Beats News

Mecanica Popular is back 9 years after their LP “Neguentropia” and 4 years after Dead Cert reissued their first LP “”Que Sucede Con El Tiempo”

Mecánica Popular is ’s an experimental and industrial band formed in the late 70s by Luis Delgado (Finis Africae, Ishinohana...) and Eugenio Muñoz (Randomize), who rapidly gained cult status between the genre fans. The band experienced a renovated international success after their record "Que Sucede Con El Tiempo" (1984) was repressed in 2015 in Andy Votel and Demdike Stare's Dead Cert imprint.

Arriving 9 years after “Neguentropia”, “Estridentismo” is the group’s fourth record and the product of new material that was developed over the last 3 years.

“Estridentismo” is based on the avant-garde movement of the same name that was born in Mexico during the early 1920s (known as Stridentism in English). Each track uses this lens to explore a different thematic concept, from “Jouer Avec Schaeffer,” based on musical pioneer Pierre Schaefer, to “Mikado,” which draws inspiration from the sounds of Mikado steam locomotives.

Following the sound of their previous releases while also introducing elements that reflect their continued evolution, “Estridentismo” is a record that owes as much to the Industrial movement as it does to the work of early electronic pioneers.

Mecánica’s inventive style, and their blending of older techniques like tape manipulation with newer digital technology, allows the record to incorporate Industrial and experimental aesthetics to create a sound that plays with categories and ultimately creates its own.

The record has received praise from the press and artist alike, and it has been played by the likes of JASSS, Demdike Stare, Cera Khin and Ossia.

“Estridentismo” comes in a luxury vinyl edition with a printed inner sleeve full of text and pictures.

Nao Katafuchi is a Japanese artist who makes electronic music with a guitar & a semi vintage synth box, creates his own world of cold romantic wave. Stahlgrau is his 2nd longplayer.

After "Today, the organ has played beautifully again", released earlier in 2019, Edition Telemark presents the second instalment of what will become a series of LPs of sound works by Dutch artist William Engelen. "32 bpm" was recorded at Kunsthalle Mannheim for an exhibition in summer 2019 and is a slowed down version of "38 bpm", previously released on Engelen's double LP "Partitur Belval" in 2016.

The piece – played here by Mannheimer Schlagwerk – is written for 8 percussionists, each using a set of 9 different instruments varying in their timbre and in the duration of their resonance. The composition is played in a monorhythmic pulse of 32 beats per minute and in unison. To determine the order in which the instruments are played, each percussionist draws their own path through the score consisting of a 32x32 grid of dots of different sizes, with larger dots representing instruments with long resonance and smaller dots those with short resonance. Because each musician has chosen their own path, different instruments are played at each pulse. Neither does the pulse ever change nor do the musicians play out-of-sync at any time. As the piece progresses through its 5 parts, more and more dots are skipped, leaving only 64 beats per musician in part 5, as opposed to 320 in part 1.

The composition "38 bpm" was written in 2016 and now adapted by Engelen to take into account the acoustic qualities of the atrium of the Kunsthalle Mannheim, leading to the slower tempo and a different selection of instruments, now focusing on more resonant ones. The instruments played are mokushos, wood blocks, bongos, reyongs, crotales, triangles, timpanis, gongs, and tubular bells. For the performance, each player stood at a different spot and the audience moved freely between them, feeling out the space by listening to the resonance. The piece thus turned into a sound sculpture inside the architecture of the museum.

The LP is a co-release between Edition Telemark and Kunsthalle Mannheim and comes in a full-color gatefold sleeve with a 12-page LP-sized booklet with photos, a reproduction of the score, and extensive liner notes by Björn Gottstein, director of the Musiktage festival in Donaueschingen, and Sebastian Baden, curator at Kunsthalle Mannheim.

Deriving from the acclaimed performance and exhibition—staged by Anne Imhof at the 57th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia and awarded the Golden Lion for Best National Participation— the album Faust is part documentation and part elaboration, the sonic capture and extrapolation of the gestures, intensities, and durations of the live event.

Serving as the dramatic backbone of a several-hour long performance seen by thousands over the course of the Biennial, the soundtrack was a product of the collective and its individuals, animating and organising the performers while immersing the audience in the potent images of power and paradise. The music for Faust was written in a band-like process by Imhof and her close collaborators Billy Bultheel, Eliza Douglas, and Franziska Aigner during the months leading up to
its premiere at the opening of the German Pavilion in Venice.

From the chaos of the performative, the album is constructed out of live recordings and original arrangements, teasing out the most potent strands and weaving them into a new composition of brutal feeling and baroque intricacy, each track a testament to the energy that brought it into being.

Faust is anchored around three pieces—Medusa’s Song, O.W.E.N., and Queen Song—written and sung by performers Eliza Douglas and Franziska Aigner, whose sonorous and elegiac voices imbue the work as a whole with their crushing depths and dolorous moods. Between these urgent vocal interventions march and twist the winding fugues and electronic abstractions of Billy Bultheel, who has dismantled and reassembled the sonic landscapes of the pavilion, crafting new
arrangements that couple the forcefulness of the physical encounter with the artifice of the studio Throughout the album and culminating in it's closing act — the brutal chorus of Douglas’ Faust’s Last
Song, a pulsing canon of looped and layered voice pierced by black metal screams.

Faust is the record of a lost event and the promise of a new creation. The release of Faust illustrates the centrality of music to Imhof’s artistic practice. Her musical collaborations with Bultheel began
in 2013, and this generative constellation expanded to include the contributions of Douglas and Aigner, together scoring Imhof’s Angst (2016) and recently her performance trilogy Sex (2019).

