Beats News

Air Lows is the debut solo album by Silvia Kastel. The Italian artist has been a fixture of the underground since her precocious teens, clocking up many miles in Control Unit with Ninni Morgia ('It's like Catherine Deneuve dumped two cases of post-Repulsion psychiatric notes over Pere Ubu's Dub Housing, lit the fuse and, ahem, stood well back" - Julian Cope), including collaborations with the likes of Smegma, Factrix, Gary Smith, Aki Onda and Gate (Michael Morley of The Dead C). Both solo and in her work with others, Kastel has explored the outer limits and inner workings of no wave, industrial, dub, extreme electronics, free rock and improvisation. Air Lows is both her fullest and most refined offering to date, a work of vivid, isolationist electronics which draws deeply on her past experience but assuredly breaks new ground. Prompted by a late-flowering interest in techno and club music, Kastel sought to create something which combines a steady rhythmic pulse with the otherworldly sonorities of musique concrete, and avant-garde synth sounds inspired by Japanese minimalism and techno-pop (Haruomi Hosono's Philharmony being a particular favourite). The formal artifice of muzak / elevator music, the intros and outros of generic popular songs, the extreme light-heavy contrasts of jungle, the creative sampling of hardcore, and the very 'human' synths in the jazz of Herbie Hancock's Sextant and Sun Ra: all were touchstones for Air Lows' conception and composition, and all strains of music addressing - or complicating - the relationship between the human and the technological. By extension, visual inspirations also proved important: anime, and the avant-garde fashion of Rei Kawakubo. What does that shirt or dress sound like Though used sparingly, Kastel's voice remains her key instrument, whether subject to dissociative digital manipulations as on 'Bruell', delivering matter-of-fact spoken monologues, or providing splashes of pure tonal colour. Recorded between her expansive Italy studio and a more compact, ersatz set-up in Berlin, Air Lows gradually takes on some of the character of the German capital: you can hear the wide streets and uninhabited spaces, the seepage of never-ending nightlife, the loneliness. Air Lows is The Wizard of Oz in reverse: the glorious technicolour J-pop deconstructions of its first half leading inexorably to the icy noir of 'Spiderwebs' and 'Concrete Void'. These later tracks are reminiscent of 2015's magnificent 39 12', Kastel in the role of numbed, nihilistic chanteuse stalking dank, murky tunnels of reverb and sub-bass. But in fact there is contradiction and emotional ambiguity to Air Lows from the outset, and throughout - a sense of both infinite space and acute claustrophobia; energy and inertia; fluency and restraint.

LTD / Translucent Red

- Team Dreams' is the collaborative album of Sin Fang, Sóley and Örvar Smárason of múm and FM Belfast. It combines the individual strengths of three acclaimed musicians, blends folk sensibilities with futuristic pop beats. It's an emotive ocean of sound, melodies and miniature stories that gently washes over you. And it's easily one of the best albums the three Reykjavík artists have been involved in.

*The No Man Is An Island EP is a single cut from the debut album of the same name by Aalko, a new project by Kebko Music founder Akiko Kiyama. Renowned for her minimal techno track featured in Richie Hawtin's seminal DE9 Transitions album, the Japanese producer reveals her another side under this new alias. The project has already created a stir as Aalko has garnered support from Gilles Peterson on his BBC 6 Music radio show and premiered a live performance at MUTEK's Tokyo launch, where she drew the audience into an inspiring frenzy.

Aalko is a culmination of Kiyama's recent practices in a wider musical spectrum that go beyond the confines of her minimalistic techno characteristics. It conjures her distinctive soundscape where a variety of styles coexists: she demonstrates her knack for breaks, ambient and irregular time signatures, her acute ears for unadulterated tone and texture of sounds standing out in sharp relief.

Taking a floor-oriented side out of the No Man Is An Island cassette album, this single cut features three tracks that work wonders in a DJ context. "Body & Soul" is an erratic rhythm experiment jumping between several beat styles. "Mixture" offers Kiyama's unique interpretation on syncopated dynamics of breaks. Wrapping up the EP is 'B.I.C', a long-awaited exclusive track that ranked among Gilles Peterson's top 20 tracks of 2017. Its dubby functionality makes it a powerful tool that can work at various stages of the night.

These tracks give the nod to Kiyama's peculiar self full of sonic idiosyncrasies, showing no fear of breaking accepted conventions.

* Fully embracing its penchant for explorative music, DAC Records invites Alex Augier.
* His work offers a cross-cutting musical perspective, allowing hybrid aesthetics that includes sound and visual components. These components interact within the stage area, taking the form of singular audiovisual performances.
* This time, Germination, his first solo EP, is purely musical work composed of organic, visceral, living sounds, both fragile and mighty. The electronic music is free of constraints imposed by the dedicated instruments. Embodied by large dynamic ranges and a constantly moving temporality, Germination tells an evolving process, in full bloom, with its share of mutations and strange directions.
* Germination is composed of four tracks, including one remix by Roly Porter. In the same vein as Alex Augier, the co-founder of Subtext Recordings explores the experimental music boundaries, both electronically and instrumentally

This is a vinyl release of the debut album from 2007 (Ubiquity Records) celebrating a 10 year anniversary
I'm kinda like a blond (less good looking) Vincent Gallo, but with self-irony.

