Beats News

Second release for Nantes based Abstrack crew. Three takes on obscure ethnic recordings with an unknown origin! Abstrack comeS up with A batch OF music that sounds like them : spanning all the way from trippy grooves to heady dancefloor material.

An unbelievable anecdote from the 20th century led to these three tracks. Breaky and trippy vibes are played with on the opener : coming in and out of the groove, while the ambient air is sparkled with surprises. Malcolm TURNS up with a rolling acid and drums workout, coming up subtly and bringing hands upwards for sure.
Label man Vidock goes afro, epic and vocal on the last piece. A track to open up the vibe without losing dancefloor intensity. Super emotional and beautiful.

The (true?) story behind the record :

The Traumstatter Phonogramm Archiv is host to one of the world’s largest ethnographic recording collections. It was created in September 1901, when a group of Indian musicians came to Traumstatt, where Blois Schauder, a psychologist at Berlin’s university and Xiu Pu Sonmi, a physicist from China recorded them on an Edison cylinder.
150 000 ethno-musical recordings have joined the collection since then. During the cold war, many cylinders and tapes were safely kept out of danger out of the country and sent to the four corners of the globe.
After the wall came down, the repatriation operations started, and in April of 1990, the Miquelon-based ship “l’Herminie” sailed out, with a large number of recordings on board. Ten days later the ship sinks. The eight crew members were rescued by a Swedish cargo ship and a few floating trunks along with them. The few tapes that didn’t sink aren’t the main concern, and they end up in the posession of a swedish sailor.
After reading this unbelievable story in a collection of anecdotes from the 90’s, an investigative work began, leading us to track down two of the tapes. We digitized them and sent them to several musicians and producers. The difficulty to give them an age or a geographic origin gives us the feeling that they come from an unknown land and time. Dreamtown Ethnic Tapes is intended as a wink to this beautiful story, that started a century ago, in the city of dreams…

Second release for Nantes based Abstrack crew. Three takes on obscure ethnic recordings with an unknown origin! Abstrack comeS up with A batch OF music that sounds like them : spanning all the way from trippy grooves to heady dancefloor material.

An unbelievable anecdote from the 20th century led to these three tracks. Breaky and trippy vibes are played with on the opener : coming in and out of the groove, while the ambient air is sparkled with surprises. Malcolm TURNS up with a rolling acid and drums workout, coming up subtly and bringing hands upwards for sure.
Label man Vidock goes afro, epic and vocal on the last piece. A track to open up the vibe without losing dancefloor intensity. Super emotional and beautiful.

The (true?) story behind the record :

The Traumstatter Phonogramm Archiv is host to one of the world’s largest ethnographic recording collections. It was created in September 1901, when a group of Indian musicians came to Traumstatt, where Blois Schauder, a psychologist at Berlin’s university and Xiu Pu Sonmi, a physicist from China recorded them on an Edison cylinder.
150 000 ethno-musical recordings have joined the collection since then. During the cold war, many cylinders and tapes were safely kept out of danger out of the country and sent to the four corners of the globe.
After the wall came down, the repatriation operations started, and in April of 1990, the Miquelon-based ship “l’Herminie” sailed out, with a large number of recordings on board. Ten days later the ship sinks. The eight crew members were rescued by a Swedish cargo ship and a few floating trunks along with them. The few tapes that didn’t sink aren’t the main concern, and they end up in the posession of a swedish sailor.
After reading this unbelievable story in a collection of anecdotes from the 90’s, an investigative work began, leading us to track down two of the tapes. We digitized them and sent them to several musicians and producers. The difficulty to give them an age or a geographic origin gives us the feeling that they come from an unknown land and time. Dreamtown Ethnic Tapes is intended as a wink to this beautiful story, that started a century ago, in the city of dreams…

Erste Solo-EP des Berliner Produzenten Allan Shotter, neben Sängerin Giada Zerbo eine Hälfte des Duos Vittoria Fleet mit Releases auf n5md und 2DIY4. Inspiriert von Veteranen der elektronischen Musik wie Aphex Twin, Radiohead und Boards Of Canada sowie Sounddesignern wie Steve Reich, Moon Dog und John Cage, nimmt uns Shotter mit in eine Welt aus überwältigender, analog erzeugter Electronica mit atmosphärischen Klangkulissen und cineastischen Akkordläufen.

Don't DJ
Laniakea

On ‘Ways Of Seeing’ Konx-om-Pax has switched up the mood and hit gold. He has made an album that is filled with joy and sunshine, saturated with the classic feel of Berlin Techno.

Tom Scholefield has moved on from the dark ambient and brittle rave of the first two Konx-om-Pax albums, which were a reflection of his hometown Glasgow's electronic music scenes. After a recent move to Berlin, the textures of Glasgow's musical strains have fused into an accessible and friendly mix of poppy melodic electronica built from a stricter 'less is more' sound pallete, closer in spirit to the music of his adopted city. It is also a record which was made in opposition to recent music he has been hearing, in particular the troubled, dark and noisy experimental music coming out of Berlin. Tom wanted to focus on more joyful qualities, making this a record imbued with warmth and happiness, a panacea to the darkness and disorientation all around in 2019.