‘Captured Entities’ is the debut album of deeply raw house and psycho-jit-jazz by Detroit producer
and DJ, Howard Thomas aka H-Fusion. Spanning the breadth of Howard’s hands-on, tracky style -
from beatless cosmic jazz audities to slamming 170bpm missiles and heart-grabbing house - it’s
arguably one of the most distinctive, dare-to-be-different albums from the 313 in recent memory
The fruit of more than 5 years of communication between Howard and The Death of Rave,
‘Captured Entities’ expands on the ruffneck, asymmetric slant of his killer 2005-2012 productions
for Sound Signature and Fit - as played by everyone from Kyle Hall to Kassem Mosse - across 11
unruly numbers united by an intuitive, jazz-wise approach to his synths and MPC2000. While
his sound may remind of many Detroit greats such as Omar-S, Damon Peterson/8088, and Urban
Tribe/DJ Stingray, Howard can’t help but sound like himself, and his debut album is best defined by
its classically driven yet singular Detroit soul clinamen.
Where too many producers’ lip-service to jazz is betrayed by their gridlocked uniformity,
Howard cuts the f*ck loose in real-time, improvised jams which have made it to the final
tracklist because of their unquantised cantankerousness and frictional quality. Sawn-off blasts
of hardcore warehouse rave give way to sultry, dream-away house jackers and a ruck of diesel-
fuelled bangers that sound like Nate Young doing Jit with DJ Stingray at a Detroit biker bar. When
combined with the curdled gob of beatless, cosmic noise and the cranky swaggering cyberpunk
on the LP’s closing side, ‘Captured Entities’ really comes into its own as a unique expression of
Michigan grit which, by design or chance, effectively splits the difference between Black Noise
and Wolf Eyes.
This kind of instinctively jazz-taught, stylistic and metric versatility is rare in Detroit-
manufactured techno albums beyond, say, the debut Omar-S album ‘Just Ask The Lonely’, or the
eponymous Urban Tribe LP for KDJ’s Mahogani Music, and the track sequencing of ‘Captured
Tracks’ aims to highlight the album’s strength in its diversity. Illuminated by an exceptional
mastering job from Anne at Berlin’s D&M which reveals all it’s dusty details and rewards cranked
volume in spades, ‘Captured Entities’ is a uniquely rude, thrilling and soulfully compelling album
from any angle, and a long overdue LP testament to one of Detroit’s most peculiar, instinctive, and
unsung artists.

Michael Speers impresses with a debut LP of absorbing “synthetic listening environments” for
C.A.N.V.A.S.; the London-based co-op behind Elvin Brandi’s cracking ‘Shelf Life’ EP and the group-
show ‘Cipher’ comp starring Flora Yin-Wong and Object Blue +++
Stemming from Speers’ background as a percussionist, his first LP ‘xtr’ctn’ pairs software
processed, nanoscopic recordings of electronic equipment’s internal behaviours with samples
of the natural world and feedback from no-input mixers to yield a visceral and inventively
personalised view on sound phenomena and resonant spaces that lay beyond the threshold of
human perception. In the process he effectively amplifies and renders the infrasonic world as
tangible yet abstract, meticulously arranging his unique palette of field recordings, SFX library
and YouTube samples, and original instrumentation by Olan Monk and Flora Yin-Wong, into non-
linear, non-narrative structures that invite the listener to immerse in a form of sonic fiction which
highlights the fine line between referential, objective reality and pareidolic subjectivity.
Distinguished by an otherworldy, meta sense of detachment shared with music by Giuseppe Ielasi,
Mika Vainio, and :Zoviet*France:, the four pieces form a fascinating sonic weltanschauung that
acknowledges and articulates the complex role of non-human and material sound generators upon
the self. From the way seagulls resemble death metal screams in ‘obturo’ to the uncanny manner
how a Olan Monk’s piano pulse and samples of Liam Byrne’s viola de gamba in ’tombeau’ recalls
a scene of ravenous whistle and horn blowing at The Eclipse in Coventry c. 1992, each piece is
densely packed with acousmatic data that will stimulate a broad range of reactions as listeners fill
in the perceptive gaps according to their own sferic conditioning and grasp of worlds natural and
synthetic.
Where the first two pieces steer clear of any blatant emotive cues, the fragged shrapnel that
opens ’sul. locus’ initially does the same, but changes at the mid-way point withe suggestively
gloomy strokes of Flora-Yin-Wong’s Kemençe, a stringed middle-eastern instrument held in
subtle contrast with the sound of ice hacking circa 1984 taken from a BBC SFX library sample to
sound like a location recording from an alchemist’s lab, or passages of When’s proto-BM classic
‘The Black Death’, follows with an eerie vent of sounds ranging from a percussive improv to the
sound of filing metal, and a pressure washer that recall the lurching rhythm and gauntlet grasp of
textures also found in the remarkable debut by Cairo’s 1127. It all points to a penetrative pair of ears
and mind that sees the world differently, and should inspire listeners to pay closer attention to the
world around themselves.

Beginning a new series of Remix Packs, in which favorite artists and label affiliates are remixing tracks from different Malka Tuti back-catalogue releases. The first one includes Toulouse Low Trax and Die Orangen remixing Xen & Yovav’s critically acclaimed 7” release from 2018, as well as 2 remixes of the Tel Aviv duo Plazmot by Benedikt Frey & Borusiade. All Tracks were mixed by Gordon Pohl. This record will also be the first to present Malka Tuti’s brand new specially designed generic record sleeves.

Sarah Benabdallah and Alexis Lebon are a very 21st century musical coupling, absorbing their metropolitan surroundings while tapping into a rich cultural heritage, not unlike fellow countrymen PNL or the Dutch band Altin Gün. A Paris-based duo set for greatness they might be, but it’s fair to say Mauvais Oeil are operating under a misnomer: while their name means “evil eye” in French, you’ll only experience enlightenment when you lay eyes (and ears) upon them. Mauvais Oeil are set to release their debut EP Nuits de velours, a magical melting pot of musical shibboleths and contemporary grooves. On opener “Mes nuits de velours”, we’re transported in the land of 1001 Arabian Nights, with the music every bit as smooth and alluring as the subject matter. “Afrita” is a trance-inflected musical acclamation evoking all
the madness and gayety of a midsummer souk. Sung entirely in Arabic with delightful blasts of strings, it’s a North African-influenced banger with a delicate wistfulness. “Asha” meanwhile is in a reference to Asha Vahishta, the middle-eastern concept of truth
according to the ancient religion of Zoroastrianism. Sung again in Arabic, it features catchy Phrygian guitar manoeuvres played over ambient analogue keyboard strokes. The E.P. is completed by “Constantine”, a song of longing, dedicated to the home of Sarah’s forebears. Having met in the arty northern faubourgs of Paris, Sarah and Alexis soon developed a musical telepathy and a shared sonic agenda, mining their own histories for the profound
cultural roots that underscore Mauvais Oeil, while absorbing the ubiquitous sounds of the suburbs, where Turkish, Armenian and Ethiopian music ring out. The band’s moving and melancholic chansons are delivered with a delightful French pop sensibility, making Mauvais Oeil one of the most exciting and musically diverse prospects in 2019.