The crew behind A Strangely Isolated Place firmly believes that this collection is Christian Kleine's strongest album since 2001 set Beyond Repair, and we tend to agree. It's made up of material recorded in the same period - between 1998 and 2001, to be exact - and showcases a range of impressive electronica tracks that pit the crunchy, computer controlled bottom-end of Skam-style IDM with warm chords, rich basslines, subtle jazz influences and some life-affirming electronic melodies. The German producer has always excelled at finding the right balance between forthright experimentalism and atmospheric musicality, and Electronic Music From The Lost World is a particularly fine example.

All tracks written & produced by Solune in a sonic hut nestled
underneath the intense flow of a grey western european city.

* Released for the first time on vinyl
* The ultimate collection of rare early materials by this electronic music pioneer
* Comes as a deluxe double LP set with insert and extensive liner notes . Limited black vinyl pressing (700 copies) with obi strip.

Klaus Schulze is a German electronic music pioneer, composer and musician that needs very little introduction. In the late sixties & early seventies he was a member of several iconic bands such as 'Tangerine Dream', 'The Cosmic Jokers' & 'Ash Ra Tempel' before launching a solo career consisting of more than 60 albums released across five decades. Collaborations were numerous and highlights include working with Steve Winwood, Brian Eno & Alphaville... just to name a few.

Klaus Schulze's proto moog-synthesizer work is regarded as a milestone in electronic music & during the decades he released landmark albums in genres catalogued as 'Ambient', 'Electronic', 'New Age', 'Berlin School', 'Experimental', 'Kosmische Musik' & 'Krautrock'. Mr. Schulze had a more organic sound than most electronic artists of the time, often he would throw in decidedly non-electronic sounds such as acoustic guitar and a male operatic voice. Schulze is also known for developing a Minimoog technique that sounds uncannily like an electric guitar, which is quite impressive in concert.

On occasions he would also compose film scores such as Body Love (1977), Barracuda (1978), Next of Kin (1982), & Angst (1983). His best known song 'Freeze' has been used in films like Manhunter (1986) and more recently in Sofia Coppola's 'The Bling Ring' from 2013.

In 2009, producer Klaus D. Mueller and Schulze began releasing La Vie Electronique ( The Electronic Life'), a series of sets that collected rare sought-after early works & unreleased tracks put in chronological sequence. These sets contain some of the best music Klaus ever created and are early 70's masterworks that will appeal to both fans and collectors.

Now available for the first time on vinyl, One Way Static Records presents the first volume in our new archival series 'La Vie Electronique'. This volume (1.0) focuses on the years 1968-1971 and is spread over two glorious LP's containing +78 minutes of Klaus Shulze rarities. This deluxe vinyl set also comes with an insert containing extensive liner notes.

MAGNETIK NORTH is 'live drum electronics'. Drum performances are fed through processors, samplers and sequencers to produce layers of rhythmic patterns that interact with each other. Other instruments are melted into different textures so that only the harmonic content remains. This is a new project from Ian Tregoning, engineer and producer for artists as diverse as Yello and Fela Kuti.Now working with Jaki Liebezeit, the legendary drummer from CAN, to add his endless evolving rhythms. Jaki's in a world of his own as he balances technical brilliance with subtle restraint. Recording started in the Summer 2006 in an old jazz studio in the south of Ko¨ln. Jaki arrived with a minimal drum kit including customised cymbals, a snare and a huge Gretsch floor-tom from the CAN days. All of Jaki's performances are 'complete takes' with no drop-ins, loops or edits.The backing tracks for 'evolver' were recorded without using key changes. Each song features one key which is held continuously while other instruments and effects are blended with the key. Drums (also tuned to the same key) were added last which is another unusual technique. As Jaki says 'they're often overlooked as tuned instruments in their own right'. The finished results are a minimal blend of industrial and classical. Like listening to a 'raga in an earthquake'.Guest musicians include :
KUMO shaker ^ ARP 2600
LEE HARRIS (fromTALKTALK) djembe ^c hinesepercussion
ANDY BAXTER bass
MICHAEL POLLITT wash guitar
TIM HUTTON trumpet
JOE HOLLICK guitar