Having a social scene full of producers has also influenced the album. The opening track 'LA Melody' came from staying with Ross Birchard (Hudson Mohawke) at his house in LA, hanging out in the glorious sunshine with him and Lunice working on tracks.
"Initially Ross asked me to write some melodies to use in a project he was producing, but I ended up liking it so much I decided to keep the riff. I generally write music alone, but being around other producers gave me a certain excited energy that reminded me of after-parties back in Glasgow where Ross and myself spent our youth together. Spending time in Clark's studio also helped me improve my workflow and sequencing the album by seeing the way he does things". On 'Säule Acid' he collaborates with Silvia Kastel and in 'I’m For Real' the vocals of Glaswegian DJ/producer Nightwave filter around the track.

Sigha brings his OCS imprint out of hiatus after four years and resurrects his Faugust alias for 'Parallel Rave Fantasies'.

Across five tracks the ep pulls together a clutch of his formative influences, leaning heavily on his early experiences with electronic music and placing them in with in the context of his contemporary production and sound design work.

Often doing away with traditional structures in favour of a more organic approach, the result is a set of tracks that both take in the dynamic of the dance floor and step away from it.

Georgian artist Sophia Saze releases her debut two-part album 'Self' on Francis Harris' Kingdoms imprint, with part one dropping on cassette this June. "The record embodies my story of duality within the context of identity, insomuch as the idea that every person has a deeper layer we don't show on the surface."
Born in Tbilisi, Sophia Saze is the daughter of political refugees who's spent her life living in numerous different countries before eventually finding home in Brooklyn. Finding it difficult to find her own identity due to living a nomadic lifestyle, the classically trained musician became entangled with electronic music before becoming a key player within New York's nightlife scene and launching her Dusk & Haze imprint in 2017.
A reflection of her struggles throughout life, 'Self' is very much a memoir of the many different places she's lived during her journey, including Georgia, Russia, USA, France and Canada. Contrasting to her recent productions, which are geared more towards the dancefloor, her debut longplayer is downtempo and features a medley of musical influences - mixed in two parts and released as a concept album on cassette. Maintaining a sonically raw feel throughout, 'Self' draws the analogy of analog to modern day digital culture whilst also taking a stance against perfection, whether integrating the distance crackle of her machines or intentional off-beat piano notes in minor. Part One was conceived, for the most part, during a sleepless yet inspired 48-hour studio session. Processed field recordings accompany samples from her childhood, such as soviet cartoons and intimate VHS recordings of her family. The result is a well-seasoned and personal story portrayed in fourteen tracks mixed together.
"I feel the element of patience is somewhat of a lost commodity in our generation, particularly for albums. We're consumed by track to track interpretations and constantly searching for the next instant stimulation. With this record, I wanted to reiterate the idea that if you don't have the willingness to sit through the whole thing, then you're not stepping into it with the right mindset to begin with."
Every artist who collaborated on the record is handpicked, such as vocalist Ricardo Rivera. The final production was also mixed by Francis Harris himself. All of their involvement means they share a fragment of the concept.

Dinosaur L is an alias donned by Arthur Russell, a man whose contribution to dance music from the late seventies and through the eighties was formidable but only quietly acknowledged. His innovative and left field dance records were way ahead of what people were used to hearing at the time. He was a cellist who studied classical and Indian music. As well as his great strides in dance music he was also involved in the New York downtown avant-garde music scene and produced some albums in a more avant-garde / experimental vein as well as trying his own unique approach to pop. He scored several hits on the underground New York dance scene at clubs like The Paradise Garage (Larry Levan was a huge supporter). His biggest tunes, 'Go Bang!' and 'Is It All Over My Face' were worldwide club hits and are still played today as classics. His records have influenced the scene from his first dance record in 1979 to the present day and his work has been much sampled. Sadly Arthur
died in 1992, but his music lives on and his influence is still felt on the dance music scene, his tunes still sound great and are still moving many dancers around the world, so his spirit lives on. Sleeping Bag Records and Traffic Entertainment Group is proud to present Dinosaur L's '24-24 Music' for the first time ever on double LP. Includes the original album tracklisting plus rare 12'remixes and edits.

While being best known for creating deeply immersive live psychoacoustic experiences, the London based Pataphysical have allowed us to use 'Periphera', the fruits of their debut studio work, as the label's eighth musical oblation. It would have been an exercise in futility to try and replicate the immediacy of their live performances on this record, but we feel that across these 8 disparate tracks inner worlds have been rendered real. Through the careful positioning of field recordings and the creation of soundscapes somewhat reminiscent of heyday Mille Plateau the group have held fast to a desire to craft involved and captivating synthesis.

After making music individually for a couple of decades, Peraud and Ferguson decided to collaborate for the first time, joined together by an instinctive desire to blur the boundaries between improvisation and composition.

FZR Sethi is a visual artist, musician and composer who works in several mediums under the expression of draw/paint/volume/sound. His work, either canvas or sculpture, hinges on the fundamental principles of his art, as evidenced in his use of the geometric form.

