Beats News

* Black Manual was formed in 2012 after Jan St. Werner had heard the percussionists Valdir Jovenal, Juninho Quebradeira and Leo Leandro play at a Candomblé ceremony in Berlin. The album 'Mordendo' was subsequently released in 2013 via Brigade Commerz, mixed with St. Werner's musical partner Andi Thoma who have made a name together as Mouse on Mars.On record the dynamics of speaker compositions intertwine with concrete Afro-Brazilian sound patterns, "toques" - drum beat sequences also found in Samba and Candomblé. Sounds rear up, diffuse, and rhythms dissolve into tones thereby creating an unholy conglomerate of frigidly staged disorders, digital fragments, broken melodies and the vibrant, tugging sub-bass caprices of the Brazilian "voodoo" rhythms - "a fala dos atabaques" ("speech of the drums") with violence and passion as if they were trying to force the gates to transcendence open. Portals Editions is proud to release four new distillations of the album, each passed through the hands and hearts of deft aural alchemists. While Cut Hands stays closest to the source, he is able to locate the essence and draw the spirit out in his signature glorious ritualistic fashion. James Ginzburg of Emptyset, as his Bleed Turquoise alias, summons the soul and amplifies it with cathartic synth stabs in unison with martial percussive bursts. On the flip side Africaine 808's Dirk Leyers in his guise as Format01 mechanizes the chaos in to a rhythmic spell to make one's body move as if on command. KETEV spirals it down by carrying the listener off into the great unknown with his amniotic drones and hypnotic inward movements.St. Werner has also generated four video works to accompany each of the tracks, hypnagogic Op Art to entrance and project their mystical properties. Exhibited first on September 29 in the awe-inducing chapel of former crematorium Silent Green for Portals Editions' showcase within Easterndaze x Berlin, the videos will also exist as a piece to be experienced as one whole via a digital portal accessible shortly before the album is released.

Bülent Arel was a Turkish-born American composer of electronic and contemporary classical music. He was also a devoted teacher, a sculptor, and a painter. From 1940 until 1947 Arel studied composition, piano, and 20th century classical music at the Ankara Conservatory. In 1959 Arel came to the U.S. on a grant by the Rockefeller Foundation to work at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. By that time the center had just started out under its director Vladimir Ussachevsky.

During Arel's work in Princeton he also met Edgard Varèse with whom in 1962 he worked on the electronic sections of Varèse's 'Déserts'. Frank Zappa lists Arel as a key influence. Today's electronic music - may it be by Autechre's 'Confield', Aphex Twin's 'Selected Ambient Works Vol. II', or Squarepusher's 'Do you know Squarepusher' - builds upon a solid foundation which Bülent Arel helped to pave.

With a path spent traversing between self-illumination and inner turmoil, Gypsy Mamba continues to persevere forward. He is one of California's most raw and uncompromising electronic artists and rips open new portals of energy during his live performances. Signing with Alpha Pup Records last year for the release of Da Feenux, Gypsy Mamba will soon launch out of the gates with his sophomore record Magnetic Syndromes. Gypsy Mamba has crafted his most dynamic and personal record to date. As the title suggests, Magnetic Syndromes is the sonic description of a life filled with unpredictable changes, carved out from the lens intensive view of Gypsy Mamba's life. It can also be seen outside of the artist, defining the inner conflicts many conquer in their lifetime. Gypsy Mamba finds a battleground between the darkness and the light in Magnetic Syndromes. A unique music environment where tracks fluctuate between the frenetic and the subdued. It's all pulled off with a wild array of colors and rhythms that can't be associated to any other artist. Looking at the new album in context of his career and Magnetic Syndromes can be broken down into a system of trial and error. A level of truth Gypsy Mamba accumulated as he interacted with the people helping to bring his music to the masses and the support that has followed thereafter. Following the release of Da Feenux last year, recordings for Magnetic Syndromes took place immediately at Gypsy Mamba's home studio. Makan of Bür Gür and Kelley Mak add vocal treatment, giving the record an undeniable transformation that his music has never seen before. The LP showcases a more complex side to Gypsy Mamba's usual approach, infusing Reason 8 and their built-in VST's that's a fresh take on the popular music technology. On a handful of the tracks, synth solo's flare well outside of the base and find home in a more lyrical terrain, projecting the soul of Gypsy Mamba in a way that takes the music to new worlds. The tracks move in and out of bass heavy club anthems to thought provoking ambient pop pieces. The energy is constantly morphing, retracting and expanding, much like the process Gypsy took on purging many areas of his life to find true happiness.

After his highly acclaimed - A Requiem For Edward Snowden LP, Matthew Collings returns with a collaboration with sound virtuoso Dag Rosenqvist. - Hello Darkness is dark and it is bleak and it's fragmented. It feels like those days when you want to just annihilate everything, and then stare at a river. It demands your attention. It sounds like it's breaking from the inside. It's serious. And not.

