Beats News

The red lights of Hamburg meet the Heated Heads of Glasgow as Rubadub's Mark 'Mother' Maxwell delivers the latest mixtape for V I S, building up quite a reputation for a brilliantly diverse series of mixtapes, among it's great standalone releases. This one takes us from sub-aquatic ferric drone pieces to what sounds like Industrial Gamelan and back via all sorts of post-wavey madness. Operational under several aliases including Mother, DJ Feedback, DJ Foodbank and DJ Floorfillers, Mark Maxwell is among the current generation of Scottish DJs thinking well outside the box such as Bake All Caps, Ssofay and the 12th Isle crew. Heavily involved with distribution at Rubadub, Maxwell's activities extend to running the intermittently active Heated Heads label responsible for those stellar records from Shady P and Shit & Shine.
Like any self-respecting Scottish DJ, Maxwell's knowledge of techno runs deep - see his LIES podcast from a few years back for evidence - but his musical tastes also encompass more outre concerns too. These are on full display for the latest cassette mix from the V I S label operated by Nina and Good News of Golden Püdel fame.
Maxwell superbly obfuscates the edges of this 90-minute selection, bringing a sense of cohesion to a mix that spans Highlands concréte, droning Gaelic tundras, top shelf ambient and more.
Proper selector.

150 copies only, because we are unknown and unrespectable. Music from Le Chocolat Noir, Tryphème, Russell Alderton, Luke Eargoggle, BLCKMOON77 and Kim Rapatti for your emotional sorrows, choose for now,the energy transmission , take and congregate. The breakable experience of an unconventional trip, but not so modern as that.

Electronic Emergencies' first release in 2017 is Histoire d'une Ame by Peine Perdue, the acclaimed synthpop/minimal wave duo from Paris and Berlin. The EP, which is divided into four tableaux, tells a story that was inspired by 80s cult movie Therese, directed by Alain Cavalier, about the mystical suffering of a nun who becomes a saint. Expect nebulous acid wave chansons with mysterious French lyrics.

With its non-placed devices and hard-to-pin-down aesthetic falling between electronic and psychedelic music and the warm-hued sounds of traditional acoustic instruments, Burnt Friedman's Zokuhen ('second edition'), produced exclusively for vinyl, may be considered an extension (or second instalment) of Bokoboko (non33, released in February 2012). On this new double EP, too, the music focuses on uneven rhythms that dictate the groove for all the participating musical elements and display a formal logic to which all the instruments gladly succumb. With its even rhythm and proximity to dub reggae, the track 'Kon Ki (C2)' shows that exceptions from the rule are permitted among the six new tracks and two re-worked Bokoboko themes that round off this follow-up.

On his thrilling, wide-eyed debut for Rabit's Halcyon Veil, London-based IVVVO gets deep under the hood of rave music's emotive mechanics and reasserts his crucial role in the borderland between lonely bedrooms and heaving clubs.
Good, Bad, Baby, Horny is a distressing but necessary distillation of contemporary worries in the bedroom and the dance. Largely shy of beats but heavy on symbolic, contorted references to '90s and '00s pop, rave, and video games, as much as the current ecology of effluent news feeds and rampant social anxiety, it plays out like a frazzled AI attempting to parse the confusion of memory thru state of infinitely up-to-the-second hyperreality.
Its four tracks fuse visceral and highly visual sonic cues in synaesthetic rushes that mirror our sense of physicality within the framework of daily digital experience, somehow isolating the motion sick feeling of hurtling toward a shared endgame with life flashing before our eyes, whilst simultaneously remaining static at the centre of a rave and resisting the perceived tempo of reality.
Scaling from the intensely queasy sensuality of the title track's gasps and deathly synth drop, thru the the sky-kissing guitar licks off Self Rape, to the frozen Eski shoegaze burn of I Fucked It Up and an elusive glimpse of ecstasy in Tongue Kiss Crying, the mood is perpetually high-strung yet melancholic, violent yet compassionate, perhaps best considered in terms of MDMA as a bitter salt or prism for reflective, therapeutic purposes.
It's definitely Ivo Pacheco's strongest work yet, and a hugely timely dispatch from one of rave's visionary contemporary se'ers.