Ferguson created his alias Rubbish T.C (Rubbish Techno Consortium) in 2015, producing slow and heavy techno made with martial patterns of movement. A producer for 15 years, Rubbish T.C. has been prominent in the free party scene for years.

Moving away from a dance-inflicted mode, Sâd Hu achieves more of a balance with skill and craft. A dense, textural approach hints at something more expansive and insidious. Diversity and richness unexpectedly coalesce into an eerie, percussive scapefest over sonorous layers of droning bass tones and raw power.

Mnestic Pressure' is Lee Gamble's first album since 2014 and his first with Hyperdub, a reset that sees a noticeable change in his sound and the concepts that feed into his music. Lee says 'From Diversions 1994-1996' (2012) through to Koch' (2014) - my music felt like I was dealing with signals from elsewhere - signals from the unconscious, sub-aqua, hallucinated, dreamt. Mnestic Pressure' feels like their decoded offspring, a terra interpretation.' The title Mnestic Pressure' comes from Lee's thinking about how our contemporary memory is pressured, individually, but also collectively. 'We live in these strobing, visual times, like a constant subliminal advertisement but, also over the last few years the world seems to have become more and more dreamlike, alien, and parodic itself and there was this part of me that wanted to drag my music back from this Shangri-La, but fully drenched and infected by its ghosts.' Mnestic Pressure' as a whole is a simulation of this experience, a flow of targeted information, through contrasting and quickly changing terrain, from one track to another you're dragged into a new space. The pressure to move is intrinsic to the flow of the album, one thing morphologically transforms into another, zooming in and out from wide angle to detail, reshaping into new forms at a speed Lee's music hasn't before. The music on Mnestic Pressure' has a hardness, with a structure and melody that was sublimated in Lee's previous LPs. It builds on his more recent experiments with more functional dancefloor forms. Here his hypermodern production and crunchy, dissembled beats feel like they could be malfunctioning holograms projected onto the hallucinated memories of his early work.

For their 5th release the London label born of the clubnight of the same name make a b-line straight for the dancefloor. The title track of Desert Sound Colony's latest EP is equal parts anthemic vocals, stabbing guitar lines and a motorik backbone which combining for a hefty slice of post-punk inspired dancefloor churn. Two B-sides take the themes found in Lose My Rhythm and head down the rabbit hole to drown you with a flurry of breaks led rhythms on Suffocation and put you to rest with the pitch black basslines of The Blacksmith.
On the remix front local hero Scott Fraser delivers an acid drenched expansion of the title track.

repressed !

Third studio album from French kraut / experimental / psychedelic act Le Réveil des Tropiques after two opus on Music Fear Satan. LP with obi-strip.

After almost 10 years of existence, two studio albums and a series of live recordings, the exploration by Le Réveil Des Tropiques of the psychedelic worlds takes this time the form of a hybrid record mixing recordings from different eras and contexts: scenes, studios, abandoned factory or even in the middle of nature.

Conceived as an experience of multiple lives, the arrangement of these elements by superimpositions or contrasts echoes the different experiences of the soul as well as the encounters that each makes (or re-made) during his passage on Earth and that does not not only due to chance ...

Named in reference to this mechanical device to synchronize several displacements, and illustrated by Valentin Pinel through the reinterpretation of an engraving of alchemists of the seventeenth century, "L'Arbre à Cames" will lead the listener between several grids of readings that he will be free to interpret and apprehend both as a heterogeneous entity and as a single piece.

Italian producer Andrea Natale lands the debut iteration of his new project, Anna Funk Damage, which finds him engineering a playfully deviant assemblage of steely industrial percussiveness and gritty post-Freudian / libido-filled machine talk. Setting the tone straightaway, the A-side 'Here Right Now' goes straight for the jugular, blazing its way across a flaming hotchpotch of face-melting electronics as it blends exuberant bleeps and gut-churning drums on war-mongering mode for a sustained wrestle in the basement. Flip sides and the screwed-up eroticism of 'Click Facial' will grab you by the scruff of the neck to drive you amidst a filthy orgy of analogue distortions, X-rated samples and abstract modular implementations. Or simply imagine the result of recording David Lynch 'Eraserhead' over a static-filled vintage porn reel - it's just as spitting an image. Punishing hours in the pit ahead. Full transparent 8" sealed in beautiful half silver/half transparent sleeve. Ultra limited edition of 50 copies.

A machine mirage. A hallucinogenic haze. Where Moogs mimic animal noise. Sine waves and tribal toms send jungle signals. A twilight chorus in a forest of sound. Its deep, deep, blue canopy lit by shooting stars. Third eye lightening. Wildlife roar, and temple gong drone. A bubbling skunk Funk swamp where New Age meets Nuova Neapolitan Fusion. Tubular vibrations give rise to flights of birds. Bongos back Belleville, Michigan, relics. Bottomless bass exudes womb-like warmth. Drums dance in Nyabinghi ceremony, while gurus question God`s plan, and your place in it. Discuss the search for freedom, through spirituality, and drugs. Conclude that 'Freedom without balance is destruction'. This Cosmic chatter intro-ing beatless calm. A float on primordial ooze with John C. Lilly. States altered. Trance taking hold. Time a mere construct. Snake charmer melodies sing and tempt, hypnotic like Kaa. Shimmy to percussive sambas. Percussion hits resonate. Metallic gamelan smashing through Digidub. Ancestors calling through echo. Fragments ping-ponging, colliding. Into an eternal infinite. A post-Singularity fourth world. A post-Human Eden. Mechanized. Paradise reborn.

