Beats News

Long time unsung UK techno artist Aubrey is to release Gravitational Lensing, a first artist album since 2001 and his third in all. It lands in early 2019 on Out-ER and across 12 tracks it finds him getting more personal and instinctive than ever before with jazz, techno, broken beat and house all colouring this most coherent of musical adventures.
Aubrey s discography dates back to the early nineties, when he was a key part of the UK scene on labels like Solid Groove, Textures and Mosaic. Up there with the greats from Chicago and Detroit, he has turned out a steady stream of music that marries perfect dance floor functionality with real musical invention. Always inspired by anything deep with a good groove, everything from synth band Japan to funk king George Clinton, electro break beats to Jean Michel Jarre all inform his work.

As a DJ, he cut his teeth playing the biggest raves in the UK with names like Carl Cox and Eddie C having been swept up by the acid house records that hit English stores when he was just 15. Add in a love of jazz, ambient and US house, and you have all the eclectic influences that this criminally under-the-radar artist has drawn on for his latest album.

It is one that finds him really put his personal stamp on his sound. It s a chance to be more who you are and what you feel without pressure to conform to a particular sound, it s a chance to be free, says the artist of the album process. It was partially produced at Out-ER s studio in Nard , Lecce over the course of a year s worth of studio jam sessions, and is his finest and most cinematic work to date.

Things kick off with the ambient synth modulations of Aerglo Visible before exquisitely loose jazz drums and sci-fi pads suspend you in the cosmos on Floating to Rigel. There is an experimental feel to the off grid drums, rippling chords and drunken keys of Doctor Portia that keeps you brilliantly off balance, and the first deep techno trip is Journey To the Blue Planet , which has gorgeous ambience swirling over rolling, dubby kicks and soulful Detroit synth work. Carrying on through more lush, musical synth work and inventive drums, there are moments of heads down dance floor power and hi-tech soul, serene techno landscaping and chord-laced deep house that is superbly cerebral throughout the album.

In all, it makes for a complete and storytelling record that draws on a rich variety of genres and reworks them into something deep, multi-layered and hugely emotional that works as well in headphones, at home, as it will in the club.

Experimental / Ambient Album by antonio.

Photo by Francesca Frattini

Discom proudly presents Du Du A- Du Du Archive 1984-1989 LP, a collection of previously unpublished and rare tracks of Belgrade's cult band Du Du A. Discover the music of the group whose leaders Dejan Kostic and Zoran Zagorcic primed for their never-released second album and find out why they earned a cult status among DJs and collectors worldwide!

In his third release on Editions Mego, Jung An Tagen continues to expand his unique vision of oblique electronic music mixed with future dance club sound. In "Proxy States" techno is evolving into another realm.

"Proxy States" is his most formulated attempt to combine modern composition techniques with ritualistic techno aesthetics. Here he takes his obsession with structure to a more narrative build-up, creating new paths and textures around his infectious beats. With this structure, Jung An Tagen develops an emotional relationship between repetition and dissonance.

It's addictive music. Music in constant explosion. The 12 seconds of the first track, "Spill (False)" sound like a recreation of The Big Bang, creating the perfect intro for this molecular-polyrhythm adventure. It also creates the connection/disconnection with his previous work, "Agent Im Objekt", bridging the two but also creating a space to embark on a new sonic trip. This self-contained explosion offers the right coordinates and propels the listener to Jung An Tagen's sonic realm.

All of this is done with his usual fearless but mindful approach. His unique exercises with structure, time and sound create an ecstatic familiarity with the sounds while at the same time inducing a creeping physical alienation. In other words, some parts may be rhythmically infectious, others will give you no chance to immerse. The stimulation is astute and continuous, encouraging an out-of-this-world experience.

The main arc of "Proxy States" consists of a 16 against 17 poly-rhythmic synth line that through different intonations of the kick drum always transforms its syntax. This synth line always scales up 1 key, in the middle of the track, foreseeing the upcoming structure. While these tracks (3, 4, 5, 6: "Wreath Products") follow an almost obsessive-compulsive order, the remaining tracks seem to blow up the structure entirely like the last scenes of the 1970 Michelangelo Antonioni's film "Zabriskie Point", creating an event inside the event.

"Proxy States" was impossible to press on vinyl but the fast, sharp and wild grooves of Jung An Tagen's new album are incredibly synched with the concept of an ever accelerating future.











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Cassette edition of Death Is Not The End's contribution to the Blowing Up The Workshop mix series.

"A trip across the frequencies of Bristol's pirate radio stations via cut-ups of broadcasts, taken from the late 1980s to the early 2000s ~ also a love-letter to my childhood, an audio document of the years I spent growing up in the city."

Cassette edition of Death Is Not The End's contribution to the Blowing Up The Workshop mix series.

"A trip across the frequencies of Bristol's pirate radio stations via cut-ups of broadcasts, taken from the late 1980s to the early 2000s ~ also a love-letter to my childhood, an audio document of the years I spent growing up in the city."

New Fly-Lo.. First outing since 5 years!

Drawing the lines between the galaxies of hip-hop, funk, soul, jazz, global dance music, tribal poly-rhythms, IDM and the beat scene of his hometown L.A, Lotus creates a universe that is uniquely his own. Calling on an all-star cast from the cosmos, Anderson .Paak, George Clinton, Little Dragon, Tierra Whack, Denzel Curry, David Lynch, Shabazz Palaces, Thundercat, Toro y Moi and Solange; Lotus takes these artists on an astral plane to explore his world of fire.

