. Jonathan Sielaff guests on bass clarinet.

Delsin are pleased to gather together some of the highlights from the rich and varied catalogue of Manchester-based producer Claro Intelecto. From his earliest works on Ai Records through a prolific run on Modern Love to his more recent outings on Delsin, Mark Stewart has continually presented a vision of electronic music that uses the Detroit blueprint as a launch pad for his own distinctive strain of techno. Moving from elegant beauty to rabid intensity while grounded by a firm sense of rhythm, his catalogue runs deep and wide. The second volume in this expansive compilation series filters out select highlights from across his discography, and reframes them as a compelling overview of a truly distinctive voice in modern electronic music.

First Vinyl release from WAM (We Are Music agency) from
SOMTATIC RESPONSES 140gr 12" full color sleeve

Originally released in 1980, ‘Amanita’ is an early approach of Canadian artist Sherine Cisco, formerly known as Stu Cisco, to the limitless world of synthesizers in music, through ambient, progressive rock and drone noise.

A unique combination of ambient, progressive rock and even drone noises and space-age that converged in ‘Amanita’, her first full album and a piece of music history. This LP marks a milestone in the investigation, experimentation and evolution of musical instruments, where the Mini Moog demonstrated its versatility and creative potential, opening Sherine a path of limitless possibilities.

By the time ‘Amanita’ was first released in 1980 (only 300 copies were pressed at the time), Sherine had been playing synths for seven years. But far from acknowledging how traditional instruments were played, she tried to do things her own way, creating moving landscapes and a unique language of sound. This DIY approach to music was, as well how the album was made, in her own studio, with synthesizers that were originally meant for live performances such as the Elka Rhapsody or the Elektro Harmonix, channeled through a Dokorder 4 Tape Recorder.

However, what Sherine Cisco was living in her personal life, a gender transition, was as important to the record as the instruments she used to create it. “Beginning in the early 1980's, I began experimenting with taking the female hormone, estrogen. I felt like I was gradually being re-born. It affected my music, the mood of the music, and me, physically and mentally”.

A spacey vibe surrounds each of the 12 cuts that compose ‘Amanita’, waving from ambient to experimental music, introducing drone noises that add mystery to the whole piece and creating epic moments, with the Mini Moog accompanied by Randy Gray’s drums. To close things off, a synth pop infused track works as a masterpiece ending to this story.

"Tokyo’s Conatala label plunges deep into the subterranean world of the 80s cassette scene with a debut vinyl compilation of mythical home-recording figure Steve Hartwell aka The Dead Goldfish Ensemble. In the 80s Hartwell represented a cornerstone within a disparate group of people making music at home, recording onto cassette and using their own contacts for distribution, utilising the increasingly accessible, emerging electronic technology as a means of production.

Armed only with the tools that were necessary, the output of DGE is a playful, polyrhythmic fantasy land representing the pure essence of the DIY ethos, but also tapping into and attempting to recreate some of the perceived ideas about the US minimalist scene of the time.

It’s hard to picture now with the world of information at our fingertips, but reading in magazines about how American composers such as Steve Reich were experimenting with phasing and minimalistic structures, but not being to hear them, could easily lead to this novel, home-brewed interpretation.
Despite the slower means of correspondence during the 80s, the music of DGE found its way onto over 40 pan-European compilations, including revered outposts such as Insane tapes (Belgium), UK-based fanzine IRRE Tapes, Germany’s Tonspur Tapes, French label Organic Tapes, and a dizzying number of other near-impossible to find (and totally unknown) issues. However, the seasoned hardcore music-obsessives behind the scenes of Conatala have been with him every step of the way are certainly best placed to make sense of this fascinating cult UK artist."

Rubbed/tickled strings, drone-based undercurrents, leviathanic apparitions, squeals of insects, molluscs & intriguing shells, underwater singing moans, the work of the Belgian musician and performer Anaïs Tuerlinckx plunges entangles us into a captivating constellation

AIDAN BAKER (NADJA, B/B/S) and bass clarinetist GARETH DAVIS continue their fruitful collaboration with "Invisible Cities II" - five new tracks of finest ambient/chamber jazz/subtle drones of a highly meditative quality. Two years ago, the Canadian guitar player AIDAN BAKER and clarinetist GARETH DAVIS from Belgium released their duo debut "Invisible Cities" that surprised many by it's quiet, even meditative quality.