Arnold Dreyblatt has been called "the most rock 'n' roll of all the composers to emerge from New York's downtown scene in the 1970s." Dreyblatt founded The Orchestra Of Excited Strings in 1979, harnessing unusual tuning intervals to an exuberant performance style. Propellers In Love, the Orchestra's second album - originally released in 1986 on the Stasch imprint, in conjunction with the contemporary art space Künstlerhaus Bethanien - develops Dreyblatt's rhythmically exacting exploration of the glittering resonances and overtones generated by an ensemble of uniquely-altered stringed instruments and drums.

On Propellers In Love, simple song titles - "Odd & Even," "Harmonics," "Bowing" - belie intricate harmonic structures. Dreyblatt's modified instruments - a contrabass and miniature piano fitted with piano wire along with violin, all tuned in just intonation - undergo the Orchestra's rapid, staccato attacks. Sparkling timbres dance above interlocking rhythmic patterns moored by sparse yet propulsive percussion ("Pedal Tone Dance" and the title track). Throughout, the Orchestra's perpetual motion achieves a tremulous and exquisite density.

Thirty years since its initial release, Propellers In Love remains a peerless work of second-generation American minimalism. This first-time domestic release is recommended for fans of Glenn Branca, Ellen Fullman and Charlemagne Palestine.

Oh my, what is this The alien globule of Damaged Bug's errant planet has circled the sun and is re-entering our orbit where last year's Cold Hot Plumbs left off. Urgent falsetto morbidities detail this most rhythmically adventurous offering yet: Bunker Funk — syncopating lush landscapes with moon-shot death rays.

Witness in horror the tractor beam pull of Slay The Priest' — a breathless sprint through unfamiliar enemy territory — erratic laser beam synths dredge the lake, hard panned double drums resurrect dead heartbeats: load thy crossbow, friend, this night is long and we appear beset on all sides. The Bug is back and more hideous than ever — join us as we gawp at its iridescent shell, its alien mandibles... and the guts streaming from the wound.

REPRESSED !!
Die Tödliche Doris was born out of West Berlin's lively post-punk community in the early '80s. Along with Einstürzende Neubauten, Malaria, Sprung Aus Den Wolken and Frieder Butzmann, Die Tödliche Doris ranks amongst the Geniale Dilletanten - which roughly translates as "ingenious dilettantes" - who sought to democratize cultural productions beyond the grip of both Western capitalism and GDR socialism. The Geniale Dilletanten became synonymous with a free-for-all approach to music, film, painting and performance where participants encouraged raw expression through provocation and experimentation.

Wolfgang Müller and Nikolaus Utermöhlen founded Die Tödliche Doris in 1980, presenting the public persona of Doris as a constantly shifting entity that deliberately engaged the contradictions of the human condition. The band often referenced themselves in the third person singular, alluding to Doris as a fully-formed female character with explosive, colorful emotions.

For her debut album - originally released on Zickzack in 1982 and playfully titled " " (that is, blank space surrounded by quotation marks) - Doris most closely entertains the notion of a typical rock band with drums, bass and guitar. Produced by Neubauten's Blixa Bargeld, the thirteen songs presented here are disquieting lullabies of profound anxiety, savage and primitive deconstructions of German polka and manic lacerations of punk minimalism: all reflections of the many and fractured personalities of Doris.

This first-time vinyl reissue includes a reproduction of the original 24-page booklet. Limited edition of 500 numbered copies on clear vinyl.

REPRESSED !!
Comprised of Bristol based sound artists Adam Winchester and Christopher Jarman,
Dot Product comes to light in a swathe of noise, tone and texture.

Through years of research and experimentation the duo have sought to explore the creative potential from the inaudible fog of electromagnetic radiation, the internal resonance found in the negative space of an object, the circuitry of discarded electronics, and other such less-travelled paths of sound generation. In harnessing these clandestine sonics and bringing them within a listenable range, the resulting collages of sound have been shaped into a form that nods to the legacy of uncompromising British experimental electronic music, from early industrial savagery to bass-heavy soundsystem pressure. Such reference points are abstract though, for within the truly unique array of sources at their disposal, Winchester and Jarman have a new dialect in which to communicate.

Crucially, while there may be a scientific approach at the heart of the Dot Productmethodology, the results are far from clinical. There are subversive rhythms aplenty throughout the album, from the jagged ripples of 'Skafander' to the slow, dread-fuelled march of 'Springs'. There is also space for touches of melody; 'Atmosphere Processor' swoons with blue-hued melancholy, while 'Ice Patches' stalks on an ominous bass mantra.