Luke Younger returns to PAN with an eight-track album of his most direct work to date.
Composed alone at NO studio in the Essex countryside, to start an album with a piece called
‘Capital Crisis (New City Loop)’ seems an intentional misnomer. Long, sustained periods in the
rural studio setting see Younger working with an array of fragmented, disassociated sound
sourcesto build upon 2015’s ‘Olympic Mess’. It shares a similarly inclined vision of the urban
environment, but here ‘Chemical Flowers’ makes reference to paradoxical notions of authenticity
and creative practice by way of questioning the structures around us.
Collages are assembled and dismantled, temporal and spatial boundaries fluctuate and movement
is an overarching theme. Surrealist drowned world atmospheres sculpted far enough away from
the source of inspiration leave plenty of room for ambiguity. The nocturnal nature of the recording
process is self-evident, and pieces like ‘Leave Them All Behind’ tap into a deep psychedelic
undercurrent. Confused narratives, emotions and aleatory hallucinations ebb and flow throughout.
‘I Knew You Would Respond’ evokes murky soundtrack terrain with eerie repetitive strings and
ambient respite, disrupted periodically by brief bursts of granular noise. It’s one of the records
most unnerving moments, possibly as it’s one of the most recognisably human.
The album navigates dense passages with recurring signifiers. Hollow percussion, modulating
delay and curious field recordings come and go, maintaining a perpetual state of flux where
nnothing stays the same for long. The drowned world theatricals return on the swamp-like
‘Lizard in Fear’ whilst string rhythms creep in on the penultimate track to incite momentary
electroacoustic harmony. Floating synthesis slowly washes over and the title track unfolds - five
minutes of reverb-laced portamento, visions of decay and Editions EG influenced world-building.
‘Movement is key’..

Not Glass is the debut collaboration between Alessio Natalizia (Not Waving) and his longtime
correspondent Dimitris Papadatos (Jay Glass Dubs), paying tribute to Latin and Greek authors Ovid
and Heraclitus in a suite of dramatic electronics and cryptic rhythms comparable to a theatrical
soundtrack.
Knowingly, ironically pretentious, yet serious with it, ‘Forma’ is the result of years of daily
Facebook chats between the London and Athens-based artists where they cemented the album’s
concept around key quotes by the legendary poet/philosophers, who hail from their respective
homelands of Italy and Greece. The results are in effect a spellbinding attempt to transmute those
notions within the collaborative, contemporary framework of their music, using patented palettes
of hardware, vocals, and FX to render and reflect core classical mythological and philosophical
ideas about drama, love, metaphysics, cosmology and the “unity of opposites”.
On this timeless plane, Natalizia and Papadatos both step outside of themselves to find “what
opposes unites”, spaciously consolidating their typical, yet contrasting, rhythm-driven approaches
in a reverberant, often beatless sphere of exploration. Removed from their usual handrails, the
artists operate at their most open-ended and subtly suggestive, amorphously shapeshifting from
gloaming shadowplays of synth and keys to investigate arcane percussive impulses and iridescent
ambient whorls.
The result is a perfect, finely shaded marriage of their mutually esoteric, outsider Southern
European energies, which intuitively acknowledges and inhabits the paradoxes of their respective
styles. The illusively static yet mercurial ebb and flow of the atmospheric intro ‘Fallite fallentes’
sets the scene, where ‘Dum loquor, hora fugit’ invokes a viscous but brittle tangle of wide bass
and pointillist rhythms beside a stately cello vignette ‘Ludicrum’ that recalls aspects of Scott
Walker’s mystic charm ’Soused’. The rapid arps and slow moving, glassy pads of ‘Pauper ubique
iacet’ conjure a sublime tension that becomes diffused into the cavernous, hollow dub dread of
‘Ut ameris, amabilis esto’, possessed with its throaty, processed vocal, and the lonely strings and
plasmic electronics of ‘Forma bonum fragile est’ connotes a psychedelic coming-to-terms with
their artistic/philosophic duality.

After a 5 year pause for breath, Rainer Veil return with their debut full length for Modern
Love; an immersive, kinematic tumble through electronic forms from hyper trance to
tape dub experiments and loose polyrhythms - a summoning of ‘ardcore spirits in flux.
A hypnotic soundworld tempered by weighty bass and angular construction, ‘Vanity’
marks a breaking away from the binds of overthinking, an embrace of imperfection. It’s
a brighter set of tracks then anything we’ve heard from Rainer Veil before, discarding the
foggy filters and guitar pedals that were the signature of their first two EP’s in pursuit of
a more loose-limbed and swung ideal.
Opening on the skeletal Trance vapour-trail ‘Sim Screen’ and the agitated ‘Repatterning’,
we head into a ferociously asymmetric warehouse swerve ‘In Gold Mills’ conjuring an
uncanny, nighttime vision of suburban bass riddled with tension and bliss. ‘Shallows’
retreats through isolation dub, echoing ‘Change Is Never Easy’, a re-worked House
template fractured to its bare percussive core, while ‘FM2’ entwines a double helix of DX7
patches with a heart wrench, and ‘Gauze’ dismantles a mosaic of Kwaito patterns, buried
under a haze of smoke.
Tracing rapidly mutating electronic forms, from ringtone hooks to latinate rhythms
and Razor synth edits, ‘Vanity’ explores an instinctive swell of ideas and influences in
perpetual and unstoppable forward motion, a sequence of flash frames captured and
distilled for posterity.