Rosenqvist & Collings started their work on - Hello Darkness already back in 2012, right after they had released the Wonderland EP (on Hibernate Recordings). There really were no guidelines or rules for what they were going to create, they just wanted to make music together, and surprisingly it came naturally, and felt pretty good...

This turned out to be one of those collabs that are kind of off and on. At times both were too busy with other things, and so sometimes months would pass between working sessions. And when they picked it up again, most of the times they had basically forgot where they left off, having to retrace their steps, remember things, re-create ideas, trash ideas that didn't work, misplace tracks and sounds only to add them to songs they weren't meant to be a part of. Rosenqvist & Collings worked destructively from processed stereo tracks with botched fade-ins, scrapping entire sessions and adding new layers and sounds of all kinds, letting it go in any directing it needed to, adding different time signatures on top of each other, turning sounds and entire tracks inside out and upside down. They found a freedom to go in any direction they wanted to, free from what they've done before, free from any expectations on both each other and from anyone else.

Despite all of this, there is a humour to the album. There's something tongue-in-cheek about the whole thing. This was also one of the reasons they choose to go with the title of the album, which is - in all honesty - slightly over the top. This was also the commission when creating the cover design. No holds barred, no restrictions. The title is of course borrowed' from the Simon & Garfunkel track The Sound of Silence, a fact that probably doesn't make them any cooler. Thinking about it now, Matthew Collings second album was called Silence Is A Rhythm Too. Coincidence Some say there are no coincidences.

Merchants is an italian electronic duo composed of Alberto Ricca / Bienoise (Red Bull Music Academy Tokyo alumnus) and Davide Amici. Their music is sample-based, combining dark beats with found sounds in a musical exploration of imaginary countries. Global debris and techno pulses meet in search of possible musics.

Restive Plaggona is Dimitris Doukas, Corfu-based young techno/industrial producer. Active in just one year, he has been putting out quite a few tapes on Haraam's Moral Defeat, French Collapsing Market and his own Several Minor Promises.

With Committed To The Truth Plaggona continues his path with seven new tracks of dark cinematic techno hybrids, ranging from ambient melancholia to pulsating Industrial soundscapes. This is the sound of the dark side of the Mediterranean.

After the release of his third full length "Foray" (2015) and "Trails" (2016) SUBHEIM returns with his first cooperation release.

"Conviction" is the first collaboration of multifaceted electronic artists MONOLOG ("an impressively detailed assault on the senses" TEXTURA) and SUBHEIM ("Sometimes gloomy, and sometimes lush, but always sweeping and atmospheric" INTRO).

With "Conviction", Monolog and Subheim merge two worlds together by using the same creative triggers: Berlin's night sky, the urban scenery, faces and places, action and reaction, the calm before the storm as well as the storm itself. Monolog brings structure with with his unique, unforgiving drum rhythms and heavy basslines while Subheim contributes fragile melodic undertones and lush ambiences to the whole.

"Conviction" is intentionally imperfect. It symbolizes the acceptance of its creators' very human nature: sometimes relentless and sometimes serene, a calm force that thrusts them forward like sea waves in winter. It's dark and heavy yet full of light and hope, expressing the closing of important chapters and the beginning of new ones.

As Björk continues to make waves in the electronic scene One Little Indian present exclusive remixes by boundary-pushing artists and DJs personally selected by the Icelandic artist

L/F/D/M squeezes off a volley of misshapen bangers and atonal wormholes in Music Without Discipline, making a mutant follow-up to his M Is A Shape (2015) LP and Crocodiles In The Ceiling (2016) EP for Alessio Natalizia (Not Waving) & Sam Willis' Ecstatic label.
For his third solo LP proper as L/F/D/M, the London-based producer/artist/designer jams, layers and hacks a clutch of new hardware toys, the Akai VX90 and Yamaha TX81Z in particular, into 11 variants of what is essentially a style of no wave or new beta techno.
Pursuing his taste for unique, visceral and affective electronic tones into odder integers of the club, L/F/D/M establishes a jagged line that runs from original '80s industrialists thru Larry Heard's legendary Gherkin Jerks and the scenius of Downwards' brummie radge packets to a place right between the eyes of 2017.
DJs and dancers will find full fat, wonky weapons ranging from the cranky-assed jacker Dance, You Awful Cunt, thru to a sludgy turn called Birds, a super-tangy Chicago percolator Texan Flower Girl, and the throaty acid gargle of Living Without Gain. But it's the way in which Richard Smith is just as happy to follow his nose into sparkling vignettes such as After R Version and Ballet, and into the grubby pits of Pinx that really gives this record its shape and asserts its messed-up character.