S-Type returns with his first full EP project in three years with the expansive “S-Type-Beat”: dedicated to the art of hip hop production for its own sake.

The sound of S-Type has been defined by producing massive, melodic instrumental hip hop played out in clubs as dance music - but this was always a side effect of growing up far away from the rappers he sought to collaborate with. His track ‘Billboard’, released alongside the first TNGHT and Baauer music was seminal in the genre that some American festivals mistakenly termed “trap”. But the reality has always been that S-Type’s primary inspiration is hip hop. For the online subculture of DIY producers dating back to early ‘00s Louis Den beat battles to his own releases to his co-writing, S-Type is a leader of the beat scene.

The recent term “type beat” refers to the scene of uploading your instrumentals replicating the sound of your favourite production on commercial releases, tagging the original artist in the title of the upload in the hope your track gets exposed to the fans of the original ie. “Drake-Type-Beat”. On this new S-Type ep he celebrates the booming scene of producers and affirms himself as one of the best doing it: your favourite producers favourite producer.

Comic book artist, graphic designer and free jazz improviser are only some of the many talents from Beirut born Mazen Kerbaj. After appearing as part of various ensembles on the label, Ariha Brass Quartet (CREP46) and Johnny Kafta Anti-Vegetarian Orchestra (CREP22), Kerbaj finally lands a solo outfit of his own onto the Discrepant dancefloor of insubordination.

14 years after his first (and only) solo album "Brt Vrt Zrt Krt" (Al Maslakh, 2005) Mazen returns with a series of subtle compositions of his own with not one but two(!) solo albums of prepared trumpet that further cement his international position as a serial trumpet botherer.

Whilst Vol. 2.1 showcases his (almost) (un)familiar arsenal of squawks, cackles, howls and squeals, Vol. 2.2 goes deep into the nether regions of waltzing drones and bell tweaks so deep that would make most cetaceans loose their concentration. The notion of being transported to a luring mutant underwater alien community is still present on these long(er) trips with the added meditative pieces being occasionally pierced by noise creepers, nothing is what you want or expect and that’s the way it should be.

If Vol. 2.1 is the classic follow up LP, this one is the beast from the deep, it comes surging and screeching from a deep oceanic sink hole, only to hypnotize you with perverted dance moves before diving back into the sinking, wettest and darkest cave in the world. Vol. 2.2 is a summons album; it shatters any bar there was with its intentional use of everything Vol. 2.1 was denied. It grabs you by wherever available way and it only releases you when you’re ready to listen to it again. Listen to both albums back to back, in no particular order and you’ll know that there’s nothing you can do but come back to it like a doped up seal stranded in a phantom island – appearing and disappearing as the music dictates it to.

Exactly one year after their sold-out debut album Zest, Die Orangen (aka Dreems & Kris Baha) are zurück! Malka Tuti and Die Orangen have concocted a double dish, a two part remix package, Saft 1 & Saft 2.

The first part consists of a new live version of the track Yaranabe, recorded in a live session as part of the Duo's infamous analogue live act. A2 is Tapan's remix of Metal Man. The poem-not-poem is taking shape as a low bpm banger when Tapan's heavy signature kick meets those trippy vocals. This is Tapan's first track to be made after finishing their debut Album last year on MT, and its an interesting evolution of their sound, slow dark and punchy, yet with these vocals and bassline, also a catchy post-pop track for the later hours.

On the B-side lies Gordon Pohl's reimagination of Mersey River (aka 'the Platypus track'). The tracks 'epic", long slow ambient opening and evolution into rhythm resembles in many ways the psychedelic collaboration works of the late Pete Namlook & Move D on Namlooks own Fax records, which was always a significant influence on the Malka Tuti world.

For its 50th release, Black Truffle presents the 9th album from one of the label’s core ensembles, the power trio of Keiji Haino, Jim O’Rourke and Oren Ambarchi. Drawn from a November 2015 performance at Tokyo’s now-defunct SuperDeluxe, the record’s opening piece drops us immediately into the maelstrom, abruptly cutting into an extended episode of Ambarchi’s pummelling drums, O’Rourke’s fuzzed-out 6 string bass and Haino’s roaring guitar and electronics. Eventually settling into a hypnotic bass and drum groove over which Haino unleashes some almost Ray Russell-eque skittering atonal screech, these opening 13 minutes act as a potent reminder of the trio’s power. Alongside showcasing the steady development of a unique language for the guitar-bass-drums power trio, the group’s succession of releases over the last decade has demonstrated a constant experimentation with new instruments, which continues here with O’Rourke use of Hammond organ (played at the same time as his roaming, sometimes knotty basslines). On the album’s second piece, the organ plays a key role, furnishing a harmonically rich shimmer over O’Rourke’s angular 6 string bass chords, Haino’s distant, chirping electronics and Ambarchi’s crisp cymbal work; arriving somewhere halfway between Albert Marcoeur and Terje Rypdal, this piece is undoubtedly a highlight in the trio’s catalogue so far. Sides two and three are given over to slow-burning, multi-part epics that range from spacious reflection to furious tumult. Where the trio’s previous 2LP set (This Dazzling, Genuine “Difference” Now Where Shall It Go?, 2017) was primarily instrumental in focus, here we find Haino’s voice taking the spotlight on the expansive third side, intoning, wailing and exhorting in Japanese and English over a backdrop that moves from hushed bass and organ atmospherics to rolling toms and cymbal crashes before arriving at an ecstatic finale of searing guitar, tumbling drums and reverb-saturated bass. The fourth side returns to the hypnotic grooves of the opening piece, fixing on an relentless riff and riding it into oblivion under Haino’s roaming psychedelic soloing and jagged chordal slashes.

Beacon Sound and Jacktone Records are pleased to announce a limited edition joint vinyl release by Hugo RA Paris titled Threaded Habitat. The new LP from Paris follows two of Jacktone’s most popular releases: Mystique Youth (2015) and Horizons Beneath The Surface (2016), which appeared under his alias, Lavender.