Necessary first vinyl edition of Hollywood Medieval, the debut album of psychogeographic dramaturgy by Manchester-born soundtrack composer, Maxwell Sterling. It was initially issued
as a digital release on LA-based Memory No.36 Recordings in 2016 to a round of acclaim from Fact Magazine and The Wire and has now been re-mastered by Matt Colton for this vinyl edition.
It sounds as plasticky sensuous as it should, and arguably looks worthy of a wall or pedestal in a Bel-Air or Moss Side pad thanks to its striking bespoke cover art collage by radical feminist and
Manchester punk legend, Linder (Sterling), aka Maxwell's mum.
Hollywood Medieval is an album about the glaring disparities and elaborate, underlying convolutions the composer observed and felt while working as a nanny for wealthy parents during his film composition studies at UCLA in the early part of the 2010s. Using an augmented palette of classic DX7 and Juno 60 synths along with a severely warped bank of library samples and iPhone recordings, it spells out a queasily evocative simulacra of the city in flux, animating a sort of Ballardian tableaux that's hyper-descriptive in its rendering of the hazy, dosed-up, and often
delirious transitions between Hollywood's glamour and grime, using LA's gurning facades and ostentatious wealth as prompts for a richly visual side of sawn-off emotive signposts and jazz-
taut turns of phrase that vividly etch on the memory in neon freehand.
From the dizzying sugar rush of the opening sequence, Hollywood Medieval I, to its spiralling counterpoint in Hollywood Medieval II, the album is an inception-like concerto, with Maxwell smartly subverting the film score composer's role by placing the music centre stage and allowing the narration to be carried by virtuosic flourishes owing to the artist's classical and jazz music
schooling,
In a sense, Hollywood Medieval resonates with the way Sam Kidel subverted the nature of ambient music on Disruptive Muzak (RAVE014), and offers an alternative, lucid view of the hazy LA offered by Delroy Edwards' Teenage Tapes (RAVE005), and likewise, works like a present diagnosis of the dystopian future worlds dreamed up in The Sprawl's dystopian, widescreen visions on EP1
(RAVE013), effectively broadening and illuminating The Death of Rave's own sonic hauntology.

Marking 20 years of Prurient and Hospital Productions' concurrent paths, the epic 3 hr 20 minutes of Rainbow Mirror inarguably ranks among Prurient's most compelling statements. While still the blood child of Dominick Fernow, the album's massive scope demanded more hands on board, with Jim Mroz (Lussuria) and Matt Folden (Dual Action) lending their expertise before post-production by Shifted and mastering by Paul Corley cemented this towering work of Doom Electronics for the ages.

Offered up as 'a portrait in perpetual tension', and housed in cover art created as the first collage in the pre-recording era of Prurient, Rainbow Mirror draws on the project's roots in order to locate itself in the modern day. What it finds in the process is that little has changed since Prurient and Hospital Productions' conception in '97 - the world is still a torrid, evil mess beyond control, and one that needs notions like Prurient to try and define its heaving mass more than ever.

Like Frozen Niagara Falls before it, echoes of the old world riddle the long, stark corridors of Rainbow Mirror, too. But here those echoes are more fragmented, distant and entropically obfuscated, emulating the effect of trying to find your own image in a hall of mirrors, or locating yourself drowning amid the clamour of more than 3 billion other people online, all saying the same, mundane shit at the same time.

With a length and intensity proportionately reflective of the world's increasing socio-political tension and rate of homogeneity, Rainbow Mirror holds firm as a space to immolate the senses in preparation for the ever nearing eschaton.

Son Lux reemerge with their forthcoming fifth full-length LP, Brighter Wounds, finding the trio in command of a daring, multidirectional sound, expressing naturally the proclivity for surprise and contrast that characterize the project's output. The new release explores the violence of love, the beauty of sacrifice, and the specter of impermanence.Anchored by its cinematic heart, All Directions,' the album ranges from the thunderous charge of Dream State' to the sputtering, soulful lilt of Slowly.' Ryan Lott's devastating vocal on "Aquatic," guitarist Rafiq Bhatia's blooming flower melismas on "Labor," and drummer Ian Chang's nearly inhuman rhythmic calculus on "The Fool You Need" illuminate a curious and delicate balance of precision and pain.Since 2015's Bones, the band's profile has grown in the worlds of music, dance, and film. Each member now charts their respective solo paths, and their individual adventures find a home within the purview of Son Lux. On Brighter Wounds, collaborators range from longtime cohorts Rob Moose (Y Music, Bon Iver, The National) and DM Stith (Sufjan Stevens), to new friends trumpeter Dave Douglas and reedist/instrument builder Arrington de Dionyso.Son Lux has made invention its hallmark through continued exploration and experimentation. With Brighter Wounds, the triad NPR proclaimed the world's most lethal band" now grips exhilaration and heartache in full embrace. In the words of the album's closing refrain, "is this what the resurrection feels like"

Initially the music by The Knob, The Finger & The It was conceived as some sort of ritual background ambient during extensive electroacoustic picnics by the river or in the fields. In the course of these sessions, The Knob, The Finger & The It make use of battery powered miniature electronics, DIY synths and acoustic bricolage, which mingle with the sounds of the open space: some wind, a crackling campfire, a train passing by over a bridge nearby...
However, local weather conditions as well as annually recurring festivities made The Knob, The Finger & The It escape to their inside homes now and again, where they started to explore the miraculous possibilities of modern studio technique.
Two tracks on this album - F. F. Erde and Grasebene 3, were taped live outside, and no posterior changes were made. All other pieces were recorded in the studio.
Astro Camping is based on recordings from 2012-2016. The first 50 copies come with an interstellar gimmick. The Knob, The Finger & The It are: Tobias Grewenig, Andreas Oskar Hirsch, Volker Hennes.
Cover photographs by Andreas Oskar Hirsch.