After sharing the initial results of their research, the pair performed select live shows in Bristol and London, as well as being commissioned to create a sonic interpretation of Swedish horror film Let The Right One In. This debut album on Osiris is the culmination of these initial steps, these 9 tracks representing the most complete document of the Dot Product sound to no repress

The return of one of the weirdest producers out there, sometimes known as DJ Yo Yo Dieting, sometimes known as Indignant Senility, this time deploying a set of syruppy chopped & screwed productions that sound something like DJ Screw processed thru guitar pedals or Lil Ugly Mane heard booming from the next block. This is basically the most satisfying out-there mixtape of the year...

Incorrigible noise mutant Pat Maher buries chopped 'n screwed hip hop in proper, cranky noise on the long awaited follow-up to his Bubblethug album as Expressway Yo-Yo Dieting. Imagine a DJ Screw tape covered in gravy, left to bake in the sun and then kneaded thru guitar pedals and you've got some taste of the chewy, thuggish ruggish gear on this killer dish.

While Maher may be as well known for his fractal techno as Diamond Catalog or his smeared 78 sessions in The Caretaker-esque Indignant Senility project, it was under the Expressway Yo-Yo Dieting alias that he first really got under the skin of popular consciousness, bubbling up alongside Lil B's seminal Rain In England on Weird Forest Records c. 2010 to ruggedly reset American hip hop from oblique, avant new perspectives.

Aside from a few mixtapes, Undone Harmony Following is the project's first appearance since then and picks up exactly where he left us, huffing up classic and little known hip hop joints and spitting them out as hazy, masticated globules of gristle and noise perfect for the muggiest, blunted listening sessions.

They're like the sonic equivalent of a noise weirdo idly doodling graf sigils in a battered sketchbook for his own gratitude, and thankfully Undone Harmony Following allows everyone else to peer over his shoulder see what he's scribbling, 13 raw, oozing cuts of slurred vocals and distended grooves that sag over the belt line, dripping rivulets of grease and grit, and always appearing to be on the brink of lethargic collapse.

Its ultimate value lies in that heavy-lidded space between woke and fugged-out dream lyf, and in the way which Maher drags the listener into his uniquely suspended, effected temporality that makes this record almost dangerously, druggily seductive and as vital as it gets right now...

After studying with composers John Cage and Earle Brown, Joe Jones became a prominent figure in Fluxus, contributing to the movement's first "yearbox" alongside La Monte Young, György Ligeti and Nam June Paik. Beginning in late 1961, Jones began constructing his own music machines - drawing inspiration from the calliopes, automata and orchestrions of the 19th and early 20th century to create self-playing ensembles of stringed instruments, percussion and woodwinds - "played" through an elaborate (yet decidedly lo-tech) system of rubber bands, balls and tin foil.

Christened the Tone Deaf Music Company, this battery of automated musical instruments generates the sounds on In Performance (originally released in 1977 on the Harlequin Art imprint). With exacting conceptual precision and varied subtleties of natural motion - not unlike Harry Bertoia's sounding sculptures - Jones' machines produce richly-textured strata of sound and serve as engines of paradox. While bringing the figure of the artist-composer to the foreground, the machines ultimately dispense with the need for the performer entirely - a cunning subversion of the fetish for virtuosity and individual genius.

For his second album, Two Solo Pieces, Jon Gibson forgoes the dense, multi-layered timbres of Visitations in favor of simple textures and tone. While Two Solo Pieces serves up further evidence of Gibson's centrality to American minimalism - witness its inclusion in Alan Licht's famed Minimal Top Ten list - this profoundly intimate record also reveals the beauty of enclosed spaces and infinite harmonic vistas.

As its unadorned title suggests, Two Solo Pieces consists of a pair of side-long tracks featuring the composer alone. While "Cycles," an iridescent improvisation on organ, achieves a downright eerie sense of expansiveness, Gibson's captivating alto flute on "Untitled" draws the listener inside the instrument itself.

The photo on the album's back cover - a seated Gibson surrounded by cascading rows of organ pipes and the vaulted ceiling in Manhattan's Peace Church - offers a striking visual complement to these gorgeous recordings.

Originally released in 1977 on Philip Glass' Chatham Square imprint, this first-time vinyl reissue is recommended for fans of Anthony Moore, Roberto Cacciapaglia and Terry Riley.