The transition to the Hugo RA Paris moniker with this album marks a more personal shift in approach. Threaded Habitat combines ambient textures and techno rhythms to reflect tension between humanity and nature—particularly the cyclical nature of collapse and renewal. It also marks Jacktone's first collaborative release with the record store and label Beacon Sound, which has put out works from veteran experimental musicians like Terry Riley and Colleen. Beacon Sound is an important node in Portland, where Paris also lives and developed the flagship modular product for leading Eurorack manufacturer 4MS: the SWN.

The album's closing track was entirely composed on a SWN prototype and recorded in one take. In fact, much of his work is done in layers of single takes with minimal processing to preserve its raw emotion and embrace minor imperfections. As an MIT-trained engineer and physicist, working with hardware—from modulars to guitar pedals and tape loops—is essential to his process of not only making but exploring sound.

Threaded Habitat captures moments of claustrophobia and bliss in seven tracks and three accompanying videos directed by New Zealand artist Sam Hamilton. Visual art plays a central role in many of Paris’s projects, which include intricate audio-visual performances and scores for full-length films like The Modern Jungle (La Selva Negra) and its forthcoming follow-up.

The LP will be available to pre-order on July 1st with a limited, exclusive content sample pack. The handmade vinyl package features photography by Sam Hamilton and will be released July 19 through Jacktone and Beacon Sound’s webshops, with worldwide sales beginning August 2nd. A remix release will arrive later in the Fall.

Secuund is the sophomore album from Belgian experimental electronix duo Suumhow.
This album is follow-up to last year's debut offering from Suumhow called Crash_Reports finds the pair doubling down on their blisteringly crunchy beat work and warm, humanistic melodies. While the beat-work on the album's opening track can lean toward the aggressive, making things feel as if all is about to teeter out of control, the thoughtful melodic touches in the synths keep the structure elasti- cally tethered together. Exceptions to that rule of thumb exist on Secuund with warm ambient track West Bend, the BOC-esque Bora Bora, and the durable onward animation of Cabin.
Such diversity in Suumhow's experimentation makes Secuund an excellent listen for fans of late 90s, early ought IDM, glitch & ambient.
Summhow's Secuund will be out Sept 20 and will be available on limited edition 180 gram sea blue vinyl, compact disc, and ultra-limited minidisc.

With the demise of the group Wire in 1980, founder members Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis joined forces to create Dome. With the assistance of engineer Eric Radcliffe and his Blackwing Studio Dome took the ethic of »using the studio as a compositional tool« and recorded and released three Dome albums on their own label in the space of 12 months: »Dome« (July 1980), »Dome 2« (October 1980) and »Dome 3« (October 1981). A final fourth album, »Will You Speak this World: Dome 4« was released on the Norwegian Uniton label in May 1983.

These albums represent some of the most beautifuly stark and above all timeless exercises in studio experimentation from early 1980s alternative music scene.

Notte Brigante founder and buttons specialist HLM38 is back in versatile style. Kump's label boss Gil.Barte and polyrythmic genius Harmonious Thelonious take care of the remix with two exotica versions in slow motion style. Limited to 200 copies

Celebrated Detroit composer, producer, sound designer and ambient pioneer John Beltran keeps up a busy 2019 with an expansive new LP on Delsin, his first music on the label since his Presents Music For Machines compilation in 2014. The excellent eight tracker, pressed on 180 grams vinyl, takes you on a trip though his typically serene and beautiful world right form the off. 'Alle Kinder' floats on gentle drums with beautiful synth melodies making for a heavenly atmosphere. The journey commutes through the calming pads and glistening arpeggios of 'A Different Dream', uplifting joys of the 'Himmelszelt' with its mellifluous harmonies and achingly perfect ambiance of 'The Coming Home'. 'One of Those Mornings' washes over you like the sun through a breaking cloud and the brain cleansing, pulse soothing goodness continues though 'It's Because of Her' and the elegant Detroit techno bliss of 'Perfect In Every Way'. The final two tracks close things down with a sense of classy contentedness, subtle celebration and inner joy that Beltran conveys better than anyone.

Cathedral Pinesʼ is Joseph Lawerence Clarkʼs debut album under his maiden name.
After having quietly self released a handful of compositions in the past, The Rochester, NY native steps up on Vaknar with a compelling barrage of immersive and impactful soundscapes, created using tape looped guitars, violin and synths processed through various samplers and pedals (many of which were built through his own company, Adventure Audio).

Cathedral Pines is made up of two, 20 minute long pieces of densely interwoven ambient, synth and noise laden layers, resulting in an enthralling debut that feels compellingly versatile, cerebral and substantially in-depth.

After showcasing his unique electronic output via the 'Surging Waves' compilation on Vaknar last year, Japanese native yolabmi steps up for his first solo release on the label.
Presented here is the A side of the cassette release, for which a selection of yolabmi's recent compositions have been chosen, complied and mixed by the label, resulting in a comprehensive glimpse into the artist's unconventional sonic spectrum that seems to be situated somewhere between tranquil field recordings, improvised analogue electronics and digital interference.

Yoshi Wada's Lament For The Rise And Fall Of The Elephantine Crocodile, originally released in 1982 on India Navigation, remains one of the most remarkable flowers to grow in the rarefied air of American minimalism – akin to Terry Riley's Reed Streams and Pauline Oliveros' Accordion & Voice, yet with a wild, liberated energy all of its own.

After graduating from Kyoto University of Fine Arts with a degree in sculpture, Wada moved to New York City in 1967 and quickly fell in with the community of artists known as Fluxus. In the early '70s, he began building his own instruments and writing musical compositions, studying with La Monte Young and Hindustani singer Pandit Pran Nath.

Recorded during an epic three-day session in an empty swimming pool in upstate New York, Wada's first album brings together two of the oldest drone instruments – the human voice and bagpipes – to simple and glorious effect. A visit to the Scottish Highlands spurred Wada's interest in bagpipes, which the composer integrated into these sparse, otherworldly sounds heard on Lament.

"That swimming pool was quite hallucinatory," recalls Wada. “It was another world. I felt it in terms of resonance. I slept in the pool, and whenever I moved, I woke up because of the reverberations.... The piece itself is an experiment with reeds and improvisational singing within the modal structure."

This first-time vinyl reissue is limited to 750 numbered copies. Comes with poster.

Hello! We present to you our first 7” single, two vocal tracks, a traditional choice for the format, from a favourite of ours at OTIS - LORD TUSK. Out-of-body music for the inner Upsetter. Best enjoyed on hi-fidelity, stereo sound systems.