Recorded at GRM Studios, Paris May 2018
Edited & mixed by François Bonnet at GRM studios, Paris August 2018
Mastering by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin January 2019
Written & Produced by François Bonnet & Stephen O'Malley

Art direction : Stephen O'Malley
Portrait photographer : Eléonore Huisse
Engraving : Pottery: a kiln, horizontal and vertical sections. Lowry, 1814, after Sylvester.

Tea Bowl made by Raku Kichizaemon XV
Projection image by Shiro Takatani
Photographed by Takashi Hatakeyama

First time outing from two ardent explorers of peripheral sound tactics. Cylene is the first collaboration by François J. Bonnet ( Kassel Jaeger) and Stephen O'Malley (Sunn O))) ). Laid bare we have a subtle and nuanced study of their individual practices forming a titanic whole. O'Malley's guitar inscribes a void that patiently opens up a spacious universe for Bonnet to discreetly alter with perception re-orientating studio maneuvers.

Cylene is infinitely rewarding for those that succumb to its delicate detours. A vast glacial plain unfurls slowly upon the listener invoking a mood similar to the stillness found following despair. As Joseph Ghosn succinctly outlines in his liner notes, "Stephen and François deal in those moments and instants that happen after the violence, and the ugliness and the mess. Their music is about chaos being summoned and ordered. It is about the noise that nurtures your ears after a long heartbreaking pain. I have heard the sounds of wars being fought and the noises of hearts being broken, and I have never found a shelter as soothing as this music which makes me think of sunken ships and beauty found in the depths of oceans long forgotten".

After a barnstorming live reunion which saw them play to ecstatic audiences across Europe throughout 2017, Britain's giants of electronic music Orbital are back, with new music and an upgrade of the legendary live show that transformed festivals across the world.

First single Tiny Foldable Cities opened the account, an intricate piece of electro-hypnotica, takes their signature sound forward into a new and fascinating phase, heralding their first new album in five years, Monsters Exist.

Throughout 2018 they play a string of high-profile festival dates and headline shows across Europe, featuring new material alongside classics like 'Chime', 'Belfast' and 'Impact'.

This surge of creativity shows how reunited brothers Paul and Phil Hartnoll have rebuilt one of electronic music's best-loved partnerships after Orbital's surprisingly bitter break-up in 2012. They'd been onstage with Stephen Hawking at the Paralympics, in front of the whole world. They'd remixed Madonna. They'd played Glastonbury many times and travelled the world yet were driven apart by music's strange and infamous brother-vs-brother dynamic. But now the brothers have a pact: whatever happens, Orbital does not stop. They've learned to talk and accept each other. As Paul says, "If we were both the same, then it wouldn't be Orbital."

The first vinyl appearance of 'I Came I Saw' from 90s steppas legends the Bush Chemists (which appears as a bonus track on some CD editions of the now-classic Light Up Your Spliff LP).

Comes with a typically screwed jungle refix from Bokeh staples Seekersinternational + a ragga noise deconstruction from Bristol's industrial terracorps Bad Tracking (FuckPunck / Mechanical Reproductions).

Sweat Equity is thrilled to present its first entry into the world of wax with XP, a powerful drop from Philadelphia’s DJ Delish. Spanning six tracks, the record is a striking introduction to a singular talent.

DJ Delish lives at the epicenter of East Coast club culture, having cut her teeth on the ballroom circuit as both a DJ and performer. Over the past few years, she’s also unleashed a string of self-released EPs and albums on her SoundCloud, as well as a split single with Sweat Equity’s Macy Rodman. XP marks her first outing on vinyl, and she pulls no punches.

The record is a rich landscape, flawlessly weaving between ballroom, hip-hop, ballads and house. Her command of multiple musical forms speaks to her time both in the booth and on the dancefloor. The vital energy of each track is matched only by the wit and incisiveness of her lyrics, with songs about everything from shady promoters to sexual intrigue. Her wealth of experience and abundant narrative ingenuity bring personal stories and intricate histories to life.

Echoes is the second album by the Ukrainian producer Cape Cod, released jointly by labels Vinyla Records & Kiev House.

Echoes is a comprehensive and multi-genre work in terms of sound and song creativity. On second album, dance music floats between genres, styles and mood from track to track, while Cape Cod skillfully waves the breakbeat, r'n'b of the new school, soul and hip hop into the tracks and brings his love to the disco house to the sound level.

Shanghai-based female electronic music producer Laughing Ears is releasing her debut album “Tidal Effect” on Ran Music. It includes 8 tracks featuring her signature dark and cyberpunk sound, with heavy suffocating subs, intensive footwork influenced beats, twisted growling bass lines and mysterious cult-feel melodies. Laughing Ears delivers an epic of world-ending tidal effects using her extraordinary sound design technique.