A Gathering Together is Ron Morelli's second full-length for Hospital Productions: a 'techno' cacophony brought to its granular detail and reduced to its most elemental tonal depths. A cohesive fusion of surreal and feverish deja vu loops, brittle noise, fucked rhythms, scrap metal percussions, pro-one metal synths, and an injection of near-buried, Drano vocal samples, it's a fearsome celebration of brokenness, of amplified surroundings.Stereo-shifting drones and driving rhythms that tell the stories of those now gone, more a soundtrack for a wake than 4/4 crafted for the dancefloor. There's a naked anxiety at work that doesn't turn away from loss, but runs with an excited melancholy that looks to a future that won't exist. The boldness of the gestures are not to be confused with exuberance.With this effort Morelli has shown remarkable restraint and patience most notably highlighted on title track 'A Gathering Together.' An intense cut born from rapid-paced dead-end urban environments that force people together. It's a calling to do more, include more, and celebrate the many forms within those inconspicuous places.Upon numerous listens, it's clear the sound design is a reflection of heavy compositional themes that suggest a greater whole. This is hard, dirty techno--humid, reduced, bare bones, yet dense and dissolved to its electronic soil. Heavy without being oppressive, it is the culmination of many elements pulled from all spheres of modern electronics, eaten, digested, and spit back out. Produced at the end of 2014, with final m,ixdown and additional production in spring 2015 by Krikor Kouchian and Ron Morelli in Paris, Hospital Productions is proud to offer A Gathering Together.

I think music has been banalised and vandalised by commercial misuse.
This EP shows struggle, it is explicit and romantic, like a ruin.'

Expat, visual and sound artist Astrid Gnosis explores social and emotional collapse through her work — a heady mix of abstract textures, fractured beats, cinematic atmos-pherics, twisted melodies and off-the-wall vocals.
Now living and working in London, Astrid began writing music when she was just 13 years old. She's crafted sonic installations for exhibitions and art performances, alone and col-laborating with other artists. She's made the soundtracks and sound design for a number of short films, the most recent will be shown at the London Short Film Festival 2017.

Music alone is a vessel, it diplomatically drives consciousness into reflection. Words seemed to limit this journey' she continues but increasingly I felt the urge to narrow my language, and incorporate more violence into music', she says, because for me it is vital to speak of the anger and hopes of my generation, and it is now we're most angry.'

'Agnosis', a conceptual six-track EP is about tacit conflict and subsequent collapse', painting a greying, dystopian picture of where our futures might be headed. Agnosis means ignorance in greek, this EP is the first part of a cognitive map of fear, strength, faith, fate, love and hate.'

These themes are catapulted into flux across all six tracks on 'Agnosis', from the hollowed out ambience on gentle opener, 'Arab Spring', the off-kilter experimentalism and crunchy beats of 'Severe Delays' to the rebellious, bastardised hard techno of final track, 'Titan', Astrid, in her own words, 'glorifies discomfort'.

While designed to challenge every aspect of the listening experience, Astrid's work on 'Agnosis' — although fiercely bound to her own philosophical and socio-political narrative — is testament to a musician who can match one-of-a-kind sound design with raw, unfil-tered musical ideas.

I speak for an absolute re-envisioning of our belief systems', Astrid explains, for the destigmatisation of words and symbols, to discourage fear not with mere entertainment and distraction, but with thought. That's who I try to be.'

Ltd Edition

700 Black & White Vinyl

350 gr. Sleeve - Reverse Printing-

Obi Strip

Insert with photos + liner notes by Jean-Jacques Birgé & Francis Gorgé

Have you ever imagined what a meeting between the Silver Apples and Sonny Sharrock would sound like

In 1974, Jean-Jacques Birgé, one of the first French synthesizer players (ARP 2600) along with Francis Gorgé, virtuoso guitarist, created some unique improvised pop music. These unreleased and flamboyant recordings would be the source for the cult 1975 « Défense de » album by Birgé, Gorgé, Shiroc before founding 'Un Drame Musical Instantané' with Bernard Vitet.

Electronic - Instrumental Hip Hop. Pressed on flamingo pink vinyl. Download includes bonus album Raw Light II. Botany has worked with Father John Misty, Mndsgn, Milo, Balmorhea and many others. ... alternatingly danceable and meditative psychedelia...carefully constructed and satisfying...' PITCHFORK // ...ominous, warm and absolutely thunderous...glorious synthesis of dusty hip-hop vibes and cosmic free jazz spirit.' GORILLA VS. BEAR // ...badass...a pretty epic journey all around.' FADER // Under the Botany moniker, Spencer Stephenson creates rich psychological and emotional experiences through audio. His music is a thoughtful attempt to convey the non-verbal through his particular mental prism, where sounds have potent symbolism in ways that are all but forgotten in the hermetic modern world. He explains, Sounds have archetypal connections to things in nature the same way visual symbols do. Low-end might be associated with thunder, or the sound of a mother's heartbeat as heard from inside the womb, or an approaching stampede, or earthquake. Low-end generally indicates something bigger and more powerful than you. Treble sounds indicate something deadly rattling through foliage or something vital like water flowing close by. Reverberation has a connection to the holy and transcendent, it implies spatial largeness. It's fun to hear these symbols coming out of ear-buds in a world where they aren't useful on a daily basis, but are still so subconsciously powerful." Though Stephenson sees these constituent signi­ers, he has a holistic vision of music "...functioning as a single pulsating thing, instead of a band with distinct parts," which parallels his idea of the universe as an ever emergent, single conscious entity-- a concept he ­nds spiritually gratifying, and one that's pervasive in his music. On Dimming Awe, the Light is Raw, the 28-year-old producer and composer continues dissolving the borders between his disparate-yet-beloved psych, hip hop, and ambient influences. Album standout "Au Revoir,' is a shimmering piece of sampler-psychedelia that bolsters verses by rapper Milo, and gracefully leads into the drum-less hum and crackle of Birthjays'. Matthewdavid—the high-priest of ambient bass himself—lends a rare vocal feature to the uplifting burner Glow-up" while the electro-inspired Bad CGI' stitches Bambaataa chants and sci-­ flutters to a shamanic pulse, then morphs into a late-night opiated channel-sur­ng montage, and the seams rarely appear. Unlike his previous album Lava Diviner (Truestory), which peaked and valley-ed through a narrative arc, Dimming Awe focuses on the artist's ever-unfolding, present state of mind. As a former jazz student, spiritual/free jazz philosophy regarding what he calls emergent' music has increasingly become a guiding light when he creates.

