Beats News

Backwards presents the REISSUE of this amazing VOX POPULI! album originally released on cassette (1985) by Cause And Effect in the United States. Self-labeled as an ethno-industrial project, Vox Populi! is one of the most intriguing and original band emerged from French underground. These recordings were made between 1980 and 1985. The album presents 7 tracks of analog experimental ethno industrial music! Released in a luxurious edition of 400 copies only. Silkscreened cover with printed inner-sleeve.

Auf "Small Favours" - der 6–Songs Vinyl–Auskopplung des Albums "Favours", verbündet sich Elektronikmusik–Zauberer Wolff Parkinson White mit verschiedenen SängerInnen, unter anderem Norah Jones, Natalie Beridze und Pascal Leboeuf.

Wolff Parkinson White's typisches Maschinengewehr–Feuer aus manipulierten Audio–Splittern steht hier in krassem Kontrast zu der Wärme der menschlichen Stimme. Seine erste EP–Veröffentlichung auf Nonplace bedient sich an vergleichsweise bekannten Liedstrukturen und beantwortet die Frage, wie ein Projekt von Björk und Venetian Snares klingen würde, wären sich beide jeweils der Nachteile diatonischer Monotonie und der endlosen harmonischen Wüste bewusst.

Die 6 Tracks der EP wurden von Labelchef Burnt Friedman persönlich von den 13 Album–Tracks ausgewählt. Der Schlagzeuger Jochen Rückert, der hinter dem Spitznamen "Wolff Parkinson White" steht, spielt auf "Heaps Dub" (nonplace20) von Root 70 und "Coptic Dub" (nonplace27) von Hayden Chisholm's Projekt The Embassadors.

The Amsterdam based Modern Obscure Music label launches a new sub-division named MOMArchives. MOMArchives is a reissue label that will focus on electronic music. All releases will be available on vinyl and also digitally.

The first release is Neocrystal by Japanese producer Yoshihiro Sawasaki. It is a fantastic slice of mid 90s Japanese Ambient Techno that needs to be heard by a larger audience. Yoshihiro Sawasaki is a Kyoto based producer who has released music under aliases such as Naturally Gushing and Doctor YS & the Cosmic Drunkards on labels like Sublime Records, Apollo Records and V2. Neocrystal was originally released on Sublime Records back in 1994. Sublime Records is an important label in the history of Japanese electronic music. The imprint has released music by domestic artists such as Susumu Yokota and Ken Ishii, as well as foreign talent such as Global Communications. The B Side to Neocrystal is Magic Dome. This was licensed to Dave Angel’s instalment of the legendary X-Mix series on Studio K7!

The first MOMArchives release begins with the ‘On The Beach’ mix of Neocrystal. It is a dreamy ambient track with gorgeous key washes and reverberating synthetics. It is followed by Magic Dome, a spacey keyed cut with bright synth play, subtle percussion and hypnotic key work. This is a wonderful archive release from Yoshihiro Sawasaki and it is a great start for MOMArchives.

To screengaze we see the frenzy of the hyperreality; the chaotic and unending flow of info which serves as the composite of the idealworld as it’s presented to us. Projections of self-styled-life, illusions of societal norm, prescribed freedom, and omnipresent prompts for consumption embody this hyperworld which once zoomed in on becomes dissociative, overwhelming, and often unstable as its reflection is held up to itself.

While to windowgaze, we see a muted reflection of the actual. We see in such a way that allows us to view a still and serene world onto which we can project our own idealisms; romanticising the mundane with notions of love and beauty, while flirting with senses of meaninglessness and nothingness. Through windowgazing we allow ourselves to eulogise the actual in a “is-it-really-real” way.

Tears Voyuer is the debut LP by the duo All Times Now Nothing. Tears Voyuer is presented in two formats. The physical 12” LP is comprised of two 22 minute collage pieces. The digital format is made up of 14 tracks which form the basis of the collages as heard on the record. Digital download included with the release.

Romantic Fiction - the debut LP from Curses - is an honest musical expression drawing influences from his youth growing up in NYC in the 80s. References to new wave, post-punk, synth music and early EBM are skillfully merged with the DIY approach of punk and rock n roll angst. Brandishing an immersive sonic palette, all instruments throughout the album were played and recorded by the artist

