Beats Novedades

Almost all great music is bridge - spanning geography and time, defying easy definition. It is the product of collaboration and mutual respect - individual voice, fused within a collective force. These are the roots for the trio Vértice, an unlikely formation by experimental luminaries, Maurizio Bianchi, Saverio Evangelista, and Juan Manuel Cidrón - each hailing from their own discrete musical geography in Italy and Spain. Devotion to sound and craft are the bonds which join. Milan based Die Schachtel is proud to present Besoch Trauma, this remarkable project’s first recorded outing, years in the making and now marking the launch of a new series from the imprint - Decay Music, highlighting inspired contemporary experimental efforts in the ambient, ethereal, and emotively abstract.

Each member of Vértice comes from a luminous and historic musical pedigree. Maurizio Bianchi is one of Italy’s earliest and most important figures in Industrial music, beginning to issue a wild series of visionary releases during the late 1970s. Saverio Evangelista is well known for his decades longs efforts within the seminal outfits, Esplendor Geométrico and M.S.B., while Juan Manuel Cidrón is one of the great cult figures of Spanish electronic music. Together they shed skin, reforming as one, diving into uncharted waters, while remaining unrecognizable within.

Slow, sophisticated, and a deeply meditative, minimalist wonder, Besoch Trauma progresses like a melancholic dream - the slow wilting of sounds, pondering their own rebirth. Repetitive and restrained piano lines rise among drifting synthesiser tones and textural ambiances, fall away and return, fracture, break, stagger, and distort across the entirety of the albums first side, while murky, implacable sounds breed with flirting electronics and piano, sculpting the vast expanse of abstraction which emerges across the entirety of the second - clattering and droning, filled with air, fading melodies, and rippling tones - the inorganic rising as a synthetic vision of the natural world, and a music which entirely refuses to say what it is.

Two slow burning sides, unfolding with greater depth at every turn, across Besoch Trauma Bianchi, Evangelista, and Cidrón, joined as Vértice, build rich tapestry of creatively challenging sound - a hypothetical imagining of historic minimalism and ambient music, bred with industrial and punk. Dark, inhabitable, and unquestionably beautiful.

The perfectly sounding Decay Music records have been perfectly cut and pressed using a surprising thick grey hi-quality vinyl featuring a "decay-like" marbling effect. The overall design is by the usual suspect Bruno, who created a "half alchemic-half decadent" custom typeface for the series. The covers - featuring mysterious and obscure drawings by obscure artists – are printed in silver on heavy matt black paper stock, and hosted in a transparent outer sleeve, on which the typography is silkscreened in white on clear acetate.

Edition of 250 copies and pressed to 180g grey-marbled vinyl, one-time pressing, housed in pro-printed inner sleeve and jacket, itself contained in a silkscreened pvc sleeve.

Operating on a plane between avant-garde indie, bubbling electronica and cosmic psychedelia, London group Voka Gentle have an addictive, amorphous sound. A three limbed beast made up of twins Ellie and Imogen Mason, and William J. Stokes, each is a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and producer with an imperious understanding of three dimensional sound.

The newest single ‘Necrofauna / The Garden of Eden’ - features Wayne Coyne from The Flaming Lips.
The hallucinatory mix of squelching synth bass and rhythmic samples, three-tiered harmonies playing off against William’s sprechgesang, and a cutting, full-bodied drum beat is reflected in the oneiric themes.

“This song is a dream sequence about the narrator entering the Garden of Eden, the emblem of an idealised pastoral relationship with the natural world, and realising they can’t stand it and want t o consume and bring destruction to it (I see a deer pass me by and I break its neck / Rip off its hind leg and take a bite through fur, sinew and bone).”

‘Necrofauna / The Garden of Eden’ - recorded with neo - metal battalion Pigsx7 guitarist and producer Sam Grant - is the first release in earnest since 2019’s acclaimed debut album ‘Start Clanging Cymbals’, released via Nude Records. Having come through the dues - paying gestation period that leads up to a debut record, there’s a sense of liberation around this new phase for Voka Gentle - a subtle confidence in their craft. It’s well earned too - with high praise from the likes of UNCUT, MOJO and The Line of Best Fit at press. Support comes too from BBC 6 Music - including presenting an edition of Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone - and Radio 1. Tracks from that album also featured on FIFA 19 and The Sims 2020, aiding in recognition.

A live set at the prestigious Pitchfork Avant Garde festival, as well as a clutch of tastemaker festivals in the UK (Dot to Dot , Live At Leeds, The Great Escape, Kendall Calling, Bluedot, Neighbourhood), alongside the serendipit ous shows with The Flaming Lips and













[l] d2 [When We Go, We’re Taking You All With Us!]

The France-based Australian Will Guthrie might be one of the most exciting exponent from the latest generation of experimental percussionists. For this edition, the distinctive drummer rendered some materials from things he is currently working on—from cut up of field recordings to some challenging electronics amplifications and live improvisation passages, to several tussles with a couple of Indonesian percussions such as gamelan, saron and gong. All cooked into two sagacious sides of tape that mongrelized free jazz tradition with delicate electroacoustic style. Both sides remain untitled, enticing for some adventurous expectations.