We're proud to reissue KR03, the debut LP of skewed electronica from Canterbury producer B£AMS. Brimming with warm washes of drone, Patches morphs through stoned hip-hop to gospel and highlife. Densely layered percussion, drunk synth, lost voices and temporal distortion flit in and out of earshot, inducing a joyful lostness. Riding this sea of colourful wooz, B£AMS channels Madlib, Delroy Edwards and Matthew Dear with stumbling ADHD enthusiasm.

Occupying a colder, unheimlich universe, the flip side sees B£AMS dredging sea caves for dense undulations of jazz-infused drone, while marshalling armies of static from somewhere above the clouds. Hypnotic mantras, eroded landscapes and encoded loops are run through analogue tape equipment, à la Matthew David or Leyland Kirby, as he collates the muttered instructions for some gestalt machine.

The French avant-garde quartet, four years in, improvising with instruments from Western, African, Middle-Eastern, and Far-Eastern cultures. Recorded for Futura in 1971, this is their sole album. "We just wanted the sound, the raw sound-texture, before being treated and shaped by any cultural code."

Surreal and futuristic, here is one of the best kept secrets of the cult French underground label Futura. Soundtrack to Claude Faraldo's anarchic film BOF, this avant-garde psychedelic jazz masterpiece is a blend of abstract vocals, way-out electronics, twisted ambience and twitchy brass.

The 1994 return of pioneering electronic guru Richard 'Heldon' Pinhas to the forefront of the French underground scene, with the fruits of a two-year collaboration with John Livengood from Red Noise and Spacecraft, inspired by Norman Spinrad's novel Rock Machine. First vinyl issue.

Seething, thrilling, hypnotic dance music, in the mighty tradition of Carl Craig's Bug In The Bass Bin. Two constantly shifting blends of Belfi's richly rhythmic snare-work with stately drones and shimmering electronica. Themes and traces constantly loom and recede, underpinned by a deep, pulsating bass drum, and tautened by a widescreen sense of drama (with Morricone in mind). ('Cera persa', in Italian, 'casa perdue', in French: 'lost-wax' or 'investment' casting, by which a sculpture is duplicated.)

"New polyrhythmic and psychedelic incarnation. Sounding like the music of forgotten people from Venus." (IRM)

It all began with Raz Ohara: His album 'Moksha' in February 2014 was the first release on Albumlabel, the new label from the Shitkatapult house at the time. Moksha, which blew away its audience and was so absolutely spot on, was never meant to dictate the direction of the new imprint in terms of content. In the end, the intention was and still is to impose as few ground rules as possible as to what is good for the ALB catalogue, now and always. Despite this, the album could be heard as a kind of label manifesto. Moksha demands attention and time. And this is precisely what the makers of Albumlabel are about: listening to records and having the composure and powers of concentration required to do so in these times of Internet-induced hyper-anxiety.

One year later, this is where Oliver Doerell aka Cummi Flu drops 'Z'. It is an entirely different kind of music from Moksha, less volatile and blurred, percussive and transparent instead. Yet it is an album that belongs right here on this label, one that demands time from its listener.
Cummi Flu, who likes to generate percussion loops from the twangs of various rubber bands, creates loops with the help of all possible and impossible tone generators. What happens now when these complex, gyroscopic sounds are deflected and distorted, when you send them through the Raz Ohara grinder, so to speak Gnawing tracks emerge from field recordings, acoustic instruments, synthesizers and kitchen utensils. Bizarre and fleeting.

The sound of CUMMI FLU/RAZ OHARA.

It appears that not only do Ohara and Doerell get along well, but they complement each other splendidly. Together they create an extremely fine psychedelia, a kind of dark psychedelic classicism or urban voodoo music. 'Y' is a jungle album for listeners to lose themselves in. For instance, we hear something that sounds like polyphonic, distorted whistling, but can't exactly be placed. And the fact is, it doesn't really matter. The longer you listen, the less you are interested in determining the origins of individual sounds. It's as if the sum of the music and its psychedelic effect mask all rational thought, as if the music takes over control.