Simon Scott (Slowdive) debuts his Index alias with a visceral new sound that absorbs and transmutes political, ecological and psychic dread into a caustic, dissonant style of noise sculpture for iDEAL Recorded 2016-2019 in Los Angeles, ‘Kainos’ sees veteran UK composer, field recordist, drummer and mastering engineer Scott explore ongoing concerns of his oeuvre via a prism of formative musical influences from the post-industrial music of Coil, Throbbing Gristle and early Black Sabbath, plus non-musical and conceptual inspiration from the turmoil of Brexit - including recordings of the Houses of Parliament - thru to the radical feminist scientific writing of Donna Haraway, and the conceptual vigour of Luigi Russolo’s
Futurist manifesto, ‘The Art of Noises’.
The album’s title ‘Kainos’, from the ancient Greek meaning “new” or “fresh”, characterises Scott’s efforts to glean something practical from this world’s current state of chaos. When taken in context of its use in Donna Haraway’s 2016 book, ‘Staying with the Trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene’, and its central tenet that “our task is to make trouble, to stir up potent response to devastating events on a damaged earth”, Scott’s enacts a tectonic shift from bucolic sonic signifiers to signposts of the post-industrial world that could hardly be more apt at at a time when electronic and ambient music are prized for their safe and sterile wallpaper qualities, rather than a potential to evoke and invoke more powerful feelings.
Based around modular synth-mangled live stream recordings of the Houses of Parliament during the prelude to Brexit, Scott’s compositions take these fractious debates as building blocks for the album’s caustic improvisations and compositions, ranging from convulsive clangour to pulsating tracts of strobing distortion and gutted, lurching post-dubstep rhythms riddled with the voice of Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell, before eventually resolving with a more spacious, textured sense of relief by the album’s close.
His results are chaotic and noisily abrasive in a way that holds up a mirror to the modern world, reflecting a putative state of unrest and agitation that resonates with the artist’s profound discontent with the lack of “equilibrium we have right now and how disconnected we have all become in relation to nature and each other.” In concept this is nothing new for Scott, as previous release have variously explored ideas of climate change in ‘Below Sea Level’ (2012) and ‘Flood Lines’ (2016’, but the product this time is far more pointed, even aggressive, in its noisy insistence.

Nikolaienko's "The Sounds Of Pseudoscience" LP from 2015 (originally released by Muscut/ Graphical Recording) gets 5 Years Anniversary Limited Edition on cassettes. 30 copies only. Includes 10 never published before pseudoscience illustrations.

10"

Do you know the moment when you catch the plague? Right. He also didn't know. Until it got to him. Out of nowhere, it took over his mind, his body, his soul. Nobody saw it coming. Make sure to have some garlic when you are around him. This plague is highly contagious.

You don't know what you don't know.

Asyncro Is A Record Label Launched By Moscow's Electronic Music Producer Ol In 2019. The Opening Release Is An Lp By Serwed - The Debut Collaborative Project From Ol And His Gost Zvuk Label-mate Flaty. This Record Offers Precise Cuts With A Wide Range Of Rhythmic Structures And Granulated Backgrounds, Based On The Duo's Explorations Of Free-form Generative Sound.

Electronic brutalist Somaticae distills a rage against surveillance software company ‘Amesys’ in his ferocious album of rhythmic digital noise for Mondkopf’s In Paradisum label, coming off like Pan Sonic using Takeshi Nakamura’s No Input Mixing Board in the process… Fuelled by a justifiable need to disseminate information about Amesys, a French company who have supplied discreet surveillance software to government organisations and dictatorships around the world - including Muamar Gaddafi’s Libya, the European Commission, and the French M.o.D. - Somaticae’s 3rd album for In Paradisum is framed around tense, weaponised sonics that act as metaphor for the relationship between France’s role as the 4th largest arms exporter in the world, and its emergent position as low key facilitator of “Big Brother”.
Finding Somaticae in his 13th year of operations, the project takes on a heavier meaning with its ‘AMESYS’.
In seven tense steps he affords scant relief from a raw, pulsating core of energy that he just about tames over the course of the album. Working right at the biting point of digital noise in patented style, he churns up squabbling patterns and sheer binary scree with a manacled grasp of loud/quiet dynamics that handles the listener from passages of gnashing tension to guttural spasms of bass and pelting, almost Frenchcore-style kicks.
Although recorded in the studio, the album’s livewire ruffness surely lives up to Somaticae’s notorious reputation for live, improvised performance in the European DIY scene to record. It’s a proper seat-edge listen that imparts its message in no uncertain terms, galvanising his audience to the struggle against deployment of facial recognition, and the inherent erosion of civil liberties, which are aided by Amesys and its offshoots, Nexa Technologies and AMES. The issue isn’t sci-fi any more; it’s real and impending

Raime's second album, Tooth, arrives June 10, 2016 on 2xLP, CD and digital formats. The widescreen melancholia of their 2012 debut, Quarter Turns Over A Living Line, gives way to an urgent and focussed futurism, in the shape of eight fiercely uptempo, minimal, meticulously crafted electro-acoustic rhythm tracks. The DNA of dub-techno, garage/grime and post-hardcore rock music spliced into sleek and predatory new forms.

No let-up, no hesitation. Needlepoint guitar, deftly junglist drum programming, brooding synths and lethal sub-bass drive the engine. The production is immaculate, high definition. No hiss, no obscuring drones or extraneous noise: the music of Tooth is wide-open and exposed. The seeds of its supple dancehall biomechanics can be found in the self-titled 2013 EP by Raime side-project Moin, an ahead-of-its-time synthesis of art-rock and soundsystem sensibilities, but Tooth pushes the template further, binding the disparate elements together so tightly that they become indistinguishable from one another.

If Quarter Turns was an album that confronted total loss and self-destruction, even longed for it, then Tooth is the sound of resistance and counter-attack: cunning, quick, resolute, calling upon stealth as much as brute-force. At a time when so many pay lip service to experimentation without ever fully committing themselves or their work to it, Raime return from three years of deep, dedicated studio research with a bold and original new music: staunch, rude, and way out in front.

Not to be sold in stores before 28th Feb 2020.
A window, a portal, a room.
A space one can see, but not enter.
A fleeting force burning the ether.