On May 23, 2016, Jon Mueller played four drums for over six hours in the Meeting House at the Shaker Historical Society in Albany, NY. Engineer Fred Weaver traveled by truck from Pennsylvania, hauling and then constructing a complete mobile recording studio to record the drums and the intense acoustics of the room by placing microphones throughout the space. dHrAaNwDn (read as 'hand drawn') offers a partial document of this session, featuring various long-form pieces from the day.

With dHrAaNwDn, Mueller, who has spent a great deal of his drumming career building a discography and performance reputation around ecstatic repetitive rhythms, brought a nearly impossible energy unheard in his previous work. In fact, two of Mueller's earlier recordings, The Whole (Type Recordings, UK, 2010) and Alphabet of Movements (Type Recordings, UK, 2011) both pointed toward the Shakers. However, these were merely sketches compared to the severity found within dHrAaNwDn. As stark as these performances are, there is something in the patterns and acoustics, something in the feel and transmission of the sound that might have only been possible to occur in this room.

The origins of Le Forte Four are those of the Los Angeles Free Music Society itself. Chip Chapman joined forces with Rick Potts (and shortly thereafter Tom and Joe Potts), taking up the LAFMS name in 1974. Ultimately baptizing themselves Le Forte Four, they began threading imagined lines between John Cage and The Residents, Cecil Taylor and Henry Cow - generating sounds completely unlike any of these and anything since.

The inaugural release on the eponymous LAFMS imprint with only 200 copies pressed originally, Bikini Tennis Shoes is a staggering piece of anti-music that remains as refreshingly ground-clearing today as it was when it first appeared in 1975. Its 40 minutes (parceled out across nearly as many tracks) chart forays into free improvisation, Buchla misuse, filtered noise, begrudging and damaged melodic sorties (from the Star-Spangled Banner to Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring") and healthy doses of basement pablum.

Le Forte Four emerged out of the lethargic American '70s as a locus where, in their own words, "gamelans and ragas merged with serial and chance compositions finally melting together with instructional records and Beatles bootlegs." A wildly eclectic rummaging of postwar culture and 20th century sound, Le Forte Four's Bikini Tennis Shoes preempts punk's outsider ethos and DIY autodidactism.

Lone Piñon is an acoustic trio from New Mexico whose music celebrates their region's cultural roots. Using violin, accordion, guitar, guitarrón, upright bass and harmony vocals in Spanish, English, and Nahuatl, the group has revived and updated the Chicano string band style that once flourished in New Mexico, bringing a devoted and explosive musicianship to Northern New Mexican polkas and chotes, virtuosic Mexican huapango and son calentano, and classic borderlands conjunto.

The musical landscape of New Mexico, like its culture, is beautiful and complicated. Lone Piñon is the first of their generation of musicians to embrace the full scope of that complexity. Onstage, they cluster around a single microphone and play with a fiery intensity, moving seamlessly through several dozen of the dance forms that resonate in their home state. The result is a new sound, rooted in a deep respect for the past and undeniably alive.

Lone Piñon is easily the best band in New Mexico right now. They have tapped into an almost forgotten vein of rich Chicano folk music, learning from some of the great elders of the tradition like Antonia Apodaca and revitalizing the Southwestern string trio with a wonderful virtuosity.

- Jeremy Barnes (A Hawk And A Hacksaw, Neutral Milk Hotel, New Mexico native)

For more than 20 year Eblis Alvarez (Meridian Brothers), Mario Galeano (Frente Cumbiero, Ondatropica) and Pedro Ojeda (Romperayo, Sidestepper) have been exposed to latinamerican tropical types of music that for many years (and still these days) have been relegated to the last place of good taste. Vallenato, peruvian chicha, colombian raspa, champeta, some african sounds and cumbia in its different genres (sabanera, rabajada, sonidera) make part of the new style that Los Piranas expose in the agitated Colombian music scene.

Man haette die Platte auch >Melancholie der Seligen< nennen koennen, wenn der Titel nicht schon von Rainald Goetz besetzt waere. So finden wir hier zwei autarke Stuecke vor die gleichsam diabolischen Ursprungs sind und vielleicht die Frage beantworten können, ob ein Leben im Vakuum tatsaechlich moeglich ist oder ob das Reale einfach nur nicht mehr greifbar ist. Entscheidet selbst!