Soul fragments, sung by Raz Ohara in his broken yet commanding style, waft around the extraterrestrial sound loops. Again comes the dark voodoo tapping, Ohara's sharp inhale, after which we immediately hear his voice creaking and scratching, maniacally, as if it were part of a cultish act. Various time signatures are intertwined, generating polyrhythmic infinity. And before the extremely filtered flute loops regain the upper hand, the music suddenly grabs your heart and moves you in the same way the soundtrack of your youth perhaps once did - the consequence of having taken the time, who knows.

CUMMI FLU is the latest incarnation of the ever-changing multimedia illusionist Oliver Doerell. Born in Brussels, he was the driving force behind the electronica projects Dictaphone and SWOD, and a sound box in Raz Ohara's Odd Orchestra.
RAZ OHARA's dub-infused productions develop a distinctive sound flow. Ohara has already worked with countless artists and released on just as many labels. His tracks have been remixed by Pantha Du Prince, Noze & DOP, Apparat, NU, Acid Pauli and others.

Recital release the first album of American Gamelan composer Daniel Schmidt (b. 1942). Schmidt, who emerged in the Bay Area music scene in the 1970s, wove the threads of traditional Eastern Gamelan music together with American Minimalism (repetitive music). Schmidt was (and is still) a prime figure in the development of American Gamelan music - studying and collaborating with Lou Harrison, Jody Diamond, and Paul Dresher. He currently is a teacher at Mills College, teaching instrument building.
The recordings on Flowers date from 1978 - 1982, selected directly from Schmidt's personal cassette archive. It holds two studio tracks, along with two live performances. The first track, Dawn (commissioned by composer John Adams), employs an early digital sampler provided by Pauline Oliveros. It holds the sound of a string quartet. The nature of this piece is breathtaking, an ocean of strings pulsing beneath the gliding bells of the gamelan - such a lovely interplay. Furthermore, the title track, Flowers, features the addition of a rebab, a traditional bowed instrument, which reels through the piece, netted and taught.
The final two works are strictly gamelan compositions. Ghosts is a a dynamic piece, rife with dexterous euphoria- it well displays the skillset of the percussionists heard on the LP. The closing work, Faint Impressions, is a somber elegy. Demonstrating the fragility and grace possible with the gamelan, sounding almost as an evening piano sonata
This is album is unique document from an under-represented movement of American New Music. An account of the curious beauty and woven emotions hidden within resonating pieces of metal.

Last Signs is Eli's first solo release since) and explores a very different side of his unique acoustic universe. One instrument and the hyper-mediated sonic ecosystem of the club sound system in which the macrocosmic percussive collisions of his earlier work give way to a gradual unfolding of dub-influenced rhythmic constellations. Eli has described Last Signs as his response to playing in club environments over the last few years, an attempt to negotiate a delicate balance between the materiality of his acoustic. Coming off like an inspired synthesis between Scientist and Xenakis, Last Signs of Speed is a truly unique work by an artist at the height of his powers.

About Eli Keszler:

Eli Keszler is a New York-based artist, composer and percussionist. His compositions and visual works examine the limits of instrumentation, notation, and space in its insti- tutional, musical and public form.

Eli has released solo records on ESP-Disk and PAN and toured extensively throughout Europe and the US, perform- ing solo and in collaboration with artists such as Tony Conrad, Oren Ambarchi, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Aki Onda, and Rashad Becker. His upcoming projects include a duo recording with Rashad Becker at The Empty Gallery and a collaborative project with Laurel Halo.

Keszler's sound installations, music and visual work have appeared at Lincoln Center, MIT List Center, Victoria & Albert Museum, Sculpture Center, The Kitchen, South London Gallery, Carpenter Center for The Visual Arts (Har- vard), Luma-Foundation, Tectonics Festival (Harpa Hall) Reykjavik, Centraal Museum in Utrecht, Boston Center for the Arts, Barbican-St. Lukes and 3S Arts and Greater New York at MoMA PS1.

Ltd. Edition on translucent blue Vinyl !

Plaster Falling was recorded at the same time as John Bender's first album, I Don't Remember Now / I Don't Want To Talk About It. Released in 1981 on the artist's own Record Sluts label, copies of Plaster Falling's initial pressing came hermetically sealed in plaster (and later latex). Thus, listeners had to literally break open the record to find what's hidden inside.

Produced in relative isolation, Plaster Falling is a beacon of brilliance in the nascent minimal-wave sphere. Veering towards skeletal urgency, these recordings set bright analogue melodies against half-whispered vocals and expand Bender's electronic cryptography thru a series of lone signifiers: "Station," "Plaster," "Women," etc.

As Bender explains in the liner notes, "I began to distance myself from the present and describe scenes as if in a movie - seeking concrete, terse, juxtaposed imagery."

This first-time standalone reissue is recommended for fans of Gareth Williams and Mary Currie's Flaming Tunes, Minimal Man and Grouper. Pressed on translucent blue vinyl in a limited / numbered edition of 1000 copies.