Re-issue eines Meilensteins aus den 80ern. Remastered inklusive eines 24-seitigen Booklets mit Archivmaterial und Anmerkungen von David Tool.
Im Original auf dem Quartz Label veröffentlicht findet - Whirled Music nach 38 Jahren den Weg zum Black Truffle Label von Oren Ambarchi.

- Whirled Music" beinhaltet eine außergewöhnliche Serie von Aufführungen von Max Eastley, Steve Beresford, Paul Burwell und David Toop und ist somit ein Schlüsseldokument der erfindungsreichen und energetischen Impro-Szene der späten 70er und frühen 80er Jahre.

Faitiche announces the launch of its new Acoustic Surveillance Series. Each 7" vinyl single in the series presents a historical system for acoustic surveillance, beginning with uguisubari by G.E.S.. The pieces on the record feature recordings of uguisubari - special floors in Japanese temples and castles.

After Un Reve, second of the trilogy of LPs recorded at studios Davout during the heyday of punk: 'a guided tour through the ruins of a civilisation'; and an evilous, innovative prophesy of electro, industrial, post-rock and noise.

Kalakuta Soul Records joins forces with waf80music to proudly present Kai Niggemann's solo debut, an all original album of outrageous poetically abstract music created live and without overdubs on a Buchla 200e Electric Music Box, one of the rarest and most sought after electronic music instruments. Working on the platform since 2013, Kai Niggemann has become one of Germany's leading artists who perform live with a Buchla 200e. His style is an electro-acoustic storytelling, a clubby dreamscape and a poetically-abstract kraut-infused energetic mix of new Elektronische Musik with contemporary club culture. Nerds love the technology and clubbers love the throbbing drive of the basslines. It's all improvised and recorded live in Berlin — yet it sounds meticulously crafted in a dark basement studio throughout the entire last winters. Kai is a member of the 30-piece kraut-noise-jazz collective "The Dorf" and the electronics duo "The Last Books" (with Achim Zepezauer), performs and records with Mia Zabelka (Vienna) as "Redshift Orchestra", cofounded the internet-computermusic "European Bridges Ensemble" (EBE, e-b-e.eu) and the electroacoustic duo "Resonator". His most recent releases were the CD/vinyl "Lux" (feat. the noise drone artist N), "EviL/EvyL" and the cassette "Made in Österreich" with The Dorf (feat. Caspar Brötzmann & FM Einheit (Ex-Einstürzende Neubauten) or "Thinking Light" by Redshift Orchestra (duo with Mia Zabelka). He performed concerts with Mia Zabelka (Wien), Yoshio Machida (JP), Trap & Zoid (BE), Stian Westerhus or Shahzad Ismaily (with The Dorf) among many others.

Finally here we are with the fourth release on Last Drop Records, signed by the london-based Stavrogin. 'Collectors' takes a more subdued approach from his debut on Australian label 3BS, focusing on ampdriven ambient textures and digital experimentation. 'Sixty Acres' is a juddering mass of static textures and penetrative low-end, forcing itself to a crumbled close. Title track 'Collectors' is something like the afterglow. Weary and destitute, the track stumbles through heatwave-soaked atmospheres, fragmented voices stuttering like a malfunctioning android. 'Are These Actual Miles' is perhaps the most direct, with its tremors of noise punctuated by a rhythmic pulse. This is a feature Italian duo Ichinen have capitalised on in their closing remix, reducing the track to a warbling, dead-eyed drum workout.

The fifth album, from 1976, originally out on Cobra. 'Intense, violent, bitter, abrasive, uncompromising prefigurations of Industrial and post-rock. It is easy to understand why Merzbow, Wolf Eyes and Oren Ambarchi all wanted to collaborate. Whilst run-of-the-mill comparisons between Heldon/Pinhas and King Crimson/Fripp are hitherto sustainable, Un Rêve Sans Conséquence Spéciale explosively busts open new ground.'