Laughing Ears is a female electronic music producer who currently lives in Shanghai, China. Her music crosses genres which include Experimental, Ambient, Beats, Bass, Footwork and Noise. She treats sounds as building blocks and by layering and combining them, she builds stylized sound castles of her own. She uses vintage tapes and creates unique beats then processes them using modulated effects and granular synthesizers. She has several releases on Beijing-based label Ran Music and has been gaining recognition in the China electronic music scene ever since. She has been favored by many indie labels in China and has also been invited by NTS radio to play music for their program.

Christian Marclay: turntables

Mats Gustafsson: live electronics & slide, tenor and baritone saxes

Recorded and mixed April 2006 by Christoffer Roth and Olof Madsen at Studio Dubois, Stockholm

Mastered by Martin Siewert

Record sleeve by Kim Hiorthøy

Mika Vainio left behind a lots of unfinished projects and unreleased music.

This archive series is presenting some pieces which can be considered as completed works.

The first volume comprise of two selections from the 48:22 long untitled recording Mika Vainio did as Ø for the radio project Ambient City at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki 1994.

Paul DeMarinis is a key figure in the history of electronic music since the 1970s. Collaborator with the likes of Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and David Tudor, DeMarinis is a pioneer in the development of gallery sound installation and digital music technologies. Black Truffle is thrilled to announce the release of a double-LP collection, selected in collaboration with the artist, focussing on DeMarinis's exploration of synthesized voice and the digital analysis and manipulation of speech sounds. Drawing together tracks dispersed on compilations along with a number of pieces previously unheard in any form, Songs Without Throats offers a revelatory look into DeMarinis's alternately accessible and uncompromising production between 1978 and 1995. Opening with a mesmerizing piece from 1978 pairing the voice and tamboura playing of Anne Klingensmith with strings of letters spat out by a Speak n' Spell to the accompaniment of the randomised melodic patterns of DeMarinis's homebuilt electronic instrument 'The Pygmy Gamelan', the record then dispenses with the live human voice in favour of its recorded and synthetic doubles. We follow DeMarinis's restless probing of the possibilities of new technologies, from the hacked Speak n' Spell (which gives us the austere 'Et Tu, Klaatu' 1979, another duet with Klingensmith, this time on bowed psaltery, in which the toy's synthetic voice is stretched into an alien song) through to the use of digital audio samples manipulated with home computer technology in the early 1990s (including a remarkable dream-like collage piece that weaves a rare recording of Stalin's voice and bird-like electronic twittering derived from its formant-glides into a rich tapestry of samples reflective of the dictator's musical life). In between we get a rich sampling of DeMarinis's signature work with speech melodies - usually unnoticed melodic inflections that lie within speech patterns - which he analyses and translates into synthesized musical accompaniment. These pieces draw on a wide variety of textual and vocal sources, which range from the hilarious to the menacing ('Cincinatti (1830-1850)' sets a detailed description of butchering techniques, for example) and an equally broad range of musical conceptions, combining elements as seemingly unlikely as Beethoven's Opus 31 pianos sonatas and the sounds of 80s synth pop. The results are an extraordinary combination of the alien and the familiar. As DeMarinis himself characterises his work with vocal synthesis, this is 'a kind of signal that simultaneously carried and obscured meaning and ideation, even as it created a sound world totally alien in esthetic'. Presented in a deluxe gatefold sleeve with archival images and liner notes by Paul DeMarinis. Design by Stephen O'Malley. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin

René Audiard delivers two tracks in between worlds for this Ep. Once again,his special approach left us with two out of the ordinary tracks, two long journeys where classical melodies and warm minimalistic beats come together. It's dark, yet beautiful.

“Following on from Homenagem, Lugar Alto’s first critically acclaimed project, the São Paulo label's new endeavour is the reissue of another neglected masterpiece. This time, it’s “Poema da Gota Serena” turn by Zé Eduardo Nazário from 1982. This unique work gathers elements of free jazz, Brazilian Northeastern rhythms, Asian percussive instruments and electronics.

Zé Eduardo is a virtuoso drummer and percussionist with a prolific career as a musician and teacher. He was introduced to music in his youth and started playing professionally at the age of thirteen. In the late 60’s he was a regular at the famous Totem night club in São Paulo, where he performed alongside the pianist Tenório Jr. and other exceptional instrumentalists. It was there that he met Guilherme Franco, and together they formed the Grupo Experimental de Percussão. This period defined Nazário’s interest in different sonorities involving percussion, and he broke away from the more traditional genres, such as bossa nova and jazz. Over time, this distinctiveness in sound and playing allowed him to create his own path which culminated in an extensive number of remarkable works, including the colorful and psychedelic “M andala”, which examines Indian and hippie themes. He also played with Hermeto Pascoal’s group and joined him and Jaques Morelenbaum for the recording of the cult classic “Imyra, Tayra, Ypy” by Taiguara. For Egberto Gismonti’s “Nó Caipira”, Nazário performed with the khene, a mouth organ from Laos, a present from Gismonti himself.

But it is Nazário’s work with the 1976 collective Grupo Um which is his most well-known, who, during their 6-year legacy recorded, amongst movie and ballet soundtracks, 3 albums: “Marcha Sobre a Cidade”, “Reflexões Sobre a Crise do Desejo” and “Flor de Plástico Incinerada”. The combo is considered one of the most innovative formations of its time, unusually combining electro-acoustic elements, jazz and Brazilian traditional music.