Originally self-released in 1961 and later issued by Folkways, Tod Dockstader's Eight Electronic Pieces is a foundational document of American electronic music and a stunning first work from this revolutionary composer.

Refused access to the resources and funding of the academy and without any interest from the record industry, Dockstader assembled his debut album through three years of his own private labor - recording after-hours at the New York radio station where he worked. Dockstader's approach was informed by the laboratory experiments of his European contemporaries Edgar Varèse and Pierre Schaefer as well as by the aleatory compositional techniques and neo-dadaist aesthetics of John Cage.

While Dockstader famously described his music as "organized sound," Eight Electronic Pieces is not pure musique concrète. Oscillators pulse and clash with fragments of incidental tape music, leaving collages of sound as tuneful and memorable as they are otherworldly. A visionary debut that presages the abstract ambience of modern IDM and an essential addition to any collection of early electronic music.

Finnish multimedia artist Jan Anderzén returns to Alter in characteristically singular style under his Tomutonttu guise. Kevätjuhla (translated as "Spring Celebration") is his second release for the label following a split 7" with Oneohtrix Point Never in 2010 (ALT02) and his first vinyl long player since 2011. Lately Jan has been busy within visual art, making mosaics, quilts and creating installation work for which the music of Kevätjuhla was initially composed. Inspired by the multitudes of mold and the microbial life, the installation Kevätjuhla was built as a listening station that sought a bond between sound, the earth and organic matter. Sound was sent to speakers through cables sprouting like stems from a pile of dirt with a single coleus growing on top. A graphic score of sticks, orange peel and party debris was hung next to the installation. The score is now visualised on the albums cover, rightly depicting the visual aesthetic of Tomutonttu.

In many ways Kevätjuhla is a landmark release for Anderzén as it sees both his visual and sonic practices coalescing as one. As for Tomutonttu specifically, it is a release that both acknowledges the projects past whilst also looking firmly to the future. Electronic and acoustic instrumentation blends together confidently and more refined than before with a minimal and razor sharp approach to production. Each track becoming an integral part of the records' trippy cut & paste narrative, leaving the listener wholly unaware when one bit ends and another begins. Despite the abstract way in which Anderzén composes, this is still music which has a pop sensibility placed fully at its core. A confounding array of musical references such as folk, hip-hop and the colourful nexus of Yellow Magic Orchestra could be thrown up here, but with Kevätjuhla Anderzén has ultimately created a form of music that goes beyond genre classification and fully into the realm of 'other'.

The brainchild of visual artist Jordan Belson and electronics polymath Henry Jacobs, the Vortex Experiments ran from 1957 to 1960, first at San Francisco's Morrison Planetarium and later at the SF Museum of Art. The very name of these events announced their aim: a swirling totality of sensory experience. Around Belson's richly-colored visuals - making use of the planetarium's entire dome and featuring luminous, sharply geometric imagery projected through an array of devices - Jacobs ringed a system of roughly 40 multidirectional loudspeakers, each of which could be precisely controlled to produce, in the words of one reviewer, "a living theater of sound and light."

A landmark recording in the history of electronic tape music and an engrossing artifact of proto-psychedelia, Highlights Of Vortex gathers recordings designed for the Vortex system by Jacobs and collaborators David Talcott, William Loughborough and Gordon Longfellow. Source material including free improvisation, field recording, classical Indian instrumentation, West African polyrhythms and musique concrète is transmogrified through tape manipulation, atomizing swathes of reverb and delay, and other live and recorded effects, making dramatic use of the monumental Vortex soundsystem.

An unprecedented marriage of image and sound, Vortex Experiments exercised immeasurable impact on the imagination and practice of countless experimental visual and sonic artists so this album is a must for fans of such visionaries as Stan Brakhage, Tony Conrad and Jack Smith.

* Circular Ruins is the project of Netherlands-born, Berlin-based musician and visual artist Marijn Degenaar (b. 1987), whose "arcane, wistful and wishful ambient soundscaping" have been described as embodying "electronic music's potential for optimistic, dreamlike qualities" (Boomkat).

* 'The Thorned Maze' is a different, darker and more cerebral beast; one where the dreamy optimism is often interrupted by dissonant, atonal clusters rattling textures and rhythms that suggest subterranean infestations. The name Circular Ruins suggests the cyclical nature of being and time and the atmosphere of his most cohesive release to date suggests a period of existential exploration; Touching on something eternal, conjuring images of fallen idols and ruined civilisations - past and present; an astral free-float through imagined eras and landscapes, as well as a hazy reflection on the cracked mirrors of the now and even hints at the inner turmoil of a cyberpunk dystopia.