Currently undertaking a residency at the prestigious EMS Stockholm, Egyptian producer Ahmed El Ghazoly makes a stunning 2nd mark on Lee Gamble's UIQ label with Numbers, a ruggedly chopped but spatially hypersensitive suite of encrypted electronic rhythms and entrancing, mirage-like geometries.
Boldly committed to his own niche between the folds of grime, techno and electro-acoustic dimensions, Zuli's follow-up to the Bionic Ahmed EP pushes it's loping designs into stranger, spaces within the sound field, finding an idiosyncratic ecology of frequency that finds room for dense, physical subbass, smeared vocals and iridescent motifs amid its morphing dimensions.
The six tracks exemplify Zuli's playfully paradoxical approach to club music, experimenting with tessellating dry and fluid textures in the dusty, humid London-via-Cairo swerve of Bow which cranks opens the EP, to the metastable techno momentum in the buckling rolige of CommProto, while She's Hearing Voices feels like a smoking area between rooms, heard in a queasy but spangled state.
That all feels like preparation for the second wind of the B-side, which convulses into action with the chromatic trance warp of What You Do and its grubbing Autechrian inversion, Tongue Chomper, only to slide off the page in Foam Home's future primordial glob of melted dancehall.
The hooks may be less explicit or tangible here than on his debut EP, but Numbers is proof, if it were needed, of a restless mind which is only just coming into its own.

* BEAK> return with a fantastic new single, 'Sex Music'. This is the first taste of new BEAK> music since 2015's BEAK>/ * 'Sex Music' sets the mood with its four minutes of slinking grooves, with tense, blaring synths and driving drums. A murky and experimental dealing of electronica which morphs into its own identity.
* The 7' is pressed on coloured vinyl. The B-side is a remix of 'Sex Music' by Win Butler of Arcade Fire.

Originally released on Brainfeeder in 2011, Tokimonsta's own Young Art Records is proud to reissue Creature Dreams on blue vinyl. Tokimonsta is not content with standard 4/4 time signatures and verse- chorus-verse-style track construction — her instrumental compositions are a mind-melting mix of intricately layered samples, exotic percussion, and live instrumentation. Her songs take a strange approach to mellow both cosmic and off-kilter. The seven tracks on Creature Dreams are all distinct, but still work well together, from the breezy vocals of Little Pleasures' (with Gavin Turek), to the freaky, panned sound effects of Stigmatizing Sex,' to the neck-breaking stomp of the closer Day Job.' Akin to artists like Daedelus and Flying Lotus this is modern-day head music for listeners bored with simple genres.' - Apple Music

Sam Kidel from Young Echo opens proceedings with a beautifully rolling, pastoral re-arrangement of the melodies of South East Of The Mountain, keeping a watchful eye on the original, dread b-line. Then some chilled ragga from O$VMV$M, versioning Skeletal. Finally Helm takes the helm, with a startling re-animation of Bloom, brilliantly tipping the registers of Music For Airports on their side.

A generation younger than the founders of the Teklife crew, DJ Rashad and DJ Spinn, DJ Taye was originally a rapper and beat maker before hooking up with the collective and jumping into the world of footwork production and DJing.
However, it was Rashad's untimely passing in 2014 that was the unlikely catalyst for developing the sounds and ideas for this album. He says, "When Rashad passed away I felt inspired to continue evolving the music that I loved so much coming up in this world. So, I had to do something...make something brand new."

100% committed to pushing further the potential of the footwork template, Still Trippin' is ambitious in its range and scope. Taking two years to formulate, the record broadens the possibilities of the sound, forcing it to adapt to songwriting, and also revives Taye's talent for MCing and producing beats to which he can rap and sing. Furthermore Taye definitely ups the ante with his complex and precise drum programming, never losing sight of footwork's ability to confound. The album features a range of guests that span contemporary music, the eccentric, instructive rapping of Chuck Inglish of Detroit duo the Cool Kids is featured on 'Get It Jukin', Odile Myrtil, a young vocalist from Montreal, lends her smokey soul to 'Same Sound', Fabi Reyna, the editor of the celebrated women's guitar magazine She Shreds, sings and plays bass and rhythm guitar on 'I Don't Know' and Jersey club queen UNIIQU3 offers production and rapping on 'Gimme Some Mo'.Also, Teklife members DJ PayPal and DJ Manny assist on production, and DJ Lucky is a guest MC on 'Smokeout'. Taye is ambitious in his hopes for the album, "I took this as an opportunity to not have boundaries with footwork. Different approaches to our 'underground' sound to make it broader. It's only underground until it crosses that visible threshold.' This album brings all of this to the forefront.

The urgency and viscera - both live and on record - that led Yorkshire-based five-piece Hookworms to prominence across two blistering full length albums, 2013's 'Pearl Mystic' and 2014 follow-up 'The Hum', remains. However, as they return with
their much-anticipated third record 'Microshift', the band deliver a seismic shift in their sound, dynamic, songwriting and production.
Radiant, immersive and teeming with light but still heavy and forceful, the music on 'Microshift' acts as a very deliberate counter to some of the difficult topics the album's lyrics address - ranging from death, disease, heartbreak, body image and even natural disaster.
Hookworms have pulled off a triumph against adversity, a comeback with what they may see as a 'Microshift' but is in fact a massive advancement.
CD in spined mini LP wallet and printed inner sleeve. LP pressed on 180g heavyweight black vinyl, with printed inner sleeve and digital download code.