The time-stopping tract of ’In Demons In!’ is a naturally elemental drone collaboration between
eminent experimentalists Jim O’Rourke and CM Von Hausswolf for their eternal admirers at iDEAL
Recordings
Offering a transfixing peek behind the curtain of pure black hole drone dynamics, ‘In Demons In!’
finds the American in Japanese exile and the proclaimed monarch of the imaginary kingdoms of
Elgaland-Vargaland meeting on common ground after 26 years of international correspondence.
Initiated in Tokyo 2016 and completed over the proceeding two years in Japan and Sweden, the
uncompromisingly adventurous results are galactic in scope and viscerally metaphysical in
presence, conjuring scales of abyssal bass and diffused, atomised, abstract dark matter that make
the listener feel like a speck of stardust floating in infinity.
Using sound as a magickal tool for psychic transport and to finely model notions of the
metaphysical that typically elude human comprehension, the near 40’ work feels to collapse
billions of years into a glacial moment. Location recordings made in Kathmandu lend an barely
there iridescence, like microbial filaments flickering in the endless darkness, to their plunging,
subharmonic basses and vaporised mid-upper registers, where spectral forces comb thru the
piece, only very gradually altering the weightless keen of its planetary mass and mental traction.
Ultimately, and fans are likely to agree, ‘In Demons In!’ amounts to a vitally definitive entry in both
artists’ catalogues, marking right up there with the most abstract wonders of O’Rourke’s electro-
acoustic Steamroom volumes, while manifesting some of the most fascinating results from Von
Hausswolff’s ongoing investigations into drone music’s paranormal properties. In other words: it’s
Grade A+ zoner music.

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1
Breach One
9' 36''
2
Interlude One
3' 26''
3
Breach Two
7' 05''
4
Breach Three
9' 32''
5
Interlude Two
2' 29''
6
Breach Four
7' 34''
Breach dives into chaotic systems and reflects on the recent events of protests and riots in the world, exploring the build up and release of tension and energy in a new form of pitch black metal electronics and polyrhythmic structures.

Zeno van den Broek is a Dutch-born, Copenhagen-based composer and artist. Van den Broek works in a multi-sensory way to research and express physical, social and acoustic notions. He utilises audiovisual means to create site and concept specific works. This trans-disciplinary method has a strong conceptual foundation, originating from a background in architecture, which enables Zeno to comprehend and reveal the richness and complexity of spatial, visceral and physical perception. He works with a characteristic artistic language based on minimalist and fundamental elements such as sine waves, lines, noise and grids.

Released on the occasion of Thomas Baldischwyler's booth in the collaboration section at ART COLOGNE 2019.Through a Soundcloud mix by London Crew Front Left Life, Baldischwyler was pointed to the mysterious Laton 12" VI AUX by the Austrian project FON (Formation ohne Namen) which was released in 1997. The project consisted of Johann Groiss und Manfred Söllner, but it was mainly Söllner who was responsible for the production. Baldischwyler got in contact with Söllner in 2018 when he stayed in Vienna and asked him if he could release some of his recent productions, for the second time - after 20 years - on vinyl. While reading a documentation about the SS division "Feldherrenhalle" burning some of the most important works of Austrian artist Gustav Klimt (Especially "Schubert at the piano" from 1899) on the last day (May 8th, 1945) of the second world war in the Austrian manor house Immendorf, with this idea, Baldischwyler started to make the artwork and Söllner selected the tracks which are now in the "hidden" grooves beside the recording of a 1969 workshop for fire safety in California, USA.

Repress available in early May.

Faitiche releases a new collaboration between the Japanese sound artist ASUNA and Jan Jelinek: the album Signals Bulletin brings together joint improvisations and compositions made over a period of three years in Berlin, Kyoto and Kanazawa. ASUNA’s meandering organ drones merge with Jelinek’s pulsating synthesizer and field recording loops to create dense superclusters that span broad harmonic arcs.

"Watching the Japanese sound artist ASUNA playing the organ, some people might be surprised. ASUNA is no virtuoso flying over the keyboard in a rage. Instead, with the calm gestures of an office worker, he cuts strips of adhesive tape to the correct length before sticking them onto the keys of his instrument. In this way, large clusters of keys are held down, creating a dense and sustained range of frequencies, while the sound artist continually prepares further sets of keys or removes tape again. I have rarely seen a more convincing performance concept, with such a power to fascinate.

I first met ASUNA when we both gave a concert at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, his home city. He performed the organ drones as described above and I immediately knew I wanted to collaborate with him. Six years and five meetings later, we completed Signals Bulletin. The album includes both joint improvisations and compositions, recorded in Berlin, Kanazawa and Kyoto.

Whether using prepared organ, Casio keyboards or mechanical plastic toys, ASUNA creates rich textures of sound that barely change over long stretches of time. It is a music without breaks. For a while, I was unsure how my loops made using modular synthesizers and live sampling fitted here – until I realized the role I had to take in this duet: I would provide the rhythmically pulsating foundation over which his dense continuums could unfold.