Following the recent critical success of his 101 Beats Per Minute collective project, Le Doux Nord LPs and Ribbon Works EPs, Ireland’s most prolific electronic composer and one of an exclusive coterie of producers who truly understands the occult language of the synthesiser, Dunk Murphy returns this spring with the release of his 7th album as Sunken Foal. Reflecting a lifelong infatuation with confectionery and a passion for synthesisers, Murphy’s latest suite, ‘Hexose’, features layers of thick harmony, flickering nano-sound design and extensive use of self generating melodies to conjure up a rich bio-mechanical soundscape. The end product is reminiscent of contemporaries like Lee Gamble and William Fields and the softer aspects of the 90’s WARP sound, blended with the work of visionary synth artists such as Laurie Spiegel, Suzanne Doucet, Enno Velthuys, and Vangelis. Whether you enjoy the cloying sweetness of the Caramac, the saccharine pleasures of the Instant Whip or the seductive charms of the Dark Bounty, you’ll find something in this mellifluous selection box to satisfy your audial cravings.

ELEH's Harmonic Twins is slow moving monophony tuned to the overtone vocalizations generated by a particularly beautiful sound sculpture made by Harry Bertoia.

These two pieces are inspired by early music, choral masses, motets, the cathedral reverberations of sacred geometry and deep bass. Harmonic Twins was originally debuted by ELEH at Unsound, Krakow in 2017.

Harmonic Twins was pressed in an audiophile edition of 500 copies and is packaged in a heavy duty sleeve printed with metallic inks.

An optimal listening environment is recommended in order to experience the low frequencies of Harmonic Twins.

Not to be sold in stores before 28th Feb 2020.
A window, a portal, a room.
A space one can see, but not enter.
A fleeting force burning the ether.

Tod Dockstader's Aerial series, an electronic/drone masterpiece, is cherished among fans of the artist's work and this first volume is available in an audiophile quality double LP edition of 500 copies.

15 years in the making, Tod Dockstader's Aerial series is sourced from his life long passion for shortwave radio. Dockstader collected over 90 hours of recordings, made at night, and comprised of cross signals and fragments plucked from the atmosphere.

Opening with airwave drones, Dockstader gradually allows elements to slowly come and go, summoning an ominous atmosphere of ethereal cloud clouds. Malignant placidity continues, giving the feeling of eavesdropping upon late-night audio activity not unlike discovering number stations while sweeping the dials. These sounds pull you in as their density and rhythms come and go.
Backward voices, deep echoing choruses of conversations flowing under the surface, ocean sounds, pulsing electro-rhythms, all seem to be created via the collaging of many hours of source recordings. A masterwork of collage and juxtaposition by an overlooked pioneer of American electronic music.

Artwork by John Brien (Imprec) is inspired by the propagation of shortwave radio signals throughout the earth's atmosphere.

"This return of Dockstader is something to cherish, not just because his output has been so limited and scarce but because what we do have is so intriguing, persuasive and cliche-free; the music of an inspired explorer who trails in nobody's slipstream." The Wire

"One of the great figures of musique concrete composition." Dusted

The Aerial project

I've written before of my interest in shortwave radio, in the notes to the Quatermass CD. Also, in the notes to the Omniphony CD (which has my first "Aerial" mix, "Past Prelude," in it), I mentioned "The Aerial Etudes," which was my working title for what became the three CDs you have. And, at the end of an interview with Chris Cutler (which can be found in the "Unofficial TD Website"), the piece I mentioned I was starting to work on at the time became Aerial.) When I was very young, people got most of their entertainment from radio. They called it "playing the radio," as if it were a musical instrument. That's what I've tried to do in this piece. About this time, a few people encouraged me to look into using a computer for this work.

I'd never used one, but I saw it would allow me to keep my mixes digital - no more transfer losses. So, at the end of 2001, I got a computer and an editing program for it, and spent what seemed a long time learning it. I began selecting mixes and loading them into the computer in late March, 2002. Out of the 580, I selected 90 "best" mixes - eventually reduced to 59, the ones on the CDs. Finally, in assembling the CDs, I followed David Myers' suggestion to allow each piece to flow into the next - making a continuous journey to the end. Tod Dockstader, 14 september 2003

About Tod Dockstader:
Dockstader moved to New York in 1958 and became a self-taught sound engineer and sound effects specialist and apprenticed as a recording engineer at Gotham Recording Studios. It was around this time that he started to use his off-work hours to experiment with mixing and manipulating sounds on magnetic tape (musique concrète). By 1960 he had amassed enough material to assemble his first record Eight Electronic Pieces which was released on the Folkways label in 1961 (this would later be used in the soundtrack of Fellini’s Satyricon). The last of the eight pieces was later re-worked into his first stereo piece.
In 1961 he applied to use the facilities at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center and was denied access by Vladimir Ussachevsky. Ussachevsky’s official reason was the “overstrained” scheduling of the studios, although many suspect that Dockstader’s lack of academic training was a factor in the decision.
He continued to create music throughout the first half of the 60s, working principally with tape manipulation effects. His last piece at Gotham was Four Telemetry Tapes in 1965, after which he left to work as an audio-visual designer on the Air Canada Pavillion at Montreal’s Expo ‘67. It was around this time in 1966 that some of Dockstader’s pieces were released on three Owl L.P.s, and his work became known to a larger audience. He achieved modest recognition and radio play alongside the likes of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Edgard Varèse, and John Cage.