Ross Alexander first came to our attention with Memorias Vol.1 - Bugandan Sacred Places, released back in 2017 on Sucata Tapes, it featured a mind altering mix of recorded sounds from a series of visited sites considered sacred within the Bugandan kingdom and session recordings with Ugandan musicians Albert Sempeke and the Nilotika Collective layered with his own original composition using the Yamaha DX7 and programmed FM synthesis. The result being an unique reconfiguration of new age vocabulary with East African traditional sensibilities. The tape quickly sold out and the new Volume of Memorias presented here arrives now on the mother label Discrepant, on Vinyl with an expanded sound palette appropriate to the format.

Memorias Vol.2 - High Atlas To The Sahara Desert is the logical progression of Volume 1. - based on a series of field recordings Alexander made during a trip through the High Atlas Mountains and into the Sahara Desert in 2018. The aim of the trip was to visit a gathering of nomadic musicians at an oasis close to the Algerian border. Like Memorias Vol1. the recordings made on the trip were then later processed, layered and arranged with original compositions. Where Vol1. had clear nods to New Age music this volume explores the more ambient side of 80’s Industrial sound.

Starting off Otomatik Muziek in 2016 as a means to release music and working together with friends, S.U.V. aka Franz Joseph Kaputt went on a long journey since then. After the brutal no-input-noise of „New Dark Age“ and excursions in the realms of dark, psychedelic folk on 2018’s „Sterben/Shifting“, he began working with synthesizers, mostly because they…synthesize. With the pragmatic approach to replace a merzbau of pedals by using synths as multi-faceted tools for live shows, Kaputt started recording, and after some fondling around, these 5 new songs emerged from a convolute of over 30 recordings.

Musically, S.U.V. is centered around darker timbres, drones of different sources, distilling harsh aesthetics from genres folk to noise (for a beginner’s guide, check out the parallel release „Nullproblem. The Life And Struggles Of Franz Joseph Kaputt in His Pursuit Of Bread, Knowledge And Freedom“, a collection of unreleased songs 2013-2019 that will wash up parallel to this release as a self-released tape). And yet, there’s a commonality within all of S.U.V.‘s records – the approach to bring together disparate elements, working on a language of its own. One can hear the thread woven through his work especially on „F65.5“, a track first recorded around 2012, which was re-recorded for this release and which features no synths at all, but fits perfectly with the other songs.

Besides these technicalities, regarding the content, „Our Complex Pleasures“ has a clear main theme. All of the songs rotate around interpersonal relationships, sexuality, gender and the diversity within. It is as well a celebration of queerness, post-romanticism and widening hegemonial discourses, as it is a meditation on limitations, fatigue and letting go. „Warm Animals“ is based on an improvisational performance where two people face each other and try to hit the same note, over and over again – a practice involving a lot of laughter, passion and exhaustion. „Bull“ and „F65.5“ are clear allusions to kink culture, while „Emotional Yoga“ and the near side-long „Compersion“ deal with themes of polyamory – with struggling to live love in a non-toxic way. „A Drug That Never Works“? – read that one for yourself.

In comparison, „Our Complex Pleasures“ is a pop album with most of its harshness buried underneath the surface. But as it is also taking a clear political stand (look into the booklet!), there’s much more to discover. It’s a reckoning with masculinity, as well as coming to terms with the fact that there isn’t one way of living in a body and loving others. And it is a clear middlefinger to the toxic traditionalism of the alt right movement.

The tape is accompanied by a mini-book, yet again and of course designed by Dicey Studios, where the complex pleasures find a very physical transfer; in the fabric as well as in the lettering, there’s a sensitivity within that even amazed ourselves when it got back from copy factory.

Triumvirate = the combined power of a group of three in creative collaboration.

CARTER TUTTI VOID (Chris Carter, Cosey Fanni Tutti and Nik Void) have an-nounced their third and final studio album containing all new studio recordings, Triumvirate brings Chris Carter, Cosey Fanni Tutti and Nik Void’s collaborative partnership as Carter Tutti Void to a conclusion.

The trio first came together as a collective for a live performance, in-vited by Mute for the Short Circuit Festival in 2011 and released their acclaimed debut, the live album Transverse the following year. Carter Tutti Void went on to release f(x) (Industrial Records, 2015), their first stu-dio recording and performed a handful of selected shows, culminating in their final live performance in Hull, part of a series of events for Hull City of Culture 2017 centred around the COUM Transmissions retrospective at Humber Street Gallery.
For some time Carter, Tutti and Void have been awaiting an opportunity when all three artists were able to gather at Carter and Tutti’s Studio47 in Norfolk, where the album was recorded, produced and mastered. Triumvirate was ap-proached with the improvisational spirit of previous Carter Tutti Void albums. The rhythms, created by Chris Carter, formed the foundation and starting point from which the process began of melding the live instrumentation of Cosey Fanni Tutti and Nik Void’s searing guitars, vocals, effects and the arsenal of sounds each had amassed from a variety of sources, some sounds manipulated to extremes, all fed into the mix. Tying the album together is the power of three, and a free open approach to sound shared by the trio.

Carter Tutti Void are Chris Carter, Cosey Fanni Tutti (Chris & Cosey / Throbbing Gristle) and Nik Void (Factory Floor / NVPR). Chris Carter recently released his first solo album in 17 years, Chris Carter’s Chemistry Lessons Vol. 1 (Mute, 2018) and Cosey Fanni Tutti’s TUTTI, her first album since 1982, came out ear-lier this year on Conspiracy International (home of Chris and Cosey since 1982). Nik Void is currently working on her debut solo album.

Sentiment of Callousness was written over a one-and-a-half year period of total collapse, characterized by disconnection between the world within and the perception of the world outside.

Each of the tracks embodies feelings experienced during this time - from dark to bright, sluggish to energetic, alive to dead, real to unreal, and the self to the other.

Ten incredible albums culled from the deepest, weirdest co-op of record enthusiasts ever gathered under one banner. We've spared no expense packaging these, pairing the idea of the Art of Compilation with living and breathing art, creating little fortune cookies baked in a factory of forgotten dreams. Video games, pyramids, trading cards, matchbooks, a working planisphere, mazes, lottery tickets, film canisters, yearbooks, and various other exercises in design absurdity.