The result is harmonically drifting superclusters that put us into a meditation-like state. It can perhaps be compared to Automatic Writing – a mode of creative expression floating somewhere between concentration and distraction. Both the structure of our pieces and our approach to our instruments allow a similar “absence”: we let the machines play and repeat themselves – while we, in a mild form of trance, adopt the role of observers, intervening only occasionally.

It is no coincidence that ASUNA owns a collection of Doodle Art – drawings jotted down during conversations or while talking on the phone. It is said that works made like this point to the unconscious and reveal pet motifs – because a doodler always inadvertently returns to his or her favourite themes. The artwork for Signals Bulletin features pictures from the collection, in this case sheets of paper from the pads provided in stationery shops to test out pens. The special quality of such doodles is that the jumble of drawings is the work of a collective whose individual members do not know each other. Layer by layer is added, by someone different each time – until it becomes a dense cluster of lines and symbols ..."

Jan Jelinek, Berlin 2018

"Mannequin Records and Platform 23 come together to start a series of stand-alone reissues of the music of post-punk / industrialists Bourbonese Qualk, starting with their 1983 album Laughing Afternoon. Formed in Southport during the late-70s, the band came to prominence out of South London's squat scene via their own Recloose Organisation. Early releases including the band's first experiments put to tape and the now highly sought after Sudden Departure compilation featuring luminaries Colin Potter, Eg Oblique Graph (Bryan Jones) and Lol Coxhill, laid the foundations of their burgeoning sound.
Recorded and produced at the Recloose Studios in Camberwell in 1983, Simon Crab, Julian Gilbert and Steven Tanza infused their music with politically charged atmospherics, instrumental exploration, heavily laden reverb and dub, all projected by drum machine rhythms to assemble a musical collage which encapsulated strands beyond contemporary music.
Track titles decipher little, as with the music, a discourse not belonging to a set style or movement, but crossing boundaries of supposition, pushing distortion and outernational leanings towards something else, a primordial discant. While tape loops warp the ears and spoken vocals propel songs like Blood Orange Bargain Day and To Hell With The Consequences and contrasting guitar acoustics pierce the mood on Qualk Street and Spanner In The Works, the overall embrace is claustrophobic, embedding a foreboding for the times. This unique, indulgent, cross genre melting pot where pounding rhythms, wailing trumpets, mournful melodica and electronic pulses all spiral in a contagious dissonance that heralded Bourbonese Qualk to the wider world.

Japanese maverick ALTZ teams up with relative newcomer IGAXX for a wonderful debut on the new LADYBUG imprint...

Having released the superb 'Permanent Vacation' on ALTZMUZICA a few years back, the two made a musical connection that has come to fruition with their celebrated Star Child parties & this collection of mesmerising cuts.

Osaka born ALTZ has forged a genre-defying career both behind the decks and in the studio, always unconventional, he combines a wealth of influences into something genuinely fresh.

He capably takes the A side here, with 'Ottie' a loose, musical and low-end heavy Theo style jam, while 'Sly' is a gurgling synth-out.

Tokyo's IGAXX steps up for the flip, with the atmospheric and intricately realised 'Sonorama' leading the charge. 'Minotaur's Dish' presents us with another exquisitely layered number, with aquatic undertones and a hypnotic appeal. Finally 'Unnn' leaves us with another beatless synth exchange, ending what has to be one of the strongest debut 12's we've heard in a while !

June Records presents their seventeenth release, ”Diataxis" by Ioannis Savvaidis, which is comprised of 4 recordings and their accompanying texts.

Diataxis is an audio interplay between Optical Networks terminology and the main artwork of the release. The sound is transmitted throughout abstractly and emotionally structured spaces.

Recorded live in Savvaidis’ studio in Athens between July and December 2018.

“Le Lisse et le Strié is a new work by french composer François J. Bonnet, released under his project name Kassel Jaeger. Based in Paris, Bonnet is the Director of INA GRM. He is also a writer and theoretician (The Order of Sounds, a sonorous Archipelago and The Infra-World have been published in english by Urbanomic). As a musician, Bonnet has been collaborating with artists such as Stephen O’Malley, Oren Ambarchi or Jim O’Rourke and most of his recent work has been published by Editions Mego.

Le Lisse et le Strié has been conceived as an exploration of the two antagonist concepts of “smooth” and “striated”, applied to the realm of electroacoustic sounds. If the “smooth” is linked to “nomos” as an open space of organic distribution, the “striated”, on the contrary, is associated to “logos”, as an enclosed space defined by a grid.

Elaborating a dialogue between these aspects, Kassel Jaeger draws here an intermediary space where pulsations become textures and layers, and where rhythmic elements are found in the qualities and bodies of sounds instead of being functionnalised, pre-determined sound objects, abstracted and frozen onto a temporal grid. The concept of “striated” is made audible only through the sonic landscape it inhabits, like the stripes of the camouflage fur of wild animals only exist as such in the woods and long grass, disappearing into a potentially uselessness in a desert plain.”

Some Became Hollow Tubes floating in the ocean.

6 self recorded improvised drone rock waves from Eric Quach (thisquietarmy - relentless DIY powerhouse) and Aidan Girt (Godspeed You! Black Emperor).

Chords loop, pedals get pushed, pounding drum parts get added and subtracted, it starts quiet and gets loud. Eric no longer needs to worry about the rhythm, Aidan no longer has to worry about the song structure. All four ears stay cocked and listening even if neither of them are very good at keeping eye contact.