* Cooper Bowman is a Melbourne-based visual and sound artist working in the margins of the Australian experimental and electronic scene.

* Following shows in Berlin, Warsaw and Helsinki, Bowman swiftly recorded and assembled Isle Of Isms, a suite of short vignettes forming a cohesive whole.

* Made with minimal equipment (tape loops, synthesizer + effects) and recorded directly to tape, 'Isle Of Isms' is largely informed by the processes associated with early Kraut electronics and musique concre`te. This release hints at the mystery of improvisation, wherein Bowman allows for chance-based encounters with sound, forgoing the stricter templates of his other projects.

* Jonathan Baruc, in the guise of Death Qualia, makes his burnt offering to the undead rave with 'Intention Versus'. The architecture of longing styled by the black hand beyond. The record leaps from tectonics to tenderness as it meditates on the violence of creation, reincarnation and rebirth. Cascades of sheetrock peel away to reveal a private bardo. Though a student of technical finesse, Baruc drives listeners to examine their inner mythology and confront the golems they have raised. He does not speak of another world ... his is a journey in intensity.

Pomperipossa Records, curated by Anna von Hausswolff, is delighted to announce the forthcoming release of the first album by drøne. Field recordings, short wave radio, modular synth all combine to form an enticing, arresting, moving journey of electrically-charged dissonance, drones and electronic melodies..., Anna calls it "a jewel". "A very hot day in the hills above Los Angeles..., only possible to work in the mornings because of the sweltering afternoon heat, so all a bit frantic, but with a kink in time. There is no wifi-controlled air conditioning, the car is electric-powered and charging up. It has barely rained for months, (if not years) and the hoses are working overtime. Its an analogue session, Mark's modular synth set up is working furiously and overheating. We are pushing sounds through and seeing what works..., and things gradually take shape. The forms seem to determine themselves, how much control do we have How much do we want Some peculiar things start to happen and the haze bends. Some of the sounds seem alive and are quick to reform as we struggle to contain them, like trying to stuff snakes into a bag. The sounds moan and sing, forming their own phonemes. A new language is being born, are we the midwives"

The second album for Anna von Hausswolff's label, Pomperipossa Records, by Mark Van Hoen & Mike Harding. Also featuring Anna von Hausswolff, Philip Jeck, Bethan Kellough, Charlie Campagna, Paul Haslinger, Marie Takahashi and Oleg Belyaev. Limited to 500 copies.

oleg belyaev - baroque 'cello charlie campagna - 'cello paul haslinger - piano phiip jeck - pulse bethan kellough - violin, viola marie takahashi - baroque viola anna von hausswolff - voices

baritone guitar & cymbals dulcimer & psaltery field recordings lorenz cipher machine 1877 henry willis organ (union chapel) short wave

Debut record from Group Zero (Cathal Cully - Girls Names). Using synthesizers and drum machines, 'Structures And Lights' glistens with subtle Euro sophistication - pairing cold-wave optimism alongside freaky and brutal tracks for the more open-minded DJs and dancefloors. Written, recorded and mixed intermittently over four years, the narrative of 'Structures And Light' is bound by a deepening connection with electronics, instrumentation, and the studio. With no imminent touring schedule or release deadlines, Cully built a modest home setup and began producing on his own again - It was as an exercise in my own development and it was fun. It brought the naivety and spontaneity back to making music'. Initially, it was for his personal consumption alone - selfishly indulgent. In fact, this first collection of Group Zero music - along with a library of other ideas and sketches - was thought to be eternally lost and all but forgotten until a chance conversation with Touch Sensitive led to the tracks being salvaged and subsequently restored. The genesis of this newly discovered musical freedom coincided with a viewing of 'Pyramid of Light' by Heinz Mack from the post-war Dusseldorf based Group Zero art movement which resonated deeply. It stirred up questions and emotions which I could not get from a book or a screen. It was the direct relation between me, the light and the physical object hanging on the wall. New moments of beauty locked in the memory. I was in awe.' Cully was also taking influence from a range of contemporary electronic producers - on labels such as LIES, Diagonal, Optimo Music, Blackest Ever Black, and PAN: These records felt as much in keeping with post-punk traditions and my own DIY background whilst tapping into the primitive ideas of masters such as Cluster, Suicide, Malaria! and the proto-techno of pre-club music.' Just as a structure obscures or reflects light furnishing us with new ways of seeing, the propulsive rhythms in 'Structures And Light' reveal subtle differences on each repeated cycle. This is music to go away from and travel to. Here's a record from a Belfast bedroom that sounds nothing like the city, past or present. It's made with synths and drum machines, and it glistens with subtle Euro sophistication. Day breaks: dig those fast linear movements and rhythms ('The Fantasist'). Then fall for the unexpected guitar line in 'Pursuit', a gentle kind of cold wave optimism. Night heals: there's 'pummelling repetition' here too, for the club freaks or shut-ins. Slow, industrial shocks that give way to 'Pyramid of Light's stark new-age burst. It's a record for the present - full of gorgeous themes that dream unwired.'