”Are you ready to take your turn now?” asks a mischievous voice at the beginning of DJ Marcelle’s new album. But by this point you don’t have a choice: you better buckle up for a joyride through the wild, unpredictable imagination of a true electronic music auteur. ‘Saturate The Market, Now!’ is stuffed with the kind of raw, rhythmic workouts and playful humour we’ve come to know and love from the long-serving Dutch artist. Let’s start with the music: Marcelle pinballs between pumping outsider house, brilliantly weird acid and musique concrète experiments where anything could happen at any given time. Then there are her famous track titles, which take another aim at nightclub patriarchy (‘Technicians And Their Light Effects’, the successor to last year's 'Technicians And Their Smoke Machines') at the same time as displaying a keen sense of satire (‘I Fell In My Own Cesspit!’) and revealing a difficult relationship with the sour, massive rock that for her is ‘German Bread’. With artwork featuring a collage of puppets found in her Amsterdam house and Marcelle’s own on-the-road photography, this is yet another album that sets her a mile apart from the paint-by-numbers dance music producers - or “accountants” as she’s witheringly described them.

Marcelle arrived via punk, post-punk, avant garde and dub and lives by the independent, forward-thinking spirit inherent in those scenes. A sense of freedom is imbued in her work, unsurprising given that this album was written in two weeks and was made entirely on her own collection of machines (save a few choice vocal samples). It’s Marcelle’s eighth vinyl-only release for Jahmoni Music from Munich and follows on from last year’s ‘One Place For The First Time’ which swiftly sold-out and is now onto a repress. The vinyl is released alongside a 10” featuring extended and dub versions of triumphant album-cut ‘Everything Not Yet’.

So are you sitting comfortably? Well Marcelle would prefer if you weren’t. Because this is music for misfits to move to. The very opposite of business techno. A missive from a cult DJ with an enviable record collection and a fearless artist who couldn’t give a flying fuck about dance music norms. Saturate the market with pure energy – let’s do this!Seb Wheeler, Mixmag

Kutmah closes off a series of 10 inches started back in 2010 from the cream opf L.A. Beatmakers. ... He was supposed to be on that batch of releases but for reasons well documented he had other priorities during that year.

We're delighted to finally welcome the esoteric beat wizard on board with "New Appliance" - as expected from such a singular talent this is a super strong ep, a diverse fusion of his classic beat styles and a signpost to a new departure using all his wave, noise & punk influences.

Cover photo by B+ // Mastered by Jonwayne //Mixed by Kidkanevil

Fully immersive electronic music by US composer Maggi Payne, inspired by the arctic winds. Maggi Payne's sound worlds invite the listeners to enter the sound and be carried with it, experiencing it from the inside out in intimate detail. The sounds are almost tactile and visible.

The music is based on location recordings, with each sound carefully selected for its potential—its slow unfolding revealing delicate intricacies—and its inherent spatialization architecting and sculpting the aural space where multiple perspectives and trajectories coexist. With good speakers, some space in your schedule, and a mind-body continuum willing to resonate with Payne’s electroacoustic journey, but then it will take you to places that other music can’t reach.

From the sounds of dry ice, space transmissions, BART trains, and poor plumbing she immerses the listener in a world strangely unfamiliar. Maggi Payne is a composer, video artist, recording engineer, photographer, and flutist and is Co-Director of the Center for Contemporary Music and a faculty member at Mills College, in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Svitlana Nianio and Oleksandr Yurchenko are musicians with a long history in the still-mysterious Kiev Underground. Nianio’s first group Cukor Bela Smert Sugar, The White Death were active from the late 80’s through to the early 90’s, and following an intense period of touring, collaboration, experimentation and a string of mixtapes and self-published recordings, Nianio’s first official solo album ‘Kytytsi’ was released in 1999 by Poland’s Koka Records. Oleksandr Yurchenko, a longtime collaborator and a pivotal figure in the Kiev music scene, was instrumental in creating the Novaya Scena, a loose conglomerate of artists who encouraged each other to excavate both the sounds of the West and Ukrainian tradition. ‘Znayesh Yak? Rozkazhy’ (‘Know How? Tell Me’) is the duo’s most fully realised collaboration, an enchanting, complete world in which Yurchenko’s instrumentation and playfulness with form frames Nianio’s otherworldly soprano, recalling Liz Fraser steeped in contrapuntal melody and hymnal improvisation. Originally made available on a self-released cassette in 1996 (re-issued in 2017 by Ukraine’s Delta Shock label) where the album was twinned with ‘Lisova Kolekciya’ (re-issued on LP in 2017 by Skire) this is the debut release of ‘Znayesh Yak? Rozkazhy’ outside of Ukraine.


Recorded in an abandoned park in Kiev during a fertile period for artists and musicians following the collapse of the Soviet Union, ‘Znayesh Yak? Rozkazhy’ sees Nianio and Yurchenko combine Casio keyboard, hammered dulcimer, percussion, and Nianio’s unmistakeable soprano vocalisations to create music sympathetic to the specific locations in which they chose to record. Yurchenko’s contribution is perhaps more present on this recording than anything else we have heard from the duo. His percussive dulcimer playing provides the basis on which Nianio can weave delicate keyboard lines while playfully contorting her voice, shifting from a low register reminiscent of Nico to what could be perceived as the call of a bird or an animal in distress. Whatever the intent, the effect is haunting and beautiful in equal measure.