One life to live, pound drone and loop this moment into the present, hahaha let’s keep joking, it's ok.... the music has our sadness. This world is dying, the machines are getting better and better at eating material things to create nothing and all we can do is make wordless music in response.

The album was mastered by Harris Newman (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Tindersticks etc).

HATEAU: O you singer, solitary, singing by yourself—projecting me;
O solitary me, listening—nevermore shall I cease perpetuating you;
Never more shall I escape, never more the reverberations,
Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me,
Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what there, in the night,
By the sea, under the yellow and sagging moon,
The messenger there arous’d—the fire, the sweet hell within,
The unknown want, the destiny of me. O give me the clew! (it lurks in the night here somewhere,) O if I am to have so much, let me have more!

Lee Gamble signs up HXE (fka HEX) for a tightly coiled, hard-edged quartet of deco-rave recces in
the space between sound designer techno, mutant Latinx styles, and polluted megatropolis vapour
noise
Run out 3 years since the London-based duo’s debut with Liberation Technologies, and proceeding
their 2017 EP for Antifur, the ‘INDS’ EP is loosely structured around the practice and aesthetics of
modern, large scale industry. Its 4 tracks are brutalist in resolve and construction, but each derive
a sense of (perhaps perverse) pleasure and sensuality from the warped virtual/physical tension
and crunching industrial intensity of their sounds.
‘Rozay’ opens the A-side with an alarming sort of Industrial dancehall smackdown, all panic-
station strings and pummelling, off-kilter bass with unyielding effect, while the reticulated
writhe of ‘Worm’ synchs breathless synthetic gasps with mechanically reclaimed rhythm with
‘floor-flailing force, and ’Spill’ alternately sustains and vents the tension with lurching, gnashing
dembow dynamics.
Following Zuli’s ‘Terminal’, which ranked highly in the Wire’s AOTY chart, and Nkisi’s resoundingly
acclaimed ‘7 Directions’ album, HXE are a fierce new addition to UIQ’s gang of dancefloor mutants.
In a stark reflection of the music, ’INDS’ will be accompanied by artwork and video in collaboration
with Paris-based sculpture artist Anita Molinero, whose process of salvaging and irreversibly
deforming industrial objects and materials patently mirrors the process and abrasive, malformed
nature of HXE’s music.

Venerable avant-garde composer John Duncan follows his prized cycle of cover versions ‘Bitter
Earth’ [2016] with ‘Conventional Wisdom’; a truly beguiling new suite of original, stony avant-blooz
songs produced in collaboration with iDEAL boss Joachim Nordwall, and marking another high
point in both of their catalogues After coming out as a vocalist to memorably striking effect in
2016, Duncan compounds the effect with ‘Conventional Wisdom’, placing his original lyrics in stark
arrangements ranging from shortwave radio-streaked dark ambient settings and Mika Vainio-
esque isolationism, to deathly dubs driven by Nordwall’s rugged rhythms in a style that heavily
recalls Jay Glass Dubs’ recent ‘Epitaph’ LP.
An original and close associate of LAFMS co-founder Tom Recchion, and collaborator with
everyone from Chris & Cosey to Asmus Tietchens, Merzbow and Andrew Mckenzie (The Hafler
Trio), Duncan is well versed in the art of f*cking with music. Doing so since the ‘70s, it’s only in
recent years that more “typical” song structures have crept into his style with most transfixing
effect, gathering the attention of many who previously weren’t necessarily exposed to his music.
Whether stemming from a perverse pleasure in twisting popular music, or a matter of changing
with age (dude is 65), we’re just not sure, but either way Duncan is now coming out with some of
the most broadly appealing, yet incomparable work in his 50 year-wide catalogue.
Aided by Joachim Nordwall, the pair convene a set of songs every bit as fascinating, eerie as
the cover image of a birdcage mask bound in barbed wire. The title track emphasises the stark
mystery with nothing more than meditative vocals, gamelan strikes and daubs of shortwave,
before ‘Hard Swallow’ catches him huskily channelling Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry at a spooky distance,
while the disembodied dub tropes of ’Soft Eyes’ come uncannily close to aspects of Jay Glass Dubs,
and ‘Say No’ says it in the bluntest, most bluesy terms. The most desiccated, strung-out material
however is saved for the B-side, with the sferic resonance and stereo-strafing vocal of ‘The Joke’
planing out into the cracked hush of ‘The Beautiful Attempt’, before he and Nordwall effectively
duet in the finale ‘The Red Hot Alternative’, where Nordwall also supplies pranging percussion and
Coil-esque synth abstraction.

Banlieue Records presents LAKERDA, an LP by ALTKAT.

No stranger to records that side-step club conventions, Banlieue’s latest release truly stands out from the rest of its catalogue.

Altkat is a Turkish-Armenian musician born in the late 40s and active since the 60s when he first started experimenting with an Anatolian saz, a two track tape recorder, and a fluegelhorn. Today, the saz is still there, the bugle is gone and the tape recorder has turned into a computer. Altkat, who spends most of his time working as a percussionist for sephardic and balkanic bands, is above all interested in the transformation of noise into music and does not shy away from using synthesizers and drum machines, along with his saz, to create his music.