Third reissue (of seven planned) in the incredible series of nature-themed libraries originally released in the first half of the Seventies by Cardium, Chic, Nereide, Musical, Rhombus, Spring, and Weekend labels. Seven never-reissued-before albums, real hardcore collector items, which gave birth to a small cult during the last four decades.

"La natura e l'uomo" (Italian for "Nature and mankind") first came out in 1973, despite being part of the same series of "Biologia marina" and "Ittiologia" (earlier reissued by Intervallo), it is actually a different affair, in which the avant-garde urge partly leaves room for sweeter, acoustic atmospheres. But there are also amazing examples of ambient experimentations (like the ones of the previous volumes of the series) such as "Protozoi" or "Venus", both featured in two versions. The main characters of this release are pretty much the same ones we met in the other volumes - Alessandro Alessandroni, Franco Tamponi e Amedeo Tommasi - but "La natura e l'uomo" also introduces two new names. Marco Di Marco, author of the tracks with a more definite easy listening mood, is a pianist and a jazz composer from Bologna, while the alias Kema hides Alessandroni's wife, the amazingly talented Giulia De Muittis. She and her husband are responsible for the most enticing tracks of the album: "Bassa marea", "Pescatori" and "Venus".

Experimental LP inspired on the streets of the big city, listening to the sounds from different angles and perspective of the city. Created just for listening, not for the dancefloor.

What ever happened to The Avalanches Diese Frage stellte sich gewiss der eine oder andere in den 16 Jahren, die seit dem Release des Debüts "Since I Left You" im Jahr 2000 vergangen sind. Immer wieder poppten seither Gerüchte auf, dass dem Kultalbum ein zweiter Langspieler folgen würde. Nun, eine halbe Ewigkeit später, ist es soweit: "Wildflower" kommt via XL in die Läden. Damit dürfte das Album das am längsten erwartete Zweitwerk der Musikgeschichte sein. Ausgeheckt von Robbie Chater und Tony Di Blasi, ist "Wildflower" eine wilde Achterbahnfahrt durch halsbrecherische Loopings voller Samples, die einem mit schrillen Sounds den Kopf verdrehen. Einen treffenden Einblick ins Geschehen bietet die Vorabsingle "Frankie Sinatra", die in knapp vier Minuten ganze Welten entstehen lässt und standesgemäß mit einem abgefahrenen Video einhergeht. Mit von der Partie sind Danny Brown und MF Doom, während Wilmoth Houdini und Rogers & Hammerstein den Soundteppich ausklopfen. Das Video dazu wurde von Fleur & Manu (Drake, A$AP Rocky, M83) produziert und zeigt eine Handvoll Einwohner von New Orleans, die auf einem Jahrmarkt durch Zufall in Kontakt mit Halluzinogenen kommen und dadurch jeglichen Kontakt zur Realität verlieren.

Traxman style of Footworking... A footwork builded up with cheap sound defenitly mastered in a super way, making them existing like devil music.

Forming during 1997 in Providence, Rhode Island experimental group Black Dice have without question paved their own way through their 20 year career. Doing what you want to do when you want to do it, no questions asked with a fully informed yet blatant disregard for everything surrounding them, always with acute execution and an ever changing singular sound. No gimmicks, no nonsense, since the beginning.
Somehow it would only make sense for Dice and L.I.E.S. to link up and after a long friendship we see it come to fruition. With this two track 12 inch Dice put their foot on the gas and ramp it up. You wanted to shred Well this shreds. Is it a snapshot of the past A possible nod of things to come A moment frozen in time We leave it for you to decide.

different coloured vinyls!

Presenting the new ssaliva release on Ekster: We Never Happened'. 180g vinyl packed in a pantone printed outer sleeve with drawing by Charles-Henry Sommelette. Comes with printed inner-sleeves and silk screened plastic oversleeve.
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I am a vessel. A muffled mass. A bulk. Extent. A womb. I move. So I am neither here nor there. Always somewhere in between. To give substance to this frame, I carve out a piece of me. Sometimes a shape, sometimes a form. Into this space I pour the siege of me: words, pictures, you. So we can become me. Viscosity and temperature dictate the time it takes. When it is done, I break the mold I am. I take the cast inside and place it by the others. Choose one and take it home.

DECISIONS is proud to announce its second release: Empty Gallery EP by waterhouse, a Melbourne based producer, DJ and vocalist. The EP spans 3 years of waterhouse productions (2013-2015), charting a sonic emergence suffused with spatial, textural and emotional complexity.
The EP opens with 'Breathless', a heady rush of ambience, shimmering cymbals and field recorded textures. 'A Little Sheep' follows, progressively immersing the listener in accumulating layers of vocal melodies. On '3415' rapturous choral textures encircle delayed claps and a reverb-drenched kick drum to form the most urgently rhythmic cut on the record. Side A ends with title track 'Empty Gallery', in which an intricate constellation of strings, pads, rumbling sub frequencies and brusquely dry percussion meet lyrics confronting life after loss.