DAVIS had made himself a name in a wide range of fields, from the postrock of A-SUN AMISSA or OISEAUX-TEMPÊTE, new music (PETER ABLINGER, BERNHARD LANG), or experimentation with the likes of ELLIOTT SHARP, MERZBOW or SCANNER, while BAKER is mostly known for his drone/postmetal duo NADJA, but that's just one out of several steady projects (e.g.B/B/S with ANDREA BELFI and ERIK SKODVIN aka SVARTE GREINER) and a multitude of solo albums.

On "Invisible Cities" the duo explored the calmer side of things – from chamber jazz to ambient/drone and back, giving much space and air to breathe to their respective instrument. Subtle guitar drones, sonore clarinet sounds, a sonic scenery of peacefullness and meditative introspection – all this you'll also find on the new album "Invisible Cities II" which is an accomplished continuation and refinement of the duo's first collaborative effort from 2018.

Recorded between 2018 and 2019 in Berlin and Amsterdam, mastered and cut at D&M Berlin by KASSIAN TROYER.

The Echonomy Split Series puts out recordings which have already been released in small numbers; it brings together two artists who are kin to each other, be it in terms of genre, approach, aesthetics, or other similar relations. In recontextualising these works, new dynamics and associations evolve.

Felix-Florian Tödtloff and Schweben/Philipp Hager are acquainted since years, but never recorded together. Long ago, Felix played in the Berlin-based screamo band Petethepiratesquid, Philipp put up DIY shows somewhere in the swamps of southern germany. Then Philipp started playing in the motorik krautrock duo Zement, and as Felix had been building a reputation of his own as an audio engineer with Aetherweight, he mastered some of their releases. Then came 2020 and all its hegemonial narratives. In May of that year, Philipp played a livestream solo/soli show for a club he was involved in back in the days. 10 tapes were made. Felix used a number of recordings done all over the globe and built the song „Volta“, released in June on a split tape of 50 copies with the great Jeans Beast on Mönchengladbach‘s Econore label.

Upon hearing both recordings around the same time, the similarities were so obvious they sounded almost like two solo recordings of a duo. In a nutshell: these two vibed smooth as fuck.

Built on a groundwork of time-stretching synth drones, both rise slowly into an anti-climactic ride through repetitive patterns. As Schweben takes the driveway to a dance show of mumbling sequence lines, Tödtloff puts on the grand gesture and throws himself into a deep-level minimalist piano etude. Both sides carry the character of exercises of the mind and the body, controlled loopholes and examinations of two things which feel lightyears away now and are so crucial to freedom and an open society: club culture (Schweben) and travelling (FFT). A third element is remembered and exercised in the tape itself: mutual dialogue and communication.

A Dusty Detroit Basement Meets Illegal Rave In Leeds. Vid Vai Embarks On A New Sci-fi Episode With His Second Ep For The Ever-growing Slovenian Label Phi. A Bleepy Affair That Keeps Bubbling Below The Surface Is Distinguished By Well-arranged Harmonies And Surprising Plot Twists. You Never Know Whether You're Sitting On Your Sofa Or Ending Up On An Alien Dancefloor.

Reissued for the first time in over 20 years, for the first time on double LP with the original, unedited tracks in vinyl format. Completely remastered and restored audio and artwork. Side D of the double LP includes vinyl etching art: pine tree branches rendered by the band in Bryce software in the 90s for the original album art. // Few groups in recent history forged as confounding and alchemical a body of work as Coil, the partnership of Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson and John Balance. From album to album and phase to phase their recordings spelunk perplexing depths of esoteric industrial, occult electronics, and drugged poetry, both embodying and alienating parallel currents of their peers. The late 1990's in particular were a fertile era for the duo, embracing chance, chaos, and collaboration, enhanced by recent advancements in synthesis and sampling. Fittingly, at the summit of the decade's long, intoxicated arc, their divergent strains of interstitial ritual congealed into one of Coil's most celebrated and hallucinatory creations: Musick To Play In The Dark. Convening at Balance and Christopherson's vast Victorian house / studio in the coastal town of Weston-super-Mare, they began a series of ambitious sessions aided by inner circle associates Thighpaulsandra and Drew McDowall. Although the creative process was admittedly "iterative" and "a bit of a drug blur," the results are astoundingly inventive and well realized, winding through shades of divination dirge, wormhole kosmische, noir lounge, ominous humor, and black mass downtempo, guided by Balance's cryptic lunar muse, which he announces on the opening track: "This is moon musick / in the light of the moon." What's most remarkable about the album 20 years after its release is how brazen, insular, and unpredictable it still feels. The songs follow an allusive, altered state logic all their own, warping from microscopic ripples of glitch and breath to widescreen warlock psychedelia and back again, as much hyper-sensory as inter-dimensional. Even within a catalog as eclectic as Coil's, Musick is a mystifying collection, oneiric evocations of desire, decadence, dinner jazz, and dietary advice, far beyond the pale of whatever gothic industrial ambiguity birthed such a journey. The record closes with a slow, starlit shuffle, bathed in seething sweeps of spectral texture and high cathedral keys, like approaching the altar of some arcane temple. As the trance thickens Balance's voice rises, processed into an increasingly eerie, gaseous haze, but he resists these unseen forces, intent on delivering a final sermon: "Through hissy mists of history / the dreamer is still dreaming / the dreamer is still dreaming."