Handnummerierte 7Inch inkl. Booklet! Hoert auf zu atmen! Wer auftauchen will, der muss den Grund gesehen haben. Anscheinend einsam, doch gleichsam wuerdevoll begleiten wir dich auf der Reise. Zwei Wege stehen offen zu wahr, zu schoen. Lass uns gemeinsam wachsen. Roll on. Auf ein Wiedersehen!

* Lettera 22 is a creature of the worldwide noise underground. Composed of Second Sleep founder Matteo Castro (also known as Kam Hassah, Endless Sea and Mercury Hall) and Riccardo Mazza (recently responsible for a technoid outing on Ideal Recordings as RM), the duo has set to make use of sonic slag and explore polluted aural ambiences in their own personal way from day one.

* Their sound-sculpting techniques incorporates direct physical interaction with tape recorders and contact mics as well as digital effects and field recordings. Their main focus though, is the constant construction and deconstruction of a virtual space for sounds to interact in, manipulating reverb in a way as akin to musique concrete as to freakish dub-wise abstractions. Control The Ground is their first release for Haunter Records, recorded in the summer of 2015, inspired by war bulletins, radio transmissions and ghost stations

Nach den R&B-Talenten Kelela und Dawn Richard präsentiert uns der in L.A. ansässige Produzent und Fade To Mind-Labelbetreiber Kingdom nun sein eigenes Debütalbum. Auf "Tears In The Club" realisiert er anhand 11 schrägen Uptempo-Bangern, düster-atmosphärichen Instrumentals und erotisch-melancholischen Soundscapes seine Vision von Leftfield-Pop und Club-R&B. Mit Vocalfeatures von u.a. SZA, Sängerin der TDE Band, und Syd, Mitglied der Odd Future-Familie und der Neo-Soul-Band The Internet.

From the forefront of early Experimental HipHop from the USA come the second longplay effort of Paul Bonomo and Tara Delong a.k.a. BEDROOM PRODUCTIONS. Originally released in 2000 and now rediscovered in a dusty Berlin-basement we're able to offer the last original pressings of this huge album that comes along as a fascinating amalgamation of the Beastie Boys' anarcho Punk approach, lo-fi recording in style and Lolita Storm's killer stage presence. Get ready to bounce, get ready to party!

Next up on Deep Distance (following the sold-out-in-a-day Sula Bassana LP) is a fabulous newly expanded -first time on vinyl- double LP set of Colin Potter's seminal 1980 cassette only release The Ghost Office'.

The label is gradually working through Colin's revered back catalogue of cassette only releases, with previous titles The Scythe' and Two Nights' selling out instantly. His run of half of a dozen home recorded, DIY / minimal synth cassettes between 1980 and 1982 is rightly granted legendary status, influencing a slew of home produced DIY experimental electronic artists and all attaining high collectors' prices online for original copies. So these LP sets filled out with all manner of unreleased cuts, demos and excluded tracks truly are a treat.

The Ghost Office , was his first full release. It was recorded on 4 track tape at the very first location of IC Studio, in the small village of Sutton-on-the-Forest, north of York.

In Colin's own words: The cassette initially appeared on the Mirage label and this release has been remastered and edited to include all but one of the tracks, the missing piece being removed in the interests of health and safety. In addition there are extra tracks that appeared on compilations or taken from the vaults.'