LAKERDA exists somewhere beyond the “traditional” and “non traditional” realms. It is marked by hybridity and the encounter of seemingly opposite notions, such as tradition and modernity, East and West, past and future, but also acoustic and electronic and more abstractly, here and there. This album takes the listener beyond these oppositions and invites him or her to approach Altkat’s music not on ultimately fallacious “either/or” terms, but simply to receive it as it is, a fourth world record, with each track on the album a palimpsest that encapsulates previously mentioned oppositions and transcends them in the process.

Full of morphing textures, metallic resonance, layered arrangements, plucked saz strings, pitch-sliding winds, shimmering melodies, bleeps and blops, peculiar samples and other disorienting sounds, this album seems indebted to the aesthetics of private press albums from the late 20th century. While some of these have recently been reissued by labels such as Music From Memory, Into The Light and Stroom to name but a few, Lakerda also feels more contemporary, and it is certainly not out of place in Banlieue’s catalogue.

It therefore seems apt to conclude this presentation of the record with a paragraph written by Joe Muggs after listening to LAKERDA and which has been printed on the LP’s labels.

'Causality moves differently in the fourth world. The flows of generational influence can be altered or even reversed. Exotic is normal and normal is just another shifting layer among many. Continents rediscover each other in new orders, distant stars loom close, and strange music like this comes not from far off but inside your mind.'
Joe Muggs

Pedro Zopelar and Benjamim Sallum started jamming and performing live sets in São Paulo in 2016, when Ben was only 15 years old. At that time they where doing freaky improvised live perfomances in tribute to a popular youtube video called “My Girlfriend Is Programming The Roland TR-909, Making a House Beat”. Using that huge name the duo performed live before Theo Parrish at the RBMA festival in São Paulo 2017, and was the first that the track GIDI was played. In 2018 “My Girlfriend” releases their first record dropped by Subsubtropics, (a Brazilian label that previously released “Dreams”, “Design a Wave”, “Seixlack & Zopelar” and more).

The Apron EP is a compilation of My Girlfriend’s tracks there are more influenced by a Brazilian approach on neo-soul, house and funk. From the first raw jams to these particular vision from “what is Brazilian music from nowadays”, the duo represents a fresh sample about what is happening into the club music scene there. Benjamim Sallum is resident at the famous party “Mamba Negra” headed by Cashu and Laura Diaz (Teto Preto, Carneosso), and since his 15yo developed a fast progress on the art of making tracks and DJing. He runs his own label “OXI”, where he often drops some crazy cassettes EPs from himself and his friends. Zopelar is multi instrumentist, DJ and producer based in SP, responsible for the keyboards, synths and basslines of the record. He studied piano on his youth and made music college in rio with 18 yo. Based in SP after his studies till now, he runs another well known party named “ODD”, where Funkineven played in 2017 (both Rio and Sao Paulo editions) and knew all that crew.

The opening track “piercing”brings pads and strings recorded and manipulated on a MPC sampler with some dreamy lead synths on top. GIDI is a tribute to all the church keyboard players in the world. And there is also another tribute to a specific music school from late 70’s in Brazil called club da esquina (“B2 Corner Club”), headed by legendary singer and composer “Milton nascimento”, is a typical sound from Minas Gerais, State where Pedro was born and raised till his 17 years old.

The HARP EP is to be released on PRAH Recordings and offers a balance of movement and feeling. ‘Banshee’ and ‘Feeler’ are both dance tracks intended for the dancefloor, whereas ‘Why Can’t I Remember Your Name’ and ‘Heart’ are two tracks meant for times of contemplation.

Inspired by the time when hardware was the only real option for making dance music, applying the same limitation and tactile approach lead to the creation of these tunes from a technical perspective. The equipment used was primarily analog and outboard, with the utilisation of tape for recording ‘Banshee’.

London via Margate composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Raven has collaborated with many well-respected artists including Kate Tempest, Paul Weller, Mica Levi, Kwes and Bullion. His music upholds a balance between the orchestral and electronic, abstract and conventional. Parallels can be drawn to the artist Arthur Russell,
in terms of their diversity, creating tracks you can dance to, but also songs and music for reflection.

All tracks are taken from the results of the second week of Raven’s PRAH residency in Margate which has seen the likes of Kelsey Lu, Adult Jazz, Ben Vince, Lone Taxidermist, James Greenwood, Deep Throat Choir, Flamingods Lung Dart & London Contemporary Orchestra. Each have spent time writing and recording in the studios
as part of a free artist residency program offered by PRAH Recordings’ arts wing the PRAH Foundation.

Cyberspeak multidipliscinary collective keep on programming. The second output from the label goes deep inside the restless character of Katatonic Silentio, a sound artist driven by cyberfeminism and queer culture who perfectly express the collective accellerationism. Emotional Gun is an half-stepping beats masterpiece, seven tracks crossing mystic territories full of pulsating soundscapes, apocalyptic and cinematic atmospheres with a painstaking attention to details.
Mixed at Zona9Studio
Mastered by TapewaveMastering

Berlin duo of gear enthusiasts Nachtzug returns to mindcolormusic for an expanded feature. This is a collection of new works and also selections from their pool of self releases.
As Initial Gain Norman and Stefan played live for several years and meet up at lease once a week to jam and maybe create new works.
The development of this took us almost 2 years as it was hard to make a selection from all these great trax.
And also the claim for the boys was to create something that is a good statement of work that has not lost the special tension situative for theyr sessions – i think they managed!
peace & thank you for the trust, mnvr / mindcolormusic