There’s a prevailing earthiness on the recordings, found in the warm hiss of the lo-fi means of recording or the grinding, unspecified sounds that occasionally accompany the melody, like drones created on the fly by hands trying to keep warm in the ice. A prevailing mood of fragility and beauty seeps from these melodies, delicate moments of clarity spun by the two musicians. ‘Znayesh Yak? Rozkazhy’ is a dream spun in twilight, a crystalline, private world where the listener feels both alien and welcome.

This album documents a recording of Tori Kudo’s Last Song Of My Life. Some may know Kudo already as prime mover in pop-naïf collective Maher Shalal Hash Baz; his history stretches back over four decades, and he’s a significant figure in the Japanese underground, thanks to his membership of groups like Noise (with his wife Reiko Kudo), Guys ’N’ Dolls, Snickers, and Sweet Inspirations. Untold numbers of said underground have passed through the ranks of Maher Shalal Hash Baz, among them members of Luna Park Ensemble, Fushitsusha, High Rise, Tenniscoats, Los Doroncos, Nagisa Ni Te and Ché-SHIZU.

On this album, Kudo and his musical collaborators performed “Last Song Of My Life” to accompany the screening of a film work by Umi Ishihara aka Ummmi entitled The Garden Apartment. During the performance, the members of the ensemble were instructed to play either the eight-bar score that Kudo provided, or noise, depending on their response to the film work that was being projected. If you’ve been following Kudo’s recent releases, particularly his recent, prodigious output on Bandcamp, “My Last Song Of My Life” feels almost like a totemic score for him – he returns to it repeatedly, elaborating different takes on its graceful melancholy.

Here, that melody cycles slowly for fifty minutes, the spine of a performance that sees Kudo and his ensemble stretching out, members of the ensemble drifting off on diversions, floating gusts of loose improvisation across Kudo’s gorgeous melody. It’s a beautiful, hypnotic performance that, across its fifty- minute arc, brings to mind, fleetingly, The Red Crayola With The Familiar Ugly, Walter Zimmermann’s Lokale Musik, Christian Wolff’s Exercises, James Tenney’s Postal Pieces, but stays fundamentally Kudo throughout. It’s another excellent example of the deeply human beauty at the core of Kudo’s approach to music-making.

‘RFG Inventions for Cello and Computer’ is a steeply adventurous, highly structured and rewarding electroacoustic collaboration between pioneering British/Russian inventor and engineer Peter Zinovieff and reeminent cellist Lucy Railton.
The collaboration is notably issued as Peter Zinovieff’s first album and also becomes the follow-up to Lucy Railton’s acclaimed solo debut ‘Paradise 94’ for Modern Love.It finds Zinovieff, co-founder of London’s influential EMS Synthesizer company and owner of the world’s first home computer, using custom computer software to create and orchestrate a “soft” version of Railton’s vast instrumental vocabulary, modelled from a large series of cello improvisations inspired by objects such as an Egyptian figure, pots, and old computer boards, as well as tales of pre-revolution Russia from his grandfather. Railton added solo cello to
the manipulated results, before these quasi-improvisations were recombined into the work’s filigree matrix during final co-production with members of ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany.
Initially conceived as a live project and performed at festivals including Norberg, Atonal, Rewire and FAQ between 2016-2017, the final 35 minute recording thrillingly sustains the duelling, visceral tension and unpredictability of their live shows in its brute scrapes across 17 variated sections.? But, with the ability to unstitch/embroider sounds outside the ? strictures? of real-time live performance, the resulting structure is confoundingly labyrinthine, assiduously swerving the prosaic and sentimental in pursuit of explorative, emotively in/human expressions of complexity and ? unpredictability in a manner that has always been key to the ideals of experimental music.
In effect, the pair speak as one through an electro acoustic prism in a symbiotic, syncretic process of transformation. Railton is here the catalyst for some of Zinovieff’s definitive work in a career spanning 60 years. Her performances provide a radical variable - a sort of spirit in the machine - which is diffused, inverted and scattered by Zinovieff using various software applications, so that Railton plays around herself like a fractal mise en abyme, cutting her warped image to ribbons in a double refraction of the “real”, the instrumental, and its virtual allegory. In this (un)common, metaphoric language and poly-temporal syntax, they incisively speak to ideas of an uncanny valley of perception between the haptic and the intangible, conducting an absorbing dialogue that transcends and bends the story of avant-garde and electronic music
in beguiling, free fashion.

French-Canadian newcomer Racine transmutes the worries of the world into sorely bittersweetelectronic compositions for Aïsha Devi’s excellent Danse Noire label.
Seemingly coming out of nowhere with a fully realised sound that makes a virtue of biting point dissonance, Racine is placed in good company among Danse Noire’s roster of fleshy conduits for what Aïsha Devi terms her Spirit Liberation Front. Fluidly adept at speaking the language of hypercontemporary electronica, in ‘Quelque Chose Tombe’ Racine spells out a labyrinthine album intended to reflect a modern life of “grinning through worry, living in insecurity”, where “to be vulnerable is the new normal; afraid, a bare minimum”.
Much like Arca, Emptyset or even Aïsha Devi before them, Racine wrings as much emotion as possible from each curdled chord and warbling note in fractal patterns that connote the elusive nature of the future and the intense flux of emotions that never seem to go anywhere, but only compound into feedback loops of anxiety and impotent anguish as the bridges burn in front of us.