In January, we'll kick this mini-verse off with Escape From Synth City, a hero's quest worth of staccato synths, crack house Casios, off-brand drum machines, minimal Morricone, four-track fantasia, and a variety of other speculations on what the 1980s thought the future would sound like. Packaged in a 12'x12' Nintendo Entertainment System-styled jacket, replete with game sticker, die-cut outer sleeve, debossed cartridge inner sleeve, and art from our first video game, playable from the comfort of your PC

When Giampaolo Scapigliati was a kid he liked to explore the hidden abandoned places in the outskirts of his hometown, Viterbo. Especially those natural pools in the middle of nowhere that attract tourists for their sulfurous healing water, not welcoming smell and obscure plants. What he cherished the most, though, was its fascinating aura, one that can only emanate from an immortal ancient site. This kind of mysterious mood is what inspires "Sulfureo", his second album as Lamusa II. Along its eleven cuts, Giampaolo experiments with wet percussive sounds, drum machines, syndrums, echos and analog and digital synthesizers programmed with sequencers and midi devices that, in his own words, "created different paths when crossing on each other". In contrast to all of this synchronization, he also experiments with guitars and bass, using a live "free approach" reminiscent of krautrock and new wave obscurities. Also near Viterbo is located the monumental complex of 'Sacro Bosco', where Giampaolo spent many afternoons walking and losing himself inside the weirdness and charm of that place. Surrounded by the grotesque sculptures, enigmatic buildings hidden among the abandoned vegetation and gloomy animals sounds he used to leap into imaginary alternative states that represented some kind of 'journey of initiation'. Now located in Paris, "away from home, from the nature and from those childhood places", he revisited all of those feelings and moods to create a sonic trip at least as equally fascinating.

For over half a century, Takehisa Kosugi was one of the most unique and enduring figures in the Japanese underground. As an art student in Tokyo in the early 1960s, he joined the Fluxus-styled performance unit Hi Re Centre and then founded the improvisational ensemble Group Ongaku, but his most legendary project was The Taj-Mahal Travelers – a multicellular organism that included Kosugi, Ryo Koike, Yukio Tsuchiya, Seiji Nagai, Michihiro Kimura, Tokio Hasegawa and sound engineer Kinji Hayashi.

With a penchant for long psychedelic jams (some lasting 12 hours or more) The Taj-Mahal Travelers lived up to their name. Touring in a Volkswagen van across Europe and Asia in the early '70s, they eventually reached the actual Taj Mahal in India. Upon their return to Japan, they held a concert to raise more touring funds and released their very first recordings. Their debut album, July 15, 1972, would extend the band's matter-of-fact titling: all the tracks were named precisely for the times they began and ended.

With a grab bag of instrumentation (electric violin, double bass, santoor, vibraphone, harmonica, radio oscillators, sheet iron, etc.), The Taj-Mahal Travelers weave together mesmerizing waves of sonic texture. Featuring longtone concepts that Kosugi discovered while working with sound generators in New York in the mid-'60s, July 15, 1972 remains just as much a collective tone poem as psych workout. These leader-less sounds coalesce into a unified whole that feels both subconscious and sublime, as if the waveforms bypass the listener's ears and land directly inside one's synapses.

DownloadCode Included !

Exercises in Estrangement is Marcus Fjellström's first album, initially released a decade and a half ago. Listening back to it now only re-confirms the unique mind of the Swedish composer, who sadly died in September 2017, only 37 years old.

Marcus was an avant-garde composer and audiovisual artist exploring the edges of classical music. The word "classical" here means nothing in the usual sense, as he would bend the rules to his liking - and hence create a completely own sound that is hard to define. A student of the conservatory in Piteå, Sweden, Marcus´ path was unlike most composers with similar backgrounds. His love for the bizarre and macabre would send him on a descent into the darkest corners of musical experimentation. A trajectory that resulted in some of the most peculiar and fascinating sound documents created in the last two decades.

For his debut album, Marcus made a record that not only lives up to its name, but really is a profoundly mind expanding listen that might sound even more intruiging today than back in 2005. With titles such as Planchette, Kandinsky Kammer or Anstice reflections on everything from spirituality, resurrection and abstract art is being undertaken, all while adding a big dose of the absurd. As Tiny Mix Tapes wrote back in 2005: ”Marcus Fjellström's Exercises in Estrangement is an unsettling, visionary work of modern composition that falls soundly within the idiom of contemporary electronic music yet evokes the darker aspects of the work of many of the more brooding mid- to late-twentieth century European classical composers.”

Marcus worked with the Swedish Royal Ballet, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Sinfonietta Cracovia as well as numerous other orchestras, ensembles and soloists, artists and filmmakers. He spent the last half year of his life scoring the AMC series The Terror. In his works, Marcus often aimed to combine opposites so that they don’t contradict each other, but rather fuse into a natural, third element - “High” and “low” culture, the naïve and the sophisticated, good and bad taste. These are all elements that comfortably blend together in his works. Musical influences range from electronic acts such as Aphex Twin and Autechre to 20th century composers such as György Ligeti and John Cage. Further influences include impressionist composers Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy as well as film music composers Bernard Herrmann, Angelo Badalamenti and Zdeněk Liška.

Vinyl edition ltd. to 300 copies, incl. 8-page 12" booklet with drawings by Marcus Fjellström.

Joachim Nordwall digests and mutates dub in unique industrial style on The iDEAList’s almighty
follow-up to a tape and 7” in this killer mode, bringing guest vocalists, JA’s Nazamba and polymath
John Duncan, for a deeply crooked ride worthy of rinse & repeat
Picking up where his raw ‘Early Tactical Experiments In Techno & Dub’ left off in spring 2019, the
rugged styles of ‘Say Yes to No’ poses only slightly less risk of contracting salmonella with a more
stewed and treated suite taking in proper songs starring Nazamba and John Duncan amid all
manner of virulent, wayward electro-dub variation.
As with his superb tape for Industrial Coast, that wicked 7” with Genesis P-Orridge, and even
his recent albums as Joachim Nordwall - ‘Conventional Wisdom’ with John Duncan, and the
collaborative CD ‘Communication Is Key’ - The iDEALIST naturally highlights fundamental links
between dub and noise - the core principles of manipulating sound in space - with a critical blend
of tactile playfulness and rigorous pressure.
The two vocal cuts are outstanding in their own rights; ‘Bigga Boss’ features Kingston-based poet
and playwright Nazamba utterly possessing the opening shot with his baritone growl, rooting the
LP at one pole, while John Duncan’s equally compelling appearance on a similar riddim in ’Tough
Doubt’ comes to epitomise the project’s direct approach toward alloying and allying styles with
alchemical suss comparable to The Bug, Ossia or Andreas Tilliander.
Vocals also spill out into the LP’s other tracks, but here they’re more textural and elusive,
scudding thru ‘Everyone Fucking Relax’ in a way recalling DJ Scud’s thudding remix of Bong-Ra,
or masticated into intelligibility on the amorphous dub-noise lurch of ‘Inner Space Dub (Insane
Version)’ and the LP’s cataclysmic closer ‘Say Yes To Dub’, which are all held tight in contrast with
the more defined techno and electro-dub structures of the LP’s club-ready highlights, ‘The Ecstasy’
and ’Shit Skull/Golden Mind.’
It’s a hugely enjoyable album - one that leaves bits in your teef and gets up in your head like a
healthy dab of shatter.