Poema da Gota Serena was Zé Eduardo's first solo project and it was financed by the legendary Lira Instrumental, a collaboration between the ground-breaking venue, label and publisher for the São Paulo avant-garde, Lira Paulistana, along with the always interesting Continental Records, home to such luminaries as Tom Zé. The album was offered as a package deal simultaneously with the production of “Flor de Plástico Incinerada”, ensuring 2 studio sessions at JV studios in October 1982.

Each side of the album explores different duets which, with its suite formated tracks, give the album the feel of a cohesive whole. The first half of the A side, “Energia dos Três Mundos”, is shared with the improvised saxophone of Cacau. Nazário delves into free jazz rhythms and plays his drums with a rolling and tumbling swing, using the kit in full, demonstrating the power of Brazilian jazz fusion. The second half of the suite takes us into a more tranquil mode. “Só Prá Ouvir”, demonstrates Zé’s mastery on the glockenspiel, and Indian percussion instruments, such as the tabla and mridangam. Cacau, on his side, switches his saxophone for more delicate dancing flute driven passages, equal parts northeastern rhythms and deep Amazonian indigenous influences. The B side, with “Prá Pensar / Prá Sentir e Prá Contar”, contrasts heavily with the A side’s more organic and natural feel. In Prá Pensar Lelo Nazários’s synth clusters and electronic blasts strangely interact with the exploring, wandering percussion. This track leads into the sublime “Prá Sentir e Prá Contar” where South Indian inspired vocals, performed by Zé Eduardo, accompany the graceful synth chords and fluttering percussion. The result is a hypnotic, otherworldly feel to the music that is infectious and takes the listener on an extraordinary journey.
With Poema da Gota Serena, it is possible to hear music that extrapolates the lines of the avant-garde and popular music. It is an album the demonstrates that Brazilian jazz fusion can be both spiritual and challenging at the same time.

All the tracks were expertly remastered by Lelo Nazário, directly from the original tapes, maintaining the high quality of production that Lugar Alto are becoming renowned for. All the artwork was reinterpreted by the São Paulo design studio Sometimes Always, including an exclusive insert and unpublished images.

It seems that Lugar Alto have managed to excavate yet another gem from the seemingly bottomless Brazilian mines. Long may they continue to do what they do so well.”

Oblique Russian sound strategist Natalia Salmina’s latest forking path portfolio as Atariame, Voiceless, arose in the wake of a dissociative relocation to Moscow, where she found herself adrift amidst a manic metropolis, alone in a skyscraper staring out at trees: “It made me lose faith in my ability to communicate, in my ideas about life.” Days without speaking turned to weeks. Even in private she felt estranged from her voice, and soon ceased singing.

For solace she turned to her Waldorf Blofeld, mining its panoramic frequencies to craft a shivering suite of futurist-noir nocturnes and rhythmic noise vignettes, equal parts exorcism and manifestation, desperation and delirium. Track titles hint at the headspace – “Outside At 5 AM,” “Same Thought All Day,” “Stay Late” – mirroring the music’s mood of hoods up, headphones on, wandering empty urban tunnels under flickering streetlights. Enigmatically, Salmina slips in a sliver of spectral voice on the intro and exit songs (“Breathe Exercise” and “Deconstruction”), framing them as induction into and escape from the cryptic isolationist condition of the rest of the collection. Mastered by P. Nikolsky, Powerhouse Moscow. Design by Britt Brown.

The first Yris Den. The first symptom of Yris Den. The first data entry of Yris Den. The first lacquer of Yris Den. The first search for Yris Den. (Paves the way for) the first appearence of Yris Den. Venial elevate your mind, free your auro.

Like a blast of wind, lost in some forgotten place, Headflush is filled to the brim with emptiness. Recorded in a single afternoon in Brooklyn, New York Leila Bordreuil's debut album, a collection of unprocessed amplified cello works, explore the limits of tonal perception. The hushed stereophonics of the album could leave the listener wondering if they were perhaps listening to amplified smoke; twisting, turning, and dancing in some strange light. Adrift and strikingly original, Headflush is the sound of the artist hidden in sound, absent in a bleak bliss.

Leila Bordreuil is a Brooklyn-based cellist, composer, and sound-artist from France. She accesses concepts as diverse as jazz, contemporary classical, noise, and experimental traditions but adheres to her own vision of sound. The New York Times has described her work as "steadily scathing music, favoring long and corrosive atonalities". Driven by a fierce interest in pure sound and inherent texture, Bordreuil challenges conventional cello practice through extreme extended techniques and amplification methods. Her composed works frequently incorporate sound-spatialization by way of site-specific pieces and multichannel installations.

Where To Now? Records present the debut release from Akiko Haruna. Akiko’s world is one where cacophonic distress lingers, shuffling itself over scapes of percussive damage and driven groove. Akiko presents a fresh take on the current Technoid function through her use of emotive and intentionally disruptive vocal chops and a dizzying ‘wall of sound’ approach to the dancefloor, consuming all yet somehow keeping vibes alive.