‘face first in the entangled’ is Infant’s illustration of the “organic internet” between different lifeforms built by mushrooms. These mycological structures see wild fungi coordinating and operating in a decentralized yet organized fashion, leading to dramatic ‘social changes’ without the need for leaders. The music follows a similar path, with Detroit-based Patrick Miller working over a year-and-a-half to forge a mimic of such systems, eschewing lead elements in favor of co-mingling patches of sound.

The role of composer is reframed here, Infant regressing to a more passive position as listener within the chain that led to the dense and untamed beauty of ‘face first in the entangled’. The process turned crude granular synth freeware into showering spores, vocal improvisations into near-unrecognisable murmurs, and field recordings and drum programmes into a distant pulse. The sonic elements at play swim around one and other and freely-associate, forming “micro-dramas” as the artist puts it, with each element playing a different, mutating part. The networked tangle of sounds adheres to its own inner-logic, pricking the sonic field, turning composted samples into a blooming forest floor littered with unexpected moments of shimmering denouement.

The work was inspired by writers like Ursula K. Le Guin or Anna Tsing, both of whom sought to reject traditional hero narratives. The latter's “The Mushroom at the end of the World” describes the foraging of prized matsutake mushrooms on forest floors worldwide, untamable by humans, and reliant on its symbiotic relationship with tree roots. The symbiosis of sounds Infant captures on ‘face first in the entangled’ reflects such organic structures, where the world is forged by an unknowable network of biological processes, rather than any one being.

Schon seit seinen ersten Veröffentlichungen zu Beginn der 1980er Jahre - seit dem Jahr 1983, um genau zu sein -, verweigert sich Michel Banabila konsequent jeder Schublade. Er lässt sich nicht auf ein bestimmtes Genre oder einen Stil festlegen. Sein musikalisches Schaffen umfasst Jazz ebenso wie experimentelle Cut-Up Electronics, Weltmusik (stark beeinflusst durch die von Jon Hassell entwickelte Fourth World Music), New Age, vielseitige Popmelodien, Musik für Tanz- und andere Bühnenprojekte sowie Soundtracks für Fernsehproduktionen. Bei solcher Vielfalt verwundert es nicht, dass der eine oder andere Hörer im Lauf der Jahre seine Schwierigkeiten hatte, sich in Banabilas abwechslungsreichem, von großen Gegensätzen geprägtem Werk zurechtzufinden. Gleichzeitig hat ihn gerade seine Vielseitigkeit zu einem der faszinierendsten Musiker Europas werden lassen, der - völlig zurecht - von vielen Kritikern hoch geschätzt wurde und wird. Jedoch ist möglicherweise genau diese Vielseitigkeit schuld daran, dass er der großen Masse - zu Unrecht - nie wirklich aufgefallen ist. Wer tiefer in sein Werk eintaucht, der wird an vielen Stellen den charakteristischen Banabila-Sound entdecken: seine sehr persönliche Art, Samples einzusetzen, die Verwendung von Stimmfragmenten, die Tatsache, dass selbst seine abstraktesten Arbeiten immer eine emotionale Schicht transportieren, an die man als Hörer andocken kann. Banabilas Produktivität seit 1983 ist so gewaltig, dass man ihr mit einer Single-Sammlung niemals gerecht werden könnte. Mit Wah-Wah Whispers hingegen gewährt uns Bureau B auf wunderbare Weise Einblick in sein aktuelleres Werk zwischen 2013 und 2020. Das einzige ältere Stück auf der Platte - Tic-Tac - stammt aus dem Jahr 2001. Dieses Album ist eine Einladung, die abgelegeneren Winkel von Banabilas Schaffen zu erforschen und tiefer in das Werk eines der kreativsten, unabhängigen Künstler Hollands einzutauchen. - Peter van Cooten

Saturations is a composition by Danish multidisciplinary artist Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard, and features a clarinet choir consisting of 19(!) clarinet players.

Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard (b. 1979) considers his work to be a basic research in realities working within the domains of imaginary & physical sound as well as other non-sonic media, and since 2012 Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard has experimented with creating music that lets the instruments transcend their inherent sonic norms and reappear in another form by way of multiplication of sound.

His work with multiplication of sound has led to numerous compositions in which one instrument is multiplied a number of times: One piece is written for 9 pianos, another for 10 hi-hats and yet another for countless triangles and so on.

The multiplication brings out bodily timbral phenomena, interference of sound waves and vibrations, and brings out what Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard calls the sound’s potential of transformation. He describes this as the quality in a musical piece, when you no longer hear recognizable instruments, but instead the individual sound, as well as the individual musician, is dissolved into the collective sound.

A sonic as well as human synthesis.

He explains the concept of this sound as follows:

“Imagine you enter a room with vibrant acoustics, such as a cafe full of people having conversations, and when you’re close to those conversations you hear the language and understand the words. If you step away from the tables, however, and stand in the doorway, you begin to loose the ability to distinguish the words from one another. Now instead of hearing the individual conversations, melts all the conversations together, and transform into a one new sound. A sound of people without words and language. Just as when you hear a group of geese squawk, or the wind in tree tops, a kind of nature given sound of people. Once the language is dissolved and the words stop making sense, what is left, is the sound."

The work of NLL has been presented at a variety of different venues and museums such as MoMA (NY - as a part of the René Magritte exhibition The Mystery of the Ordinary, 2013), Imaginary West Indies (Overgaden Copenhagen, 2017), ISCM (Vancouver, 2017), Radiophrenia (Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts, 2017), CPH:DOX (Copenhagen, 2017), Roskilde Festival (2017), Harpa (Reykjavik, 2017), G((o))ng Tomorrow Festival (Copenhagen 2016, 2018), Nordic Music Days (Norway, 2019), Akusmata (SF, 2020) and his works has been released on labels such as Topos (DK), Archive Officielle (CA) and Important Records (US). NLL is associate professor at RMC in Copenhagen, and has given lectures at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), Goldsmiths University of London a.o.p. NLL has been awarded with several prizes a.o. from the Danish Art Foundation and the Sonning Foundation.

I met SUGAI KEN a few years ago in Tokyo, outside the Dommune radio studios. His personality and music, a very special brand, touched me. His music is a coded vision of a dream world. A trade that is progressive yet traditional - in the most positive sense of the word.

Recently out of the blue, Sugai San sent me a collection of personal field recordings he made of folklore groups and public performances in Tokyo, Toyama, Kanagawa, Kyoto, Tottori, … The close listener already knows that Sugai San’s aesthetics speak of a great knowledge of these performing arts.

An open invitation: “the traditional local performing arts in the 21st century intrinsically conceive “fragility” as they are vulnerable to extinction. The Japanese local performing arts that appear in this recording is no exception, endangered by the declining birth rate and aging population which are typical to the country. (SUGAI KEN)”

I bring the original recordings into conversation with new elements like a ‘monomane’ - tr. imitating – sound game. But when i throw these old and new figurines together on the podium, the objects immediately disappear in the cracks of the stage wood. Thus only the understament of the suggestion remains. And relentlessly the significance of every movement now becomes a question.

Furthermore, what’s in focus? The manipulation? Or the content? Or are we zooming in on the aspect of archiving ~ preserving? Dubious.

In KAGIROI – tr. heat haze - people coexist for a moment severely carved in time like a high contrast still of dancing flames. When you bring this composition home, it will never boil yet merely evaporate. And when you gaze at the clouds of condensed droplets inside your own darkness, on a soft volume, You complete our puzzle."

Across two 12" slabs come long buried vignettes, motorik experiments and sketches from deep within the SVN archives. A continuation from his previous EP of the same name (c. 2017), this latest collection's smoked-out ambience, skeletal stuttering rhythmic workouts and smudged stoned melodies are some of the myriad parts that make up this most mysterious 'Mechine'.