Experimental German Rock And Electronic Music - Part B Soul Jazz Records new 2018 edition of their long out of print classic first Deutsche Elektronische Musik - Experimental German Rock and Electronic Music 1972-83' is 'a near-definitive guide to some of the world's most extraordinary music' (The Guardian). The album comes as two separate double-vinyl (+ download code) editions and a large double CD pack (+36-page booklet), featuring a stunning line-up of groups including Cluster, Can, Faust, Popol Vuh, Neu!, Amon Düül, Harmonia, La Düsseldorf and Tangerine Dream as well as a host of lesser known groups such as Kollectiv, Ibliss, Between and many more. This new edition is fully re-mastered and features all the original artwork and tracks. The first seeds of German rock and experimental electronic music were planted in 1968, as students and workers in Paris, Prague, Mexico and throughout the world demonstrated against mainstream society, the war in Vietnam, imperialism and bourgeois values. The birth of a counter-culture, drug experimentation and social change expanded musical worlds. Germany experienced its own cultural revolution fuelled by these worldwide student and worker revolts and by a generation's desire to rid itself of the guilt of war.
German rock and experimental electronic music grew out of this worldwide counter-cultural revolution of 1968. The objectives were to create new music, 'free' from the past, many German youth turning their back on mainstream society. From the opening of the first collective/cooperative, Kommune 1, in Berlin, to the formation of the Baader-Meinhof terrorist group and the bombings, kidnappings and killings of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (RAF), young Germans sought out new values and a lifestyle outside of 'the system'.
These cooperative and communal experiences led to a number of new collective German bands forming such as Amon Düül, Faust, Can (all featured here) and others and these ideals drove this new movement. A music that gave seed out of the cultural 'nothingness' that young Germans felt as a consequence of Germany's role in the Second World War. A generation who grew up stifled by the recent history of Nazi atrocities, the guilt of their parents' generation and their disillusionment at the reintegration of old Nazis into mainstream society. Influenced equally by the electronic experimentalism of Stockhausen, the progressive rock of Pink Floyd and the black American jazz and soul music played at the occupying armed forces bases, young German artists seamlessly created out of this a new unique music with its own unique identity. Double CD pack with large 36-page outsize booklet encased in slipcase. The vinyl edition is made up of TWO separate volume heavyweight loud gatefold double albums (+ free download codes) featuring all sleevenotes and text.

The Flying Luttenbachers’ “Shattered Dimension” is the first offering by the seminal cult band since 2007. It is released on CD and download on March 1st, 2019 via ugEXPLODE Records and on gatefold double LP in April 2019 via the Austrian God Records label. The current New York City based version of the group on this recording features stalwart leader and primary composer Weasel Walter on drums, saxophonist Matt Nelson (GRID, Elder Ones), bass guitarist Tim Dahl (Child Abuse, Lydia Lunch) and guitarist Brandon Seabrook.

Hot double LP of beats and scattered rhymes (JPEGMAFIA, Retro X & Jeshi feature) from this highly inventive producer. Having gained notoriety for his work with Frank Ocean and Travis Scott among others, Only Diamonds Cut Diamonds is overjoyed, heady and nervous at once. It offers a proper introduction to the massively imaginative sound of Vegyn. 2 slabs of vinyl, including insert and stickers. Ltd edition. TIP!

Multicast Dynamics returns with a sixth studio album that marks something of a new chapter. Ancient Circuits is an advancement from previous works on Denovali and one that stands the project aside as a powerful electronic act that tells stories while also serving up heavy hitting soundscapes that are persuasive, unexpected and disturbing.

Each of the four 25-minute pieces of Ancient Circuits are clearly demarcated yet sequential sci-fi stories that introduce new characters and are drawn out of long and complex studio experiments. They are collages of sound that glimmer, disturb, shine, dive deep and explore new realms and make for ambient so arresting that it pulls you deep inside.

Once again here, Multicast Dynamics draws together cinematic sound design and conceptual intergalactic fiction to come up with a work that is a multi-sensory exploration that puts you as the central character in an expressive musical world.

LTD EDITION.

Matière Mémoire presents the MMXX Series: In anticipation of the year 2020, Matière Mémoire asked 20 experimental/electronic artists to create an original 20 minutes piece and an artwork. Throughout this year, each quarter will see the release of 5 new vinyls.

Each record is limited to 500 copies and comes as a crystal clear vinyl featuring an original track of 20 minutes on one side, and a laser engraved artwork on the other. Each 12" is housed in a transparent sleeve printed with the MMXX logo, coming with a print of the artist artwork.

Participate in this series:
Franck Vigroux, John Duncan, Phill Niblock, Jim O’Rourke, Reinier Van Houdt, Stephen O’Malley, CM Von Hausswolff, Hampus Lindwall, Oren Ambarchi, Kevin Drumm, Bérangère Maximin, Kassel Jaeger, Daniel Menche, Charlemagne Palestine, Giueseppe Ielasi, Carlos Casas, Susanna Santos Silva, Joachim Nordwall, Karbé Dinel, Mauro Lanza

Architect John Körmeling worked on a system of music, that sets aside familiar Western tuning and is based instead on square roots, areas and volumes. In order to realise this music, he turned back to the harpsichord and adapted its jangling sound to an intonation that literally plays Pythagorean ratios - that's the idea behind the new instrument called Frogsichord. Körmeling then turned to the veteran rule-breaker Charlemagne Palestine, pioneer of long-form improvisations on harpsichord, harmonium and other neglected keyboard instruments. This LP documents Palestine performances on the Frogsichord made in Brussels, Rotterdam and in Cappadocia, Turkey.