Akiko’s artistic background is primarily in Dance, and undoubtedly this performance led background has had an acute impact on her approach to melodic detail & storytelling. Akiko’s tracks rapidly shift & morph states, always restless and searching with fluidity and intent. From the ever present Micro Electronic details to sweeping swathes of Bass flutter the notion of progressive movement remains at the forefront of her sound, minute elements of detail become briefly isolated, intentionally directing the listener to their subtle presence.

‘Delusions’ Leads with ‘A Mother’s Love’ and begins a theme of resentment and dissonance. The Japanase vocal cuts throughout the track roughly translate to “you should die”, here obviously flipping assumed and supposed relationship rules and roles and exposing an inner turmoil, reflected through a continuous anxiety ridden, almost panicked siren detail which pulses over Akiko’s heads down, deep and uniform forward march.

‘Husband Established’ and the opens with the emotive vocal line “I just hate your Voice”. This is the sound of a poisonous & damaging relationship hurtling towards combustion, where Akiko’s elements gather momentum and impact as layer upon layer of detail pummel and puncture this heightened state, pausing and spiralling to evoke a standoff of aggression and imminent outburst. ‘Husband Established’ stands as a frankly stunning piece of sound design, which manages to capture a raw human emotion, and provide release for the associated junk, stress, and occasional banality of Relationship angst.

‘Hetero’ picks up where ‘Husband Established’ finished, further exploring societal character types and submissive gender tropes that are thrust into our sub consciousness from day to day. The concept of Hyperreality and its themes are continuously explored within Akiko’s practice and It would perhaps be fair to say that these themic explorations within her Music are Akiko’s own outlet for traversing human relationships within a complex, heightened, & layered reality, and it is certainly Akiko’s intention for her audience to feel some kind of relief and release within her sound world. Sonically ‘Hetero’ is a much sparser, subtler affair, where swathes of sampled voice & machine swing in and out of focus, against a weightless backdrop of affecting isolated electronics.

The EP closes with ‘Ripehus Alley’, seemingly void of any deeper meaning or message this serves more as a dreamlike parting song to what is otherwise a highly charged collection. Floating itself away from a frantic & incomprehensible world into a calmer space for final thought and reflection. ‘Delusions’ is a complex, exploratory trip, one which fans of Logos, Fis, Alva Noto, Jlin, Jesse Osborne-Lanthier etc will relish exploring.

A first-ever collection of the highly sought after and largely previously unheard EMS Synthi AKS recordings of the one of Turkish pop and rocks best kept secrets !

A key figure during the birth of Turkish rock and roll, a founding father of Anatolian Rock and the studio brains behind the first Turkish electronic pop records, Gökçen Kaynatan's influence runs like the lifeblood through Turkish pop and rock. Having shunned the recording industry early in his career he remained a driving force behind the scenes and on TV screens, spearheading the explosion of synth technology in Turkish music with his pioneering use of the EMS Synthi AKS, the fruits of which would only be shared on stage, never to be repeated television broadcasts, and in archival recordings that haven't seen the light of day, until now!

Having chanced upon the newly released EMS Synthi AKS in 1972 during a sabbatical in Cologne, Gökçen undertook six months of tuition in order to fully explore every intricacy of the highly versatile portable modular analog synthesiser. As the beating heart of his now self-sufficient custom-built studio it would propel Gökçen’s forward-thinking aural ambitions to a new plain. Making his first entirely synthesiser based public performances in Germany in 1974 he then returned to his homeland to soundtrack the dawn of the Turkish television age as in-house composer and one-man house band for Turkey's first TV channel TRT, signalling the arrival of a new era in Turkish pop and rock. Increasingly dogged by ill health, Gökçen privately harnessed the Synthi to channel his suffering caused by what would later be diagnosed as a brain tumour, dutifully recording and archiving his studio experiments, which would remain in the proverbial can for over 40 years.

With unparalleled access to Gökçen's closely guarded private vault, Finders Keepers Records presents another first with this previously unheard collection of EMS Synthi AKS recordings that represent a vital yet hitherto missing thread in the development of modern Turkish music. Recorded between 1973-75 this modest compendium comprises two of Gökçen's earliest synthesiser compositions and an updated recording made whilst recovering from brain surgery - arguably some the earliest Turkish synthesiser music committed to magnetic tape, further cementing Gökçen's indelible legacy within Turkish popular culture.

Stefan Fraunberger's Quellgeister#3 Bussd is Recorded entirely on an abandoned church's organ in the village of Bussd, Romania, the album is the third installment of the series by Austrian artist and composer Stefan Fraunberger. His research on the influence of nature on culture touches on time, periphery, memory, and transience as evidenced in his Quellgeister research. The album is an archeological sonic research on the deteriorating Organ discovered in the saxon church in Transylvania.

Hailing from different places in western Europe, Luc Bersier, Low Bat, Leonard Prochazka and Ariel Garcia created this vibrant EP. Their synergy tells a story of creativity, freedom in sound and, above all, playfulness. Serious music while similarly not being to earnest.