Daniel Menche follows up his triple CD opus Sleeper with the razor drone constructs of Melting Gravity. Hailing from Portland, Oregon, Menche is an iconic musician with three decades working with intense noise, immersive ambience, and turbulent field recordings. With Melting Gravity, Menche continues to carve his spot as a figurehead in the experimental community.

The title of Melting Gravity refers to an allegory on the human pursuit of transcendence with all of its connotations to weightlessness, ascension, flight, out-of-body experiences, and just getting high. Gravity, on the other hand, becomes that which negates and nullifies those transcendent pursuits. In the context of this particular allegory, gravity is the devil. Music, long a vehicle aimed towards transcendent ideals, becomes the weapon to defeat gravity, to defeat the devil. Daniel Menche wields the weapon of music in composing the mercurial grandeur that is Melting Gravity.

Implementing an elegant arc of acceleration and dissolve, Menche presents a slow-motion tumble of drones from his signature manipulation of FM synthesis, oscillators, and sustained tones from various stringed instruments. The tangles and tendrils of these extended frequencies are bright and liquid, rich in harmonic complexities though mottled with a scrap metal discord. Menche balances these slippery, luminous overtones with a dub-inspired lattice of recursive bass tones. Read as an industrial mantra or as amplified minimalism, Melting Gravity stands as an exemplary work in Menche’s storied catalogue of recordings.

Daniel Menche’s lengthy discography contains over 60 albums, many of which have been published by some of the most esteemed experimental record labels. Over the years he has worked with Editions Mego, Sige, Touch Music, Alien8 Records, Ash International, Utrecht Records, and many others. He has collaborated with Mamiffer, Andrew Liles, KK Null, John Wiese, Aaron Bradford Turner, Joe Preston, Anla Courtis, Zbigniew Karkowski, Kiyoshi Mizutani, and Kevin Drumm. He has performed extensively in North America, Japan, Europe, and Australia.

Jim Haynes, August 2019

he first audio document ever published by Fluxus artist Geoffrey Hendricks (1931-2018). There is a romanticism found in Geoffrey, that, in my mind, sets his work aside from his Fluxfriends. Known for his timeless sky paintings, applied to canvas, cars, clothes, and so on, the conceptual married the majestic. He was a master painter, whose work could have filled cathedral ceilings. Instead, he chartered his bow alongside George Maciunas, John Cage, Dick Higgins, etc. in the 1950s. Hendricks became a prominent member of Fluxus, shown in exhibitions around the world for over 60 years. In the 1970s, composer Charlie Morrow approached Hendricks about recording an album for the New Wilderness Audiographics cassette series. This became a 40-year dance of orbiting schedules and slipping dates. The sky aligned in 2014, and a recording session at Ear Up Studios in New York manifested. Geoffrey's connection to nature not only focused upwards at the sky, but always downwards to stones. 'Rock Music' consists of a box of rocks being cast across a room. Pounded on wood, soft and hard, the sonar-like snapping echo mapping the dimensions of the room. Small bells hover over the rubbing of stones humming to each other. You can tell that this was a therapeutic ritual he practiced for years, not merely an improvised recording concept. With the LP is a booklet that includes diaries of his stone collecting on Cape Breton island in 1973, beautifully infused with dream recollection.

The cassette of 'Music for Sky Slate Wall' was discovered by chance earlier this year in the vast archive Hendricks left behind. It holds Geoff's close friend Philip Corner performing at an Emily Harvey Foundation exhibition in 1999. Corner responds to the Hendricks installation, interpreting the wall adorned with watercolors of day and night skies, grey slate, and a ladder hanging more paintings and golden ornaments. Philip Corner performs with prongs, Korean shaman cymbals, his voice, and a shoe. Their charming friendship can be heard in the interplay. This project was made possible by Geoff's widow, Sur Rodney (Sur), his children, Tyche and Bracken Hendricks, Philip Corner, and Charlie Morrow.

Includes 16-page pamphlet with essays by Tyche Hendricks and Charlie Morrow, diaries and artworks by Geoffrey Hendricks.

Annus Horribilis is a solo album written and produced by Italian sound artist Giuseppe Cordaro (aka Con_Cetta), that sonically describes one year of tangled pages and cable connections. It’s the suffering of sleepless nights captured and filtered within a modular system to create a dark sonic vision.
Featuring esoteric readings, alongside distorted tensions and primordial rhythms. The breeze of Medusa's wind pulls alog synth drones and mystical invocations.
Giuseppe Cordaro previously hid himself behind the pseudonym Con_Cetta (Moteer). He is a sound sculptor, ecologist and he has devoted himself to electronic music since 2005.
Giuseppe explores many different languages in the field of electronic music. His music moves from electroacoustic minimalism and sounds very close and warm, mixed with lush mediterranean sounds.

He has collaborated with several artists: Robert Lippok, Ben Frost (music for six guitars performance), Head Dress, Simon Scott (Slowdive), Giorgio Sancristoforo, Corrado Nuccini and Jukka Reverberi, Emidio Clementi, Grey in Sparkle, MonoLogue, Luca Sciarratta (musicians), Giuseppe La Spada, Quayola, Elena Mazzi, Sara Tirelli, Apparati Effimeri, Gabriella Sancisi, (video-artists), Francesco Fei (director).
Cordaro has previously released audio projects on Moteer, Crónica, Zamzam, Sound In Silence and Fluid Radio.