Black Zone Myth Chant acts as a dark interpreter for chemical elves in the steep sided, sunless
psychedelia of ‘Voyage Sacrifice’ for Félicia Atkinson & Bartolemé Sanson’s faultless Shelter Press,
under the slightly altered Black Zone Magick Chant alias.
Commendably, and temporarily sacrificing his consciousness for the good of your trip, on this
release Maxime Primault aka BZMC has realised some of the most phantasmagoric sounds in
his entire catalogue, which now stretches back over ten years and includes notable highlights
in his psych drone project as High Wolf, and pulsing rhythmic noise as Iibiis Rooge. It’s perhaps
testament to Shelter Press’ irrepressible vision that they have coaxed out this project’s most potent
and far-out work, bar none.
Gutting out his screwed hip hop and dancehall inspirations in three durational parts embracing
pitch black, miasmic abstraction, perceptions of time and rhythm become dissolved in the
process, aided by a severely down pitched vocal growl that absorbs the listener into its tantric
pacing on ‘Lightless Mountain’, holding the senses under as deathly bells peal for someone or
something, and scattered metronomes occasionally accentuate the temporal smudge, spilling over
into the seasick brownian slosh of ‘Incineration of Thoughts’.
But like the potential of any trip worth the effort, the darkness and the sublime become entwined
in the 22 minute counterbalance of ‘Where will we meet when our ashes are spread in the wind’,
which, thru its convincing, iridescent detail and lack of a ? in the track title, seems to describe
from the inside, rather than speculate, a divine space or spirited beyond as the result of lived
experience.

sssIn January 2016 arts and music organisation Santuri East Africa invited guest producer Jan Schulte to join the Nile Project gathering in Aswan, Egypt - an intensive two week musical experiment featuring musicians drawn from all around the Nile Basin that functioned as both a creative cauldron for cross-border collaboration, and a forum for artists and cultural activists to discuss the issues affecting the Nile river.

Wolf Mu¨ller aka Jan Schulte has been a resident of Dusseldorf's era-defining Salon des Amateurs for many years, releasing wildly inventive and dance music under various monikers - from his birth name to Wolf Mu¨ller, Bufiman and his Young Wolf collaboration with Young Marco. Schulte's feel for off kilter sounds and rhythms and a playful approach to the sometimes po-faced world of dance music have resulted in some incredibly well received releases (Instrumental Musik Von Der Mitte Der World and the compilation Tropical Drums of Deutschland being prime examples).

Santuri East Africa is an organisation set up to connect musicians and producers from around the globe, a process of co-collaboration that has led to some highly well received releases on Soundway (Msafiri Zawose) Sofrito (Auntie Flo's Soniferous Garden) and On the Corner (Makadem and Mugwisa).

Clocking in at a shade over 15 minutes, A-side 'Mabomba Dance' gradually layers Kasiva Mutua's needle-sharp percussion over a deep analogue bass pulse, building into a hypnotic dancefloor workout.

The B-side sees erstwhile Owiny Sigoma Band collaborator Rapasa Nyatrapasa showcase his Nyatiti harp before delving into an almost Afrobeat-esque slice of afro-minimalism. The EP rounds off with Adel Mekha's stellar vocals over traditional Nubian percussion.

Ludwig strikes back with his long-awaited follow-up release on his own Exo Recordings International. This release makes you feel like a champion free diver. Reflective, focused and totally at one with itself. Take a deep breath and JUMP!

Past, present, future. For those who know.

Orbital London is born. A concept from the big smoke, providing a platform for the natural and raw talent of Jack Michael and associates. The 'Opposite Visions EP' consists of four UK influenced records, with a certain garage and breaks tip. The title track is somewhat sought after, after support from several heads in the London scene. A seductive vocal sample leading you to a bassline, asking to be played on a club system. Dogmatik boss Alex Arnout provides his take on 'Opposite Vision' with a dubbed side winding rhythm, full support from the experienced artist. Carrying on the heads down affair on the B side is 'Ghetto Trooper' and 'Kult'. Heavy sounds for the two steppers, laced with flickering rap style vocals. Will make you move.

Chen Yi aims for a collective approach of art. As an isolated group of humans/numbers operating directly from a secret place in Chelmsford (UK), they developped a personnal and “bizarre” utilisation of guitars, machines, voices, distortion, giving as result an unconventional regroupment of compositions amongst a lot of lost/unreleased recordings. This is likely what got John Peel interested which leads to an inexplicable CBS contract. More couldn’t be finalised, because CBS suddenly pulled out of the contract. “Due to their raw and alternative ’self-made’ musical approach, they’ve been compared to the likes of Throbbing Gristle, Borghesia & Severed Heads or more underground names as Het Zweet, Biting Tongues…

62ND CELL (reads sixty-second-cell) is the latest alias of UK producer Dave Campbell aka Hi-RYZE but also Ubik, Timenet, Kibu, Autonation and other sought after electronic classics from the early 1990s. Dave is enjoying a renaissance this year, releasing fresh outstanding electronic music with a new double 12” LP The Wood for the Trees on his own label YozMaz. Fusing classic techno programming with high-end production techniques, there’s a track to suit all dance floors and hi-fi home listening.