Their venture evolved into a very original blend of cosmic music, utilizing instruments that fit into the neofolk Krautrock domain, vocal experiments into French chanson territory, infused in Berlinian cosmopolitanism. Expect an exciting minimal wave synth punk orgy, punk definitely being the defining trait underneath these layers of sound.

This is boundless music with attitude, capable of making us drift off and disrupt us in equal measure.

Like the resonant African-American traditions that long precede them, the Black Spirituals are equal parts choreographed and improvisational, containing simultaneously measuredly deliberate and frenetically urgent sonicities.

True to name, the Black Spirituals evoke and produce a Black spirituality in the sonorous tradition of Black flight calling us to follow the North Star and any and all other pathways to freedom. It's the choreographed and synergistic spontaneity and improvisation with clear inspirations drawn from jazz traditions, indigenous African drumming, and anti/de-colonial musico-theological and ritualistic traditions across the Afro diaspora; and it's an expression that constitutes the kind of musical fugitivity most organically and innately produced by Black Americans in our 'post-emancipation' captive state. It's a music for music's sake, and it's a feverish cathartic expression of freedom dreams with true liberatory capacity.

The Black Spirituals, like their musical forebearers, are fugitive planners enacting, per Harney & Moten, 'ruptural and enraptured' soundscapes and offering a space of refuge within which enlightenment can be understood and, thus, enacted.

But this is not music alone. The Black Spirituals are a transdisciplinary and genre transcendent epistemic framework that exists both in itself and in complement with other artists. Black Access Black Axes is a project expressing Black vernacularity as a solo-duetting avant-garde musical technology driven by clear need to contain and articulate both the world in which we live and the dire need to flee and imagine and create another. The album's core are the drone-like meditative frequencies recalling an ever-present sounding alarm: a state of emergency, an alarm signaling the need for and actualisation of Black escape, a Black articulation of futurity only accessible through distortions and conversing-dueling guitar and drum.

Though this is the last joint project with which Zachary James Watkins & Marshall Trammell will bless us, the beauty in their music is their dynamism together as well as apart. So/but before we continue to be blessed with their respective solo workings (made evident in this and all the group's work), this is an invitation to revel in this deeply affective creation born out of their wellspring of love for Black people and our deservingness of freedom. From my head to my DNA, I felt this. I hope you will, too.

(12"+ Poster)

What is Infoline Infoline indicates new content components via an intuitive union of several media forms. We see the medium record/cover as a placeholder that does not contain enough information or limits itself only to the audio (music). The goal is to break open that standard by collaborating with designers, artists and musicians to find the improbable (formula) within the limit (format). The label Infoline is built on that collaboration because via that connection the network of possibilities grows and the intensification becomes more complex. POSTER & BLOTTER ART BY MARC JAUSLIN A SIDE PROVIDED BY LUCA DIGILIO AS AUDIOGUIDE AND B SIDE BY FLAVIO AUDINO & WALID EL BARBIR AS MEMBERS OF INFOLINE

Oglon Day is the debut release from the quartet of Oren Ambarchi, Mark Fell, Will Guthrie and Sam Shalabi. Though Ambarchi had previously worked on separate occasions with Fell and Guthrie, the two days the four musicians spent together in a London studio producing this LP was their first meeting as a quartet, preceding an acclaimed performance at the 2016 Masāfāt Festival. Coming from diverse backgrounds and concerns, the four musicians have created an effortless blend of their seemingly disparate approaches, carving out a musical space that gives equal weight to Ambarchi’s physically affecting guitar explorations, Fell’s stuttering electronic pulse, Guthrie’s virtuosic drumming and Shalabi’s psychedelic oud improvisations. Oglon Day is an inspired meeting of the acoustic and the electronic, the composed and the improvised, the human and the machine, the austere and the joyous. Quite unlike anything else in the four musicians’ respective back catalogues, it also offers a surprisingly accessible point of entry for any listener so lucky as to be unfamiliar with their work

The NMB Allstars have been part of the SKAM family for nearly twenty years. Initially as DJs then as producers, they beguiled us with their dub-informed rhythms and caustic beats. When they first put their Bug EP together at the back end of 2001, we discussed what might come next – a plan for five 12” EPs before an album, not realising it would take fifteen eighteen years to get to number five... but, here it is, the 5th of 5, NMB005 the GazOhmEater EP.
The pattern of releases has played with titles and logos of UK nationalised industries – Bolton8 (002) referenced Altern-8 and the Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive, NWH20 (003) North West Water. and Mancweb (004) drew on Manweb, a local electricity provider. For this final EP Acid and Gas are the go-to aesthetic narcotics. Along the way the 12” series had guest appearances from Meam, Made and Pendle Coven, part of the NMB extended crew.
These days neither of the two founder members locate themselves in urban situations, preferring to retreat to the hills spending hours on the moors of the Pennines. Even these landscapes are punctuated by infrastructure,
be it pylons, reservoirs or tunnels, and the resonant hums, filtered through peat bog and horizontal rain can be sensed in these new tracks put together slowly over the last seven years. NMB stated from the beginning that their “output was not controlled by time” - how right they were.... They have said the album should be ready in 2028.

4 track 12" of mutant Rock 'N'Roll