Father Fugue is Nour Mobarak's first full-length album. The Los Angeles-based artist spent years sculpting this LP, and the result is piercingly emotional. A foray into her being; a sound artist, a songstress, a sculptor. Nour's creativity orbits an ever-moving center. Thus, glimpses, reflections, and splinters of her oeuvre embody Father Fugue.

The side-long titular piece on the LP is unlike anything I have ever heard. Nour describes the piece: "the left channel of 'Father Fugue' is composed of conversations with my father, Jean Mobarak, a polyglot who has a 30-second memory and lives in the mountains of Lebanon. The right channel is composed of improvised song." Nour and her father speak through four different languages (French, Italian, English, and Arabic), a full transcription and translation is included with the LP in a 24-page booklet. They speak of cars, of soccer, of Italy. They speak in games, in rhymes, and in song. The sonic division of voice and time across the stereo pattern is captivating.

The second side of the album is comprised of eleven songs. The word "song" must be taken widely and liberally in this instance. Elements were recorded in her car, in the shower, in the ruins of Oaxaca, Mexico: a rainbow of personal documentation. The vase holding the bouquet is of jubilation and abstract humor. A chanson written by Nour's great-great-grandmother, at the turn of the 20th century in Constantinople, is sung throughout the LP. The first side concludes with her and her father singing it in duet, as Nour's solo performance begins the second side.

Bound by time, Father Fugue reveals Nour Mobarak's expression from and response to her father's place and memory. A flip of the record uncovers her expression and response to her own.

Remo Seeland’s Hollow Body is a suspenseful exploration of the interaction between sound environments and individual perception. It was sparked by an intense physical experience the Swiss artist had during a residency in New York City. "The subway became a sort of ‘atonal symphony’ for me, provoking a full-body experience with the rattling of the overcrowded, airless trains," the Hallow Ground founder explains. "However, while the old subway is not exactly beloved by everyone, it also represented for me the melancholic meta-level of the moloch above it." The album, his first under his given name, makes this disparity audible over six tracks in which the visceral and the personal become at once abstract and universal.

Based on field recordings from both urban and rural environments, Hollow Body aims to mirror another of Seeland’s psychosonic encounters. "In the highlands of Iceland, I noticed my pulse lowering and my breathing decelerating," he says. "Just shortly after that, a single insect’s buzzing seemed so loud to me that I became even more aware of the silence surrounding me." Silence, perception, order and the curious dialectics of the outside world and the inner workings of the human psyche are the central questions of "Hollow Body.

Recorded in New York, Reykjavík and Zurich, Hollow Body draws extensively on field recordings and sees Seeland collaborating with Hallow Ground-affiliated artists Norman Westberg (Swans, guitar on Body Innovation and Hollow City) and Reinier van Houdt (Current 93, e-bowed guitar on Hollow City and Rhodes organ on Pulse Points Green), as well as the Swiss-based US-American musician Steve Fors (Deaf At Sea, trombone on Second Coming). The diversity of the source material is mirrored in the stylistic richness Seeland lays out with this LP. From the lush, bass-heavy drones of the opener Body Innovation to the downbeat-driven Second Coming and, finally, the haunting organ sounds of Night Within, Hollow Body forms a holistic entity that integrates idiosyncratic compositions into a coherent narrative.

Hollow Body was also conceptually inspired by Seeland’s research as a cultural scientist with a focus on Southeast Asian cultures, specifically the anomic tantric cults of India. It thus serves as a mediator between not only the individual experience of site-specific sounds and general ideas of sound production in and about space, but also between different compositional techniques ranging from drones to synthesized vocals and more primitive forms of ritualistic music. Its sonic abundancy is to be understood as a direct result of its underlying idea: at its most challenging, this record also makes the most coherent statements about the order of space, sound and their cryptic relationship with the human body.

Soundwalk Collective was given unprecedented access to the halls of the emblematic nightclub Berghain, Berlin. A re-incarnation of the legendary Ostgut club, the focal point of Berlin’s techno subculture. The Berghain building is a former East German power plant that is remarkable for its enormous dimensions, 18m high dance floor and minimalist constitution of steel, glass and concrete. An architectural space that facilitates experiences of sacredness, collective oneness and egalitarianism, Berghain is known for its impressive sound system, extended after hours, and the defining sound of Berlin techno.
For Oscillation, the collective placed 147 contact sensors on all surfaces inside and outside of the club: concrete walls, steel staircases, water pipes, ventilation tunnels, air ducts, metal frames, cages, fences, dark rooms, toilets, engine rooms, industrial glass windows, pillars, DJ booths, ceilings and more. Over the course of multiple club nights they mapped out the whole structure, and progressively recorded the entire movement of the building under the impact of the hammering music.

Massimo Carozzi is a sound recordist, sound designer and musician based in Bologna, Italy.

Since 1994 he has looked into relations between sound and image, sound and script, sound and literature, sound and space. Massimo Carozzi has created sound design for theatre, documentaries, short films, installations. As a musician he collaborated both in studio and on stage with various musicians and sound artists such as Andrea Belfi, Stefano Pilia, Margareth Kammerer, Valerio Tricoli, Claudio Rocchetti, Luciano Maggiore, Sinistri, 3/4HadBeenEliminated, Starfuckers.

In September 2000 he founded the group ZimmerFrei whose artistic practice ranges from video art to documentary films, sound and environmental installations, as well as photography, performances, workshops and public art projects

In this post-industrial, post-enlightenment religion of ourselves, we have manifested a serpent of consumerism which now coils back upon us. It seduces us with our own bait as we betray the better instincts of our nature and the future of our own world. We throw ourselves out of our own garden. We poison ourselves to the edges of an endless sleep.

Animated Violence Mild was written throughout 2018, at Blanck Mass’ studio outside of Edinburgh. These eight tracks are the diary of a year of work steeped in honing craft, self-discovery, and grief - the latter of which reared its head at the final hurdle of producing this record and created a whole separate narrative: grief, both for what I have lost personally, but also in a global sense, for what we as a species have lost and handed over to our blood-sucking counterpart, consumerism, only to be ravaged by it.

I believe that many of us have willfully allowed our survival instinct to become engulfed by the snake we birthed. Animated — brought to life by humankind. Violent — insurmountable and wild beyond our control. Mild — delicious.