Wriggling away from any clear classification, as 80s Italian new music was wont to do, yet clearly drawing on a number of traditions and procedures, Andreoni and Paladino's AEOLYCA project stands on its own as it intersects the two musicians' already well established partnership in A.T.R.O.X. and The Doubling Riders among other settings with the sounds generated by Mario Ciccioli's aeolian sculptures. Neither aiming for the organic purity of Harry Bertoia's Sonambient recordings or the complex constructions of Mario Bertoncini's works with aeolian harps, AEOLYCA walks a line of resistance in refusing to get with any program. The music that was produced in Andreoni and Paladino's interaction with the recordings extracted by Emiliano Licastro from Ciccioli's sculptures is one that breaks the boundaries between the sound and musical sources.

The work is divided between the quick pop timings of the Rain on the Bells', Sunday Clothes for Brass Bands' and The Peruvian Club' and the longer eponymous structured compositions that bookend the record each track characterized by a dominant sonority inspired by specific iterations of globalized musics. Ultimately, though, notwithstanding their individual structural and sound diversities, the project is indebted to the sampler, the ultimate absorber, the sound source that takes up the most musical space and the possibilities of eroding sources and styles that it imposes.

Further, to indicatively attest the historical context from which it emerges, the 1980s as they came to a close, AEOLYCA was originally released on cassette, that decade's foremost format, agile, immediate, economical and for a US label (Violet Glass Oracle).

This is music that has digested many of the period's instinctive gestures. It exists as a satellite, incapable and unwilling to articulate antecedents and to nurture descendants. This is a unique work in Andreoni and Paladino's well documented activity, individually, in duo, and in their eclectic collaborations with the likes of Roger Eno and Riccardo Sinigaglia. Like the Time Zones Festival from which this project got its start AEOLYCA is what you find on the 'path of possible musics'.

- Peter Sarram

And so, steadily, Roberto Musci's works are being made available for our listening pleasure. Soave's edition of 'the complete sessions' of The Loa of Music, Musci's debut album from 1984, is now flanked by Urban and Tribal Portraits, another milestone from 1988, a key collaboration with fellow sidereal world traveler Giovanni Venosta, whose essential and amazing debut album Olympic Signals was also recently repressed. While a number of the recordings that comprise this particular work have been (relatively) available --through a ReR anthology that also included tracks from the other Musci/Venosta collaboration, Water Messages on Desert Sand as well as some integrated in the Music From Memory compilation, Tower of Silence, released under Musci's name only—this is indeed the first time one can listen to this fundamental work as it was meant to be heard. Not a minor detail for a work that was obviously conceptually and narratively rigorously conceived by Musci and Venosta.

And what a listen it is.


Urban and Tribal Portraits reaffirms the idea of postmodern pastiche as a multimedia multisensory experience and sound as an ecosystem that is both aleatory and concrete, ephemeral and durable. In these binary paradoxes, a radical notion of the nature of collaboration, that is both chance induced and conversely conceptually worked out, is also established. The result is a work that exposes the fixed assumptions about the constructed boundaries and flows between musical traditions and practices. On its own this is the ultimately problematic place where many of the so-called musics concerned with the world reach an impasse, incapable as they are of questioning their own basic assumptions and ultimately end up strengthening those very same boundaries and flows that they had apparently set out to challenge. Musci and Venosta go further, principally and more fundamentally, by picking away at the margins of pure sonorous events and musical material, noise and sonance. In doing so,Urban and Tribal Portraits repoliticizes the notion of pastiche, engaging as it does in a kind of ecopractice, turning the process rather than the musical object into the poetic focus of the work. Fixed categories are rendered ephemeral, temporal and spatial categories including the margins, so hard to overcome, between composition, improvisation, authorship, recordedness and live performance are deconstructed. In the end, where one would expect seriousness there is levity and where one might see some postmodern appropriative ironic juxtaposition there is intensity and respect of the magical organicness of the material sources.


Like much Italian experimental music from that magical decade of the 80s this is not your dad's fourth world music, with all of its ambiguous aestheticism of 'unifying' some not so well defined primitivism of 'world ethnic styles' with the futuristic sounds of whatever 'advanced electronic techniques' were the platter du jour. In this sound the 8-bits of the E-Mu Emax is as primitive as the Jews Harp while the electronically treated Pygmy chants turn out to be as futuristic as the multi-timbral capacities of the OB-8.