'Empty Room' begins the B side, a gentle miasma of sound breathing to an 808 kick that dissolves into a haunting vocal refrain. 'Untitled 2 (12:48am)' builds a cathedral of bells, concrete percussion and deeply resonant drums to house a barely discernable vocal. waterhouse's alchemical ability to turn raw material into something sublime is illustrated on 'Broken Violin (afternoon recording)' in which snippets of detuned violin and vocal improvisation entwine. 'song for a prince in exile' closes the EP with a bubbling slab of ambience that is steadily subsumed by searing distortion. As if cauterising an open wound, it dramatically marks both an ending and a beginning.

Empty Gallery EP arrives on vinyl and digital on Friday 11 March, as much primed for deep listening at home as it is for the more intimately challenging moments of a DJ set. waterhouse has been making waves in Australia with her intense live performances, visceral DJ sets and her recent opus 'waterhouse at the Little Girls Orchestra' for FBi Radio's multi-award winning experimental show Ears Have Ears. Empty Gallery EP is her debut release.
Mastered by Sam John at Precise, pressed on 140 gram vinyl and presented in a printed cardboard sleeve. Cover artwork by waterhouse.

Emptyset is the innovative electronic duo of James Ginzburg and Paul Purgas.The duo composes within a complex set of self-imposed parameters or rule sets and the results of their expeditions on Borders are at once minimal and visceral. Focusing on shifting timbral changes over melody, Emptyset's work is an exploration of the relationship between rhythm, texture and space. The pair shares a history in Bristol's underground music scene as well as an impressive list of production credits. Ginzburg, now Berlin based, runs a network of record labels including electronic music label Subtext and Arc Light Editions, whose reissues include a work by Arthur Russell. He's a prolific
producer and remixer for both independent and major labels, with diverse projects such as Faint Wild Light, Ginz and more recently Bleed Turquoise. Purgas, now based in London, founded the We Elude Control label in 2009, a curated collection of rare experimental music. Purgas is an artist, writer and curator who has presented projects with Tate, Whitechapel and Serpentine
Galleries, and he is also an active promoter of electronic music in eclectic spaces from a carpark to a Modernist pavilion.
Each project's framework and parameters dictate how the sound or performance evolves. In the past, Emptyset have explored the ways in which the sonic and spatial interact within different architectural contexts: often site-specific locations such as the decommissioned Trawsfynydd nuclear power station in
North Wales, or the neo-gothic Woodchester Mansion. Borders takes a different approach, centering around the performative and the performer. Having each created their own tactile instruments, a six-stringed zither-like instrument and
a drum, Emptyset focuses on how organic sounds interact with the analogue processes that have defined their work to date.
Contrasting typical approaches to making electronic music, Emptyset set out to emphasize live performance rather than creating sequences within devices.
While Purgas and Ginzburg utilize vintage analogue electronics, compressing and distorting the signals, the album itself is performed entirely live, where subtle movements make for substantial changes in sound.
From the very first track, 'Body,' one can hear how the physicality of the instruments have imbued the sound's texture. The physical characteristics of the metal strings create a layer of dynamic juxtaposition to the grinding timbres emerging around them. The broody 'Ascent,' features the album's clearest call-and-response between the stringed instrument and the drum, barking and
thudding back and forth at one another. Evident in tracks such as 'Border' and 'Speak,' Emptyset uses basic rhythmic structures drawn from an array of broad cultural practices, expressed neutrally and without overemphasis on the
source. Taken as a whole Borders distills the duo's inspirations to their essence and the resulting music is as raw as it is captivating.

Rawabet is a live album from Helm documenting a special performance that took place alongside Maurice Louca in front of a sold-out audience at the Rawabet Theatre in Cairo on October 22nd, 2015. It's also a snapshot of a period of pan-continental touring which took Helm from Egypt to Austria and then to Canada in three days. During these shows material from his recently released Olympic Mess album was re-imagined, expanded and performed alongside new and "other" material to add an alternative perspective to the original recordings. What ended up being performed in Cairo that night owed a lot to the energy of the city and thanks to a superb recording and mixing job by Khyam Allami, Rawabet can be seen as the definitive live document of Helm to date.

REPRESSED !!
Our favorite Lush, back with further idilic musical visions . Think more Hassell free than Kenny Gcz..*Double sided Silk Screen Sleeve* designed by Cosmo Knex...

Six years after his last album on Miasmah, Schattenspieler, it's great to find Marcus Fjellström resurrected after several long years spent composing his audio-visual opera Boris Christ.

Born out of shattered dreams and an obscured vision of the future, Skelektikon is a delirious yet lucid exploration of the farthest and most conflicted reaches of the heart, teeming with confusion, passion, and ghostly shadows. Being no conventional composer in any way, Marcus stumbles further down his musical domain of detuned orchestral (re-)arrangements and pain-inducing synth passages, arriving at a most unique and personal result. Where Schattenspieler gave way to noir filled alleyways, Skelektikon fills them with paranoia. It's the sound of Limbo, of dancing amoebas, of deviant skeletons, nostalgia and futurism, or quite possibly none of that.