Recorded at the now infamous Neues Deutschland Studio in Berlin, this collection of tracks continues the unique sonic explorations that SVN is known for and has deftly showcased through various respected electronic outlets including Apollo, Acido, Sex Tags Mania and more. An essential collection of DIY and contemporary German electronics.

Zaumne's new album titled Élévation is a multifaceted yet subtle work, an abstract collage that is equally entrancing and immersive. Quoting passages from Baudelaire’s “Flowers of Evil”, the Polish musician promises to elevate the soul and consciousness “Beyond the sun / Beyond the ether”. Yet simultaneously, the artist wants us to stay where we are and focus on the immediate surroundings in search of our personal attachment to the world.

Initially recorded for the WET (Weird Erotic Tension) online community the four pieces are an exploration of erotic aspects of the environment and uncanny intimacy with other beings and objects that dwell in our nearest proximity. Just like on previous releases for labels like Czaszka Rec. or Perfect Aesthetics, on Élévation Zaumne maintains his interest in emotional aspects of sound and internet culture – he builds his compositions from fragments of ASMR-whispered poetry, samples of natural phenomena and field recordings from his family home and its environ.

What starts as an escapist exercise driven by uneasiness and ennui becomes an individual healing process, in which the subject rediscovers the strangely intimate relationship with the world and opens up to almost magical methods of communicating with other beings. ASMR samples and sounds of the artist touching, playing with and exciting different objects are an experiment in establishing contact with the non-human realm and a method of attuning the body and the mind to the reality in which everything is interconnected.

Zaumne tests Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance” through radical, sensual intimacy with what’s near, finding a glimpse of the absolute in his own room, again quoting Baudelaire: “To a child who is fond of maps and engravings / The universe is the size of his immense hunger”.

Zaumne is the moniker of Polish musician Mateusz Olszewski. In the past few years, he has released music on labels like Magia, Perfect Aesthetics, BAS or Czaszka Rec. Élévation, released by Mondoj and initially commissioned by WET, is his first vinyl release. Blending elements of genres like ambient, dub, minimalism and tape music with ASMR samples, field recordings and spoken word, he creates work with deep emotional focus and impact.

Tape

After tapes on Steep Gloss and Cruel Nature, we are happy that Stuttgart-based collective Zebularin join the OM family with their new release “Hermetic Topography“.

The album, a product of weekly recording sessions between March and July 2020, just when the pandemic slowed a bit down, might be the closest approach to what communal experiences sounded throughout 2020. It‘s a bold design of how collective improvisation can work in the post-covid era.

The first minute of „Budenzauber“ sets the tone for the whole record. Synth waveforms get joined by a drumset, both settling into a vivid conversation between digital noise and analog free jazz, finding a shared rhythm for this journey.

Daniel Vujanic, known to some from his recordings with Höhlenmusk Ensemble, Ixtar or E Jugend and the driving force behind Zebularin, had this urge to layer electro-acoustic solo material, synths, prerecorded audio meditations, without bending the sounds into detailed harmonic structures, but to build up dense, morphing atmospheres. In came Daniel Kartmann, a combatant in many of Vujanic‘s musical endeavours, his percussions, wind instruments and some deep musical talk - from obscure black metal to brazilian psychedelica, from Scott Walker to Gustav Mahler. The duo laid down basic tracks, kept arrangements vague, creating a perfect environment for a range of other players and instruments to walk in: piano, woodwinds, electronics, ebowed guitars and a vibraphone. The resulting record is a tender, affectionate take on jazz and electroacoustic composition. One can hear the routine of the involved cast as well as the fun, deep listening and correspondence that took place; even though this album was not recorded live in big-band-style, musical ideas interlock on an intuitive level and complement each other.

Take „Peljuga“ as a perfect example, a loosened jazz improv reminding of The Notwist‘s more psychic enhanced moments, which blends into a conversation between a contact mic and heavily manipulated synths and turns into a minimalist piano composition, which melds into a climactic peak and is interrupted only to rise again. And as complex as this description sounds, as uplifting is the actual song. Or the album‘s last track, „Holmen“, which starts out as an underwater ambient piece and evolves pretty organically into cosmic power electronics.