Nowadays Colin is a longterm member of Nurse With Wound and has worked with Current 93, Ora, Organum and many others, and has run the esteemed ICR label for over 35 years now. The interest in all of Colin's work remains incredibly high and this welcome vinyl reissue is a must for longterm fans or newcomers.

This double LP, with artwork by Jonathan Coleclough (who did the original layout, all those years ago) is an edition of 400 copies and is expected to sell out quick....

Marc Barreca's Music Works for Industry is a layered assertion. An economic mantra for the mind to spin, like the many loops on this recording, or churn, as gears of some godhead machine. From the pool of playful compositions, a social subtext appears - a somewhat sardonic riposte to the commercial and cynical abuse of music and musicians. The work profits the listener over industry. Said another way, its motivations are more generative than lucrative.

No longer than four minutes, no shorter than two, each piece on MWFI is a fragment of modern life. Propaganda transmitted between the click of the remote or the turn of the dial. Friend and collaborator K. Leimer checks Cluster, Steve Reich, Iannis Xenakis, and Morton Subotnick as esoteric influences on MWFI in the album's liner notes, while one might imagine Upton Sinclair, Studs Terkel, or Chris Anderson as egalitarian influences.

Made with musicians, performance artists, and a bespoke instrument maker, Barreca combines multiple disciplines into a collective, industrious whole. An experiment fabricated in the synth and tape studio at the artist-run alternative space and/or (Seattle's version of NYC's The Kitchen), Barreca manipulates dynamic sound sources into tidy, minimal arrangements using synthesizers, modified instruments, tape looped voices, and melodic, metallic phrases.

The cover of MWFI features a black and white photo of a figure in silhouette, backlit at a window, softened with curtains and plants. Maybe this is the room where the music was made: a private space, a refuge from some industrial work or at least the dubious fruits of this labor. In a way, listening to the music is entering a space without work, an apple to pluck and eat without wage or taxation.

One can imagine photographer Chauncey Hare listening to Music Works for Industry as he moved from documenting domestic interiors to the bleek efficiency of American offices. His black and white portraits of workers, isolated and obscured by cubicles and files, and published in This Was Corporate America, led to Hare's disillusionment with the art market. Not wanting to sell images, he left photography, and become a therapist: publishing the self-help book, Work Abuse.

Perhaps peering into the music industry led to Barreca's eventual career, and a similar impulse to more directly touch those at the effects of economic systems. While exploring the cassette version of Music Works For Industry, we found a business card tucked inside: Marc Barreca—bankruptcy judge in Seattle. Material traces of the cassette are evident in the record's packaging, the album format a newly manufactured form for Barreca's work.

But even in post-industrial times, Barreca's music offers listeners easily consumable musings on current work conditions. Freedom To Spend accepts your hard-earned and fortuitously won money in exchange for these morsels, but also believes that you need not invest unless pressed

- Hometown: Seattle, WA
- Key Markets: Seattle, Portland, New York, London, Amsterdam, Paris
- RIYL: Moebius & Plank, Cluster, K. Leimer, Esplendor Geometrico
- Marc Barreca emerged from the underground music scene of Seattle / Olympia in the late 70s and early 80s.
- Barreca's Music Works For Industry was originally released on cassette tape in small quantities via Kerry Leimer's record label Palace Of Lightsin 1983.
- Unlike Twilight, Barreca's 1980 album on which he was the only musician, Music Works For Industry draws on a diverse pool of musicians and performance artists.
- Barreca was also a founding member of Young Scientist and part of Savant, a Seattle experimental supergroup' whose archives were collected on RVNG in 2015 as Artificial Dance.
- Freedom To Spend's edition of Music Works For Industry is the first time the album is offered on vinyl, remastered from the original tapes by Josh Bon

Last few copies of this refreshing concoction of dark pop songs, from bands that played at the Palais Chalet nights in Brussels in 2012. Showcasing a lively cross-section of new wave, synth-pop, hard beat, and quirky electronic experimentation.

Contemporary field recordings from the Sahelian empire of Niger. Focusing on guitar music throughout the country, from meditative starlight ballads, fuzzy Hendrix covers, rag tag wedding bands, to politically minded folk guitarists. A beautiful encapsulation of the diversity of guitar as it exists today, documented over years of travels. Recorded live with a single microphone, with a backdrop of children's voices, crickets, and village ambience. A follow up to Laila Je T'Aime and Ishilan n-Tenere. With 16 page full colour liner notes.