Inhabited by the bizarre and the beautiful, Marcus's music is a blurred yet encouraging representation of how you can never trust your own feelings - or eyes and ears for that matter. And yet, we can't shake the idea that the truth is to be found somewhere within this alien language, as delivered to us through the speakers. Opening our eyes after the final track has dissipated, we wouldn't be surprised to find someone or something there, staring at us, in silent and unsettling knowledge.

Electronic, Experimental, Minimal, NDW (Germany 1984).

NU Lp for RS marks No UFO's first proper LP (as Soft Coast on Spectrum Spools was considered a demo) and having been diagnosed with Carpal tunnel syndrome, will likely be the last of its kind. Eschewing the heavy gestures of today's musical zeitgeist, NU Lp... finds Konrad Jandavs utilizing tape machines, foley libraries and rare synthesizers / amplifiers to construct an oblique sound world evoking reception, perception and agency. Of NU Lp..., Konrad states I was trying hard to avoid making another 3 Feet High And Rising and that basically meant I was making a De La Soul Is Dead, but in the end it seems clear to me that I skipped ahead and made a Buhloone Mindstate.'

POW! continue their danse macabre in the laser glow of hi-beam synthesizers, with a new batch of synth-punk candy that will rot your teeth: Crack An Egg.

Vacuum-sealed, chrome gleaming, propulsion pounding, eyebrows arched and slightly pixelated, this album is like the cupie-doll face beckoning from a digital billboard outside your hovercraft window. From a none-too-distant dystopia and on to your turntable — VCFs slowly open across a smogged-out horizon as they urge you to take that Necessary Call,' warn moodily against a Cyberattack,' and inexplicably Crack An Egg' in honor of the human race. Synthetic earworms squirm into and out of view like twinkling city lights through evening's opaque air, feasting on terse punk skeletons. The neon is buffed to an aerosol sheen by Chris Woodhouse behind the blinking motherboards, with a streetlight or two of Gary Numan's slanting through the door. The automatons know where the party's at — follow them.

On her 3rd album Berlin's GOLDEN DISKÓ SHIP enlargens her pop / experimental sound cosmos for a new component: BASS. In consequence, "Imaginary Boys" was mixed by SCHNEIDER TM and RASHAD BECKER took care of mastering and the vinyl cut.

"Imaginary Boys" sets a new landmark in the work of THERESA STROETGES alias GOLDEN DISKÓ SHIP. The album was conceived during her stay in Lisbon in the summer of 2015 where the multi-instrumentalist found plenty of inspiration in traditional and experimental music. These elements left their traces not only as field recordings but also led the classically trained musician to re-consider the use of her former main instrument viola which is more present than before. One dominant compositional element of "Imaginary Boys" is a deliberate use of time, influenced by the perception of electronic music and techno. While songs like the euphoric "Pacific Trash Vortex" or "Swarm Of Bees" come to the point without any deviation, tracks like "Sundrunk" and "Lifelike Showdown" take their time to develop tense atmospheres of psychedelic intensity. A second characteristic that is accentuated more than on her previous albums "Prehistoric Ghost Party" (Klangbad, 2012) and "Invisible Bonfire" (Spezialmaterial, 2014) is BASS as an aesthetic constant that connects the individual songs / tracks. This way GOLDEN DISKÓ SHIP's sound cosmos, right from the beginning an open and broadly framed matter ignoring boundaries between pop and experimentation, gains a clearly audible additional depth. The choice of electronic artist SCHNEIDER TM for mixing and D&M's studio wizard RASHAD BECKER for mastering / vinyl cut is not only a highly coherent and consequent decision but gives the seven tracks on "Imaginary Boys" the best possible finishing.

«TWO AND TWO» is the outcome of the ambitious research developed by Christina Kubisch and Fabrizio Plessi in 1976, a collaborative effort towards the merging of visual and sound elements into a new form of intermedia. Influenced by the aesthetics of Fluxus, the duo produced a highly complex and articulated performance, involving two camera operators and several video screens, as well as a variety of objects and unconventional instruments. The results is structured into four parts inspired by the natural elements, in which single instruments lose their different sonic characteristics to become inseparable parts of a unique visual/acoustic process.

At a time when the weekly flow of new albums, EPs and mixtapes come to exceed the number of e-mails that pile up in our inbox, the dazzle in Lokom's new double single is like the long anticipated rainfall season in a tropical country: nothing protrudes yet everything is present.
Totally melodic and surprisingly quiet despite its fabulous rhythmic complexity, Good News From Mars soothes like a perfect conversation in a sea of things left unsaid. At the same time dry, blazing and melancholic, Blurred Vision recalls the Brooklyn duo Team Shadetek in their early 2000 years, when the two were still hesitating between ambient warpish glitch and grime jolts. When combined, both tracks offer a vision inspired by the union in 2014 of electronica and experimental dance : an infinity of possibilities where hope still exists. Included Download card Inside