Two companion pieces make up the new Foom 12'. On the A-side, Ostgut Ton regular Tobias Freund artfully reframes PATRICK COWLEY & JORGE SOCARRAS' 'You Laugh At My Face.' It was produced by PATRICK COWLEY and recorded in his home studio in California in the late 1970s. On the B-side, elegantly balanced between euphoria and melancholia, HALF HAWAII (BRUNO PRONSATO & SAMMY DEE) share 'Watch The Flash' with us.

Has there ever been a better time to fuck off to the stars? Is a prison breakout ‘escapism’? Crisis carve some wound-space to let the dreams back in. In nights we turn to fire, in flight we burst into stone, where are the exits in this theatre of the damned? Strict luggage allocations – guitar (D. Knight), saxophone (S. Thrower) – and all the electronics your thoughts can carry. Headspin echoes, round and around, tilt wind-sails at a dark horizon, cut a stutter through the distance barrier. In to be out through the structure of the eye, encrusted with rotor-slime, pushing on through border erosions as everything melts into smoke, burning objects may be closer than they appear. Nebulae dazzle the shadows, tunnel through memories and the pulp-mass of neurons, forwards heading backwards, end of tether snapped, slide into the earth like ancient worms and breathe.

UnicaZürn’s core instrumentation blends analogue synthesiser, mellotron and electric piano with electric guitar and saxophone. Knight is reknowned for his pioneering multi-textured fretwork with Danielle Dax and Shock-Headed Peters, and his ambient guitar settings for Lydia Lunch, while Thrower’s reed playing provided rage and melancholy in Coil and turns to electro-acoustic texture in Cyclobe.

Consisting Neither Of One Lone Woman, Nor Hailing From Either The Eurasian Country Or The North American State, This Georgia Is In Fact Comprised Of Two Human Males Working Out Of China Town, N.y.c., Namely Brian Close And Justin Tripp. Together They Form A Creative Partnership Responsible For Not Just A Slew Of Output Upon Such Highly Regarded Imprints As Meakusma, Palto Flats And Emotional Response, But Also For A Kaleidoscopic Variety Of Multimedia Work With A Whole Host Of Clients, From The Corporate To The Counter Cultural. With An All Embracing, Freeform And In Some Ways Contradictory Approach To Production, Their Sound Is At Turns Stimulating, Terrifying, Comforting And Confounding. Separated From Any Visual Representation, The Audio On Its Own Becomes A Soundtrack For The Listeners' Own Intense Internal Projection Screen.

With 'time', Georgia's Vision Is Especially Well Realised As Here, In Collaboration With Fellow Intuitionists Firecracker Recordings, They Release Into This World An Album Which, With Any Luck, Shall Help You Unlock Your Inner Portals - Should They Need Assistance In That Regard Anyway. Unquantisable Polyrhythms Knock Against One Another In An Uncannily Externalised, Conflicting Collage Of Half Remembered Dance Ritual Memories. Fragmented Melodies, Disembodied Vocal Snippets, A Hint Of Ethnomusicality In Places All Give Deep Nods Simultaneously To Ancient Experience And To Post Human Intelligence, Condensing Past Present And Future Into One Eternal Instant.

'time' The Album Asks Us: What Happens When One Removes Ones Expectations Of Where In Time A Piece Of Music Or Art Must Sit And What Of Time Itself As A Construct, Now That We Have Myriad Ways Of Measuring It, Even At The Atomic Level; But Still Its Passing Is Completely Relative According To The Observer, And Indeed May All Be In Our Minds Anyway Equally, You Can Always Just Put It On - Again, And Again - Empty Your Mind Of Such Thoughts Completely, And Allow All Of Your Particles To Move Around Freely To This Joyful Noise... After All, That's The Point, Isn't It We're Gonna Have To Stop Asking Questions Eventually.

Active in Los Angeles’ 1980-1986 underground music scene, John Lafia is best known for the hypnotic album Prayers, released through Barry Craig’s influential, cassette-only label Trance Port Tapes. "Life Is Short", "A Promise", “Dream", “Hidden Things", "Spaghetti Western", and "Escape" come from that release.

This compilation also features tracks from subsequent Trance Port releases: LA Mantra 2 ’s "Queen Of The Nile" and Phantom Takes’ "The Moth". John’s “Odyssey Girls” appeared on the seminal 1983 spoken word LP, English As A Second Language. “The Confession,” a collaboration with legendary producer Ethan James, was released on 1986’s LP, Voices From North America. While recording this music, Hollywood-based John also dreamt of making his own films.

To support himself, he intermittently crewed on low-budget movies, including fellow UCLA Film School alumni, Alex Cox’s infamous Repo Man. Cinematic influence comes to the fore in titles such as, “Spaghetti Western”, “Queen Of The Nile”, “Escape”, and “Hidden Things”. Working alone endlessly in his home studio, John used the recording environment as a launching pad for exploring his uncensored psyche’s furthest dimensions. Hours of repetitive rhythms often transported him into trance-like states.

Tracks “Propaganda” and “Art Of The Jungle” exemplify this technique. Others, “4AM”, “Doubt”, and “Montgomery Park”, are miniature psychodramas (replete with three-act structures). Songs "Life Is Short", and "Dream" grapple with life’s fragile and unknowable essence. "The Moth", "Fourth Of July", and "SOS", are sonic journeys into trance-like repetition.

This intensely personal music never intended to "find" an audience; it was a means in and of itself. Its decades-later rebirth in this compilation is a joyous surprise.