From the funk ostinatos of El Lamento de Los Ayatollah' where Venosta showcases his straight piano playing to the rarefied queer guitar arpeggios in Tamatave', the peaceful ripples in Dialogue Between a Dreamer and Others', the playfulness of Starfish & Kangaroos' or the post-punkish This Heat/Cabaret Voltaire aggression in The Fear of a Soldier' this is destabilization as praxis, a shifting of the ground. The new cover image, that replaces the ethno patchwork of the original sleeve (beautiful as it was) is indeed more to the point: Sven Hedkin's photograph of early 20th century Tibetan death masks is at once urban and tribal, surrealist in its uncanniness. Just like in surrealist praxis these sounds offer some kind of redemption: sounds used in alternative ways, distinct from their usual connections, deconstructed. A DIY bricolage: a destructuring of everyday sound objects towards new uses fed by local ecosituated experiences, transformative of performance and listening. Surrealist 'musicking' indeed.

-Peter Sarram

Eccentric, polymetric polyphonics from inquisitive Australian sound artist Ross Manning, returning to Lawrence English's Room40 with a scattershot batch of pots 'n pans rhythms and noise.
In august this year, Manning opened his first major survey exhibition, dissonant rhythms, at brisbane's institute of modern art. As part of the exhibition, a monograph and LP edition, titled reflex in waves, were prepared to celebrate this milestone.
This LP brings together a series of sonic approaches Manning has been developing for over a decade. specifically concerned with waves and the impacts of their resulting vibration. quietly producing audio works out of his studio in Yeronga, on the south side of brisbane city,Manning's works are based on a series of deeply personal instrument designs, tape manipulation and other exploratory approaches. his instruments, which are often percussive, use harmonically related materials that are activated by motor-driven strings. the resulting sound is a chaotic but pulse-like cluster of harmony. developing sets of uniquely pitched materials. His instruments each maintain a distinct quality; no two instruments sound alike and although the way in which they
are 'performed' may be similar, the resulting sound is anything but familiar."

Sole release by this Colombian band that surfaces briefly after the Speakers, Young Beats, Ampex and Time Machine era comes to an end. The band boasts an Italian jazz-rock drummer Roberto Fiorilli and legendary Genesis Bassist Humberto Monroy. The record consists of one theme divided into two long experimental progressive ventures (Viaje I and Viaje II) of fierce, fluid and free collective improvisation with spacey feels and a rich texture of Hammond organ, guitar, bass, tenor sax, percussion and drums that takes the listener on a trippy psychedelic krautrock-sounding out there' voyage.. First performed live at the Festival de la vida' in Bogotá in 1970 with an audience of close to ten thousand, Siglo Cero's concert was then recorded in the legendary Ingeson studio with the same musicians and same production as the live gig. This concert became a pivotal and highly influential experience for an entire generation of soon to be Colombian rockers who tuned-in to the irreverent breaking of boundaries that this music showcased. Comes with liner notes From Zodiaco co-founder Álvaro Díaz Manrique.

This fully licensed album is released in high quality heavy paste-on gatefold cover, limited to 500 copies in black vinyl

From Ernst Thoma's secret vaults. First 2 chapters of Mr. Thoma's fun with the Serge Modular Music System and TMS Synthesizer, accompanied by Knut Remond on weird "laced square drum"

Live recorded at Raum 2 and at Koprod Studio Zürich in 1981 and 1982

Remastered reissue of Whitney's recording originally released on tape cassette in 1983.

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Produced and engineered by Walter Whitney from April 1982 to August 1983 at Subterranean Sound Studios, accompanied by Carl Weingarten and David Udell's guitar magic sounds.

Japonaiserie was the term the Dutch post-impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh used to express the influence of Japanese art. Artists including Manet, Degas and Monet, followed by Van Gogh, began to collect the cheap colour wood-block prints called ukiyo-e prints" A mini LP by Benoit B, the boss of Banlieue Records , on which he creates a futuristic environment influenced by the Japanese electronics of the '80s. A musical "Japanaiserie" that can melt your cold cold heart.

Idiology was originally released in 2001 and is now finally back on vinyl. This re-issue is pressed on white color vinyl and presented in a die cut jacket with artworked inner sleeve and free download card. From their beginnings in 1992, Cologne native Jan St. Werner and Dusseldorfer Andi Toma have consistently challenged electronic music"s paradigm in often surprising and always intriguing ways. Idiology is the duo"s seventh album and is no exception to this rule, as Mouse on Mars surround themselves with strings, woodwinds, brass and the band"s own heavily modified fleet of machines in the St. Martin"s Tonstudio. Fans should once again brace themselves for the inevitable shock of the new as Germany"s most irreverent audio renegades have created the perfect soundtrack for a highly sinister dance party. Kicking off with "Actionist Respoke", the album"s first single, Mouse on Mars officially declare their independence from glitchtronica"s shoegazing legions. Longtime collaborator Dodo Nkishi lends a uniquely warped vocal sensibility to the track which already features Mouse on Mars"s darkest grooves to date. The rest of the album continues to thicken the group"s sonic stew. Tracks such as "Presence" and "Catching Butterflies With Hands" have their populist intentions undermined by Werner and Toma"s meddling hands, while the duo reprise their flirtation with the orchestral as heard on the opening tracks from 2000"s Niun Niggung. At the other end of the spectrum, "Introduce" is a truly evil slice of twisted lympho-zoid hip-hop. Idiology takes no prisoners in its dual-pronged assault on the conventions of modern music. Only with the loungy closing number, "Fantastic Analysis" (a term Werner and Toma invented to describe their working process), do Mouse on Mars let the arrangements breathe a long sigh of relief, the calm after the storm. To enable these stylistic achievements Mouse on Mars enlist the help of partners in crime such as: Nkishi, the multi-talented Harald "Sack" Ziegler, house icon Matthew Herbert on piano, violinist Matty Arouse, in addition to fellow programming wizards Adam "Vert" Butler and F.X. Randomiz. The latter two toured with Mouse on Mars in 2000 as they successfully triumphed over audiences around the globe.