The sound is strange, perhaps even estranging, but Palestine has made it his own, and created a music that is rich and detailed, not simply “exotic”. It’s no longer a question of “Western” tonality colliding with “non-European” harmonic systems. Here is music that taps into the universal language of mathematics, one that we are all programmed, however unwillingly, to understand. Meet the Frogsichord. It will change how you listen to music. It might even help you with maths.

Coletivo Vandalismo kick-start a new 12" series for the Contort Yourself label. Hailing from the city of Porto the duo also DJ under the name GAM and released their debut LP on Lake Haze's Eye For An Eye label. Their music has an immediacy that seems to stem from a background in live performance as opposed to polished studio sessions - an improvisational punk aesthetic that manages to carry this EP so strongly. Wild, crashing fx and unrecognisable vocal distortions layer atop wonky 90bpm drum machine grooves and the pair even show off what may be their turntablism skills on 'Zombie Zombie'. There's a nod to early concrete on the closing track 'Black Sun's Demise' with whirring, mechanical noise motifs suddenly jolting us into punishing gabber-at-33-minus-8 territory. The DIY spirit is alive and well here and the feeling that things could fall apart at any minute just adds to the tension.

Matière Mémoire presents the MMXX Series: In anticipation of the year 2020, Matière Mémoire asked 20 experimental/electronic artists to create an original 20 minutes piece and an artwork. Throughout this year, each quarter will see the release of 5 new vinyls.

Each record is limited to 500 copies and comes as a crystal clear vinyl featuring an original track of 20 minutes on one side, and a laser engraved artwork on the other. Each 12" is housed in a transparent sleeve printed with the MMXX logo, coming with a print of the artist artwork.

Participate in this series:
Franck Vigroux, John Duncan, Phill Niblock, Jim O’Rourke, Reinier Van Houdt, Stephen O’Malley, CM Von Hausswolff, Hampus Lindwall, Oren Ambarchi, Kevin Drumm, Bérangère Maximin, Kassel Jaeger, Daniel Menche, Charlemagne Palestine, Giueseppe Ielasi, Carlos Casas, Susanna Santos Silva, Joachim Nordwall, Karbé Dinel, Mauro Lanza

Ellen Fullman began developing The Long String Instrument in her St. Paul, Minnesota studio in 1980 and moved to Brooklyn the following year. Inspired by composer and instrument builder Harry Partch, Fullman’s large-scale work creates droning, organ-like overtones
that are as unique in the world of sound as her vision of the
instrument itself.

Along with her 1985 debut album—appropriately titled The Long String Instrument — Fullman’s only output in the 1980's would be two self-released cassettes, In The Sea and Work For Four Players And 90 Strings, recorded in 1987 at an unfinished office tower in Austin, Texas. This double LP collection features music from both cassettes as well as a previously unreleased piece from 1988 at De Fabriek in
Den Bosch, Holland.

Ethereal and exquisitely paced, these rare recordings capture minimalism’s quiet radiance. Within a musical landscape that has seen the rise of contemporary drone practitioners like Ellen Arkbro and Kali Malone, Fullman is sure to find a legion of fans. Superior Viaduct is honored to present this long overdue archival release that marks a particularly vibrant period of Fullman’s pioneering and timeless work.

A mix of Istari tracks mixed by himself: Felix Raeithel is a Hamburg Breakcore mainstay since 1999. He's also running the Sozialistischer Plattenbau label.
The cassette marks his 20 years anniversary!

Deluxe Hi-Fidelity vinyl picture disc. All music & art by Macintosh Plus aka Vektroid. Limited edition including digital download.

Where have the alienated masses gone after vaporwave? Producer Ramona Andra Xavier, aka Vektroid, Macintosh Plus, Laserdisc Visions, New Dreams Ltd., and a few others, is a good resource, being a reliable throughline from the genre’s peak to our current moment. Since her most recent studio album Floral Shoppe in 2011, Xavier has traveled further and further away from slowed-down R&B samples, challenging and complicating her own production style. But “Sick & Panic (First Mix)” is her first return to the Macintosh Plus name since 2011, and it sounds almost entirely unlike the curious complacency of Floral Shoppe. This new twelve-minute track breaks apart a few key components of vaporwave, but more readily takes influences from glitch music and the freeform design of a DJ set. But by calling this a Macintosh Plus record, we’re forced to see it with a strangely human face. Between the hundreds of interrupted thoughts and microscopic silences, something organic is growing.

This is the sort of music nobody is really built for, but that one learns out of idle curiosity. While we may not be androids for a few more years, this compact, biting music speaks to some metaphysical data analysis we’re hardwired to be fascinated by. In a twelve-minute span, it has more than exhausted every notion and idea. It’s a tactical deployment of thoughts too scattered to fit into their own slots. Which is where it wraps around again to vaporwave, because nothing ever changes.