Despite its name and the Heideggerian flair of some song titles, „Hermetic Topography“ is all but hermetic. It‘s rich in musical colours without melting into a quagmire of maximalist noise. It‘s sophisticated but never top-heavy. It might be one of your favourite tapes of 2021.

Radical protagonist of “feral gore feminist ASMR”, Ronce delivers a truly shocking debut album based on the female form and the violence that comes with it: surveillance, self disgust, anger, touch, desire (or lack thereof). It’s no doubt among the most disturbing yet arresting pieces of experimental music released in recent years, highly recommended listening if yr into Frederikke Hoffmeier, Perila, Maja Ratkje, ELpH/Coil, Kevin Drumm, Sam Kidel, Rashad Becker.
Cathartic or deeply discomfiting, depending your disposition, either way ‘Malignant’ sounds quite unlike anything else in the contemporary field. It follows from the French artist’s now-impossible to find 7” ‘Lolita / Acteon’, issued by the Dawn label in January 2020, with a steeper and starker interrogation of its themes;
abuse, power dynamics, and how it felt to be a 20 year old woman visible only under the gaze of men, and experiencing, as she says “the visceral need to escape it, to escape the hands and the eyes and crawl out of the physical body; rising above.” Yet for all its excoriating harshness, the album is ultimately a positive gesture on how to navigate trauma and eventually come out of it. While the process was not easy or enjoyable, it was vital for the artist and, by turns, should be considered crucial listening.
Recorded in the months leading up to the first lockdowns of 2020, the ten tracks see Ronce continue to adapt the production techniques of ASMR - close miked vocals and hyper-tactile foley - in a dark détournement of ASMR’s semi-erotic fetishisation of the female voice. The results, in Ronce’s own words, form “a toxic, thorny maze holding all the rage and bitter curses that had to be purged in order for me to move on.” Her thoughts manifest as “a mix of primal fantasies, revenge and mourning”, exploring the limits of the frequency spectrum between sibilant highs and guttural drops, with vocals occupying a range between frankly petrifying giggles and subvocalised whispers, to Enfield-haunting croaks and bloodcurdling shrieks, each illuminating structures that shapeshift from liminal, barely-there, to bone-crunching technoid reflux and charged electrostatic forcefields.
In light of pandemic circumstances that have arisen since its recording, the masochism of ‘Malignant’ may only feel to compound the world’s woes, but let’s be fair; there’s never a good or easy time to broach this topic, and the sense of vulnerability, insight and ingenuity that Ronce brings to her work is hugely admirable, if not vital listening for a world currently reassessing its principles.

Black Truffle is thrilled to announce Backfire of Joy, a previously unheard recording from Phew, John Duncan and Kondo Tatsuo, documenting a concert at Tokyo’s Hosei University in 1982. Though the fertile exchange of ‘zines, tapes and records between the Japanese underground and the Los Angeles Free Music Society meant the artists were familiar with each other’s work, this performance (occurring on Duncan’s first visit to Japan) was their first meeting and only performance as a trio. Duncan is heard on his signature shortwave radio set-up, while Kondo performs on synth, tape loops and echo-drenched piano, providing a spacious backdrop for Phew’s astonishing performance of spontaneous, free-associative song moving between Japanese and English. A testament to the unhinged exploration of the 1980s experimental underground, the trio careen wildly between crashing percussive tape loops, deluges of shortwave noise, insistent piano figures and playful synth melodies. On the B side, we are treated to a remarkable ten minute sequence moving organically from spaced-out synth and radio textures to a stunning finale of improvised balladry centred on piano and voice, unexpectedly broken up by electronic interjections. Beautifully recorded in crunchy vintage fidelity, Backfire of Joy arrives accompanied by archival photographs and newly authored liner notes from all three participants.

we are proud to present our second vinyl release

hot and freaky techno music from der totmacher, dj ze migl, chip tronic, dize7, ulf kramer and labelhead nox
but be careful...heat could warp or melt the record

blue vinyl, marbled with black! limited to 200 copys!

10 years after founding Schmob Recordings, its time to take the next step!
We took some great tracks from our net releases and one bonustrack (previously released on gaintrax) and put them on vinyl!

Ulf Kramer, Sane and founder Nox show you what Schmob Recordings is all about!
Fine and unorthodox tracks from the representatives of nonconformist sounds!

Allow these enchanting freaky tracks to lead you into their maelstrom of chaos and disorder.

It’s time to "Remove the Barriers"