Following the Adelaide electro sounds of Furious Frank's 'Magic Mountain EP', Ken Oath returns with an eye-opening survey of modern ambient music along Australia's coast. "Breathing Space" is the intermingling of organic and synthetic textures - lyrical birdsong and field recordings that evoke the immense natural beauty of Australia alongside blissful pads and synthesizers that echo the calming waves from lazy days spent by the beach. With contributions from Ken Oath alumni Donald's House and Angophora's Max Santilli alongside 9 other hand-picked Australian artists, these meditations on antipodean flora and fauna are essential listening for anyone interested in a contemporary relaxation experience.

An Edible Body, Wind Atlas' new album, marks a turning point in the band's trajectory. Their third record builds a new space for the band to experiment and play with new sounds and electronic rhythms. Strangely, An Edible Body is the band's most experimental album and at the same time the most accessible.

After a change in the band's formation at the end of the Lingua Ignota (BFE, 2015) tour, Wind Atlas take a break from performing as to discover new sounds and work on a new album. Without a bass player, the band turns to electronic music as an answer for mixing their ritual ways with new intensities and rhythms never explored by them before. If their first albums, the EP Fen Fire (BPR, 2012) and The Not Found (BPR, 2013), were essentially influenced by 4AD's eighties bands like Cocteau Twins or Dead Can Dance, with Lingua Ignota, Wind Atlas discover an array of possibilities beyond the bands initial reverb-pumped folk songs. Opening up to post-punk, primitive sounds and spiritual chants, they begin to include post-industrial hints that would later crystallize in the form of this new album, An Edible Body.

In search of this new sound, the band decide to record the album in New York with Sean Ragon, main figure of the current post-industrial scene, leader of the band Cult of Youth -whom they meet after performing together in Barcelona- and occasional guitarist of Psychic TV, seminal band of the industrial music scene: the chemistry in the studio was immediate. An Edible Body was recorded in just two weeks, one freezing month of February in 2017, at Sean Ragon's basement studio in Maspeth, Queens, New York.

The album experiments not only with new sounds but also with new forms of speech. That's why 'Desertor'opens the album, a crude and simple song, in which the voice finds itself almost alone, in the aridity of a desert, threatened by a noise in the background. Interferences interrupt the words and the voice goes out of tune due to tape manipulation.

That interference foretells what is to come, the anticipation of a new affirmation called 'Shedding Light'. The drum machine blends with the acoustic drums and metal plates, the synthesizers stand out and the voice sings ironically to a new reality, built in a more assertive and cruder way than in previous albums.

Despite the apparent distance between songs, An Edible Body sounds oddly solid. The dark ambient sound of 'Camino de la cruz' is far from 'How to Liquify' or 'Ruins', the most unabashed pop song the band has composed to date. In a way, Sean Ragons production gives unity to an eminently heterogenous album. The eastern influences of Lingua Ignota reappear in 'Herencia de Jade', with a danceable industrial beat that takes on more significance when performed live.

'En la cruz' is a techno tribute to San Juan de la Cruz and probably, one of the central tracks on the album. The new version of some of the verses from his Cántico espiritual combined with a dense rhythm that culminates in a polifony of voices affirming the existence of the force of the invisible, product of Sean Ragon's magic in the studio thanks to the sound processors used on bands like Coil or Chris and Cosey.

On the other extreme we find 'Under these Waters', a sound poem that sings to a theme present in the band's imaginary from the start: the uncanniness of water. 'Under these Waters' is a song with a strong sexual component built through hipnotic cadences and suggestive synthesizers.

'To Clarice' is a post-industrial ballad, fundamental to understand Wind Atlas' new vibe. Again, the influence of poet Leopoldo María Panero is reflected in the lyrics, which speak of a cathartic encounter. 'To Clarice' is also an offering to writer Clarice Lispector, as well as a recognition of one's body and the foreign body, its senses and its meanings.