A Marco Dalpane's unreleased recording (mainly known for the cult album “Scorie” released with Tiziano Popoli) produced in 1991 for Radio Rai as an accompaniment to the reading of Italo Calvino “Le città invisibili” ("Invisible Cities”).

First thing you notice is how Marco Dalpane personal soundtrack for “Le città invisibili” could be seen as a link towards the combinatorial approach adopted by Italo Calvino in the book, where he used the language as a semiotic system and the literature as a mechanism of possibilities, with the reader becoming active part in the process. You can see Dalpane detaching from a linear handling of the compositional resources, working instead with computer algorithms and emerging with a sound-sphinx that multiplies the listening interpretations, a sound that is characterized in form and timbre but at the same time is full of suggestions and summoning elements that the listener has to relate. In this it’s evident a constant in the Dalpane’s music, its sensitive side, away from every technical or conceptual precondition. In the five tracks created for this soundtrack, that finally are collected in this album, as in his other works, Marco is always capable to decode aesthetics coordinates of the cultural or temporary universe of reference, but mainly he is the vehicle of an artistic vision that is plausible incarnation of the essence of things, the very spirit of being a musician.

- Christian Zingales

Lose yourself in the circuitry of the original 1965 Buchla 100 with NYZ (Dave Burraston) as he utilizes Barbara Hero's Lambdoma tuning theories to create two slow, deeply layered, subconscious, organic and meditative compositions.

David Burraston is an award winning artist/scientist working in the areas of technology and electronic music, operating Noyzelab as an independant art/science music studio since 1981. His experimental arts practice encompasses field recording, landscape-scale sound art, chaos/complexity, practice-based research, sound synthesis and electronic music. He performs, lectures, conducts workshops and creates art installations in Regional NSW and around the world. David also designs and builds sound synthesizers based on his theories of chaos/complexity science. He was recently interviewed by Bandcamp Daily and The Wire Magazine.

David has worked with many diverse collaborators such as Aphex Twin, Chris Watson, Doug Quin, Russell Haswell, Robin Fox, Oren Ambarchi, Sarah Last, Cat Hope, Garry Bradbury, William Barton, Alan Lamb, MIT Media Lab and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. In 2014 he independently published the legendary "SYROBONKERS!", the most technical and in-depth interview ever given by Aphex Twin.

Recorded at Center for Contemporary Music, Mills College, Oakland, CA, USA on 5th April 2015
Mixed and arranged at Noyzelab, NSW, Australia between July 2015 & Febuary 2016
Sound Source: Noyzelab 4 Voice Digital Microtonal Oscillator
Processing: Buchla 100 Modular Synthesizer

NYZ's split 12" with ELEH will be released at the same time as Millz Medz and both records are available in a first pressing of 500 copies.

Matière Mémoire presents the MMXX Series: In anticipation of the year 2020, Matière Mémoire asked 20 experimental/electronic artists to create an original 20 minutes piece and an artwork. Throughout this year, each quarter will see the release of 5 new vinyls.

Each record is limited to 500 copies and comes as a crystal clear vinyl featuring an original track of 20 minutes on one side, and a laser engraved artwork on the other. Each 12" is housed in a transparent sleeve printed with the MMXX logo, coming with a print of the artist artwork.

Participate in this series:
Franck Vigroux, John Duncan, Phill Niblock, Jim O’Rourke, Reinier Van Houdt, Stephen O’Malley, CM Von Hausswolff, Hampus Lindwall, Oren Ambarchi, Kevin Drumm, Bérangère Maximin, Kassel Jaeger, Daniel Menche, Charlemagne Palestine, Giueseppe Ielasi, Carlos Casas, Susanna Santos Silva, Joachim Nordwall, Karbé Dinel, Mauro Lanza

How does one describe such a supremely crafted tapestry of sound and composition when there is such a rich canvas of details to appreciate it? As a homage to ancient music, Musci, Venosta and Mariani blend a powerful undercurrent of otherwordly intrigue and mysticism throughout their structures, resulting in an emotionally engaging experience unlike any other CD recording I’ve encountered. Most of the real-time playing is placed alongside and distinctly from the computer world, creating both a stimulating, dynamic and crossover references. There is much originality to reward both close and repeat listenings. This isn’t jazz, nor improvised; in their words, “Losing the orthodox path” is an homage to ancient music, but through an electro-acoustic approach. Our jazz and/or rock souls do the rest” - Michael King

ROBERTO MUSCI - sampler, prepared electric guitar, tapes, CD player, treatments, synthesizer, rain-stick
GIOVANNI VENOSTA - prepared piano, organ, spinet, voice, ocarina, mouth, percussion, jew’s harp, sampler, synthesizer, tubes, digital percussion, pandaa (zither from Burkina Faso)
MASSIMO MARIANI - digital treatments & FX, voix, electronics, electric guitar, detuned acoustic guitar, harmonica, mouth, tapes, digital glockenspiel, mandolin, double bass, sampler, valiha (zither from Madagascar)

Sandro Cerino - baritone, soprano & alto saxophones, contrabass clarinet
Moni Ovadia - Greek chant
Silvia Mandolini - violin
Roberto Zanisi - darbukas
Ciaccio De Rossi - violin
Cesare Picco - fake muted trumpet sound produced using mouth
Liliana Bancolini - voice / Laura Pone - voice / Amelie Gerson - voice & flute / Didier Aschour - voice