Pop & Rock News

Die weltbekannte Band aus Island ist mit ihrem elften Studioalbum, dem hoch emotionalen "Mobile Home", zurückgekehrt und veröffentlicht damit ihr erstes Album seit 2018. Das Kollektiv beweist einmal mehr die Meisterhaftigkeit, seine künstlerischen Grenzen zu erweitern, indem sie eines ihrer ambitioniertesten und kraftvollsten Alben seit Jahrzehnten veröffentlichen. Für ihr neuestes Album holten sich GusGus die VÖK-Sängerin Margrét Rán zur Hilfe, um ihren Stil zu erweitern und den Sound des Kollektivs so frisch wie immer zu halten. Das 9-Track-Album bietet eine Mischung aus elektronischem Rock, Ambient, Darkwave, Downtempo und Synthpop. GusGus besser denn je!

World-renowned group GusGus have returned with their 11th studio album, the highly emotive Mobile Home, marking their first album release since 2018. The collective once again prove their commitment to pushing their artistic boundaries as they release one of their most ambitious and powerful albums in decades. For their latest record, GusGus call on VÖK’s lead singer Margrét Rán to help expand their style, keeping the collective’s sound as fresh as ever. The 9-track album features a concoction of electronic rock, ambient, darkwave, downtempo, and synthpop.

After announcing a new album in October 2020, GusGus wowed fans with their first single “Higher,” offering a first taste of how VÖK’s impactful vocals mesh seamlessly with GusGus’ intelligent and powerful electronic production. “Higher” was soon followed up with the darker, downtempo “Stay The Ride” and the bright and energetic synth work on “Our World.” The three captivating singles each received equally remarkable music videos courtesy of founding members Arni & Kinski, the directing team known for working with the likes of Sigur Rós, Kiasmos, Ólafur Arnalds, Of Monsters and Men, and more.

Every track on Mobile Home doubles as a window into a futuristic dystopian world that has been overtaken by machines. A nod to the rise of technology and ever-growing uncertainty surrounding automation, the album explores themes of solitude, rebellion, science fiction, hedonism, pleasure, and anger. Swirling within this world is a disconnected, aching soul who is on the verge of slipping into complete dementia. Forgotten purpose and goals but continues to be driven by the hedonistic default program of material consciousness; sensually self-indulgent and engaged in the pursuit of pleasure alone. In Mobile Home, GusGus challenge themselves like never before, resulting in a wonderfully chaotic reflection of the ongoing war between soul and machine.

With Mobile Home, GusGus show the quality and sonic diversity of the singles pervades throughout the full LP, while preserving the melodramatic themes that tie its 9 tracks together. “Simple Tuesday” showcases the group’s aptitude for blending contemporary electronic production with pop sensibilities while keeping an optimistic tonality at the forefront. Meanwhile, “Love Is Alone” and “Original Heartbreak” offer a slower, more pensive take on synthpop, and evoke feelings of solitude and deep melancholia. “Silence” and “The Rink” boast some of GusGus’s more experimental production, each alternating between radio-ready vocal verses with inventive and exciting synth elements. GusGus closes Mobile Home with “Flush,” an instrumental score that leaves the listener riding high as they finish the LP.

"Much like their contemporaries and collaborators NSRD, the music of 19 gadi pirms sākuma captures frustration with their own reality, and a playful drive to make up a new one." Latvia, late 80's

*limited edition cassete**
Printed see through plastic inner cover inside an orange fluorescent case, with folded paper insert. 20 track compilation.

Inspired by Clarissa Pinkola Estés canonical text, Women Who Run with the Wolves (1992), the eponymously titled Donne che corrono coi lupi is a dedication to feral feminine energy, connection and sisterhood. In the book, Estés – a psychoanalyst, poet and cantadora, or “keeper of old stories” – draws on Jungian theory to weave an alternative mythology of The Wild Woman archetype. She conjures images of the underworld, rivulets of menstrual blood; a lumpen mass of placenta splattering onto a cave floor. In a mirrored gesture, for Donne che corrono coi lupi, more than twenty artists and producers have come together, giving rise to a primal, mystical compilation destined to entrance and ensnare.

An eerie lullaby, Cucina Povera’s ‘Liikaa liimaa’ recants her trek through Glasgow’s Victorian Necropolis, a gigantic cemetery comprised of elaborate tombs and monuments. Searching for some healing growth during the bleak Scottish winter, she wandered among the graves, coming face to face with an elusive herd of deer. Translating this encounter into sound, Povera’s ethereal vocals glide and glissade, taking on the malleability of melting ice. Another eulogy to animals in the landscape, Kakubo’s ‘Aboyá’ derives from the Brazilian Portuguese word “Aboiar” – a chant utilised by farmers to herd cattle. The sloping beat is interlaid with synthetic horns and Brazilian folk songs, traditional compositions made by marginalised rural communities.

Camille Mandoki and Lucrecia Dalt’s contribution is named after the ancient Greek goddess – Baubo is a fearsome, headless torso, who appears with nipples for eyes and a vulva for a mouth. In Estés’ envisioning, Baubo is a gloriously obscene character who shakes her breasts and tells hilarious dirty jokes. Her nipples are described as “psychic organs,” with the vulva becoming an endless portal to women’s stories and secrets. On the track, developed during a virtual artist residency at the Goethe Institut, Mandoki and Dalt experiment with timbre, creating the uncanny, spectral presence of a third singer. Voices are an essential component throughout Donne che corrono coi lupi, harmonising and unifying, refusing to be silenced. Eva Geist, in her native Italian tongue processed through a multitude of fx pedals, casts spells – incantations to honour the power of female friendship. While label boss Elena Colombi, utilising Ece Özel’s hypnotic reading of the parable of The Red Shoes and Pirinç by Turkish poet Lale Müldür, summons dissociative glossolalia.

In defiance of the punitive rationality that structures the domesticated world, Estés instead holds reverence for intuition – wild impulses generated from one’s body and soul. Bergsonist – whose alias references Bergsonism, a school of philosophical thought which rejects static values in favour of motion and change – records almost all her music live. ‘Speculation’ is an improvised piece, instinctively composed in the heat of the moment.

"Dare, dare, dare ... She/her gets caught staring at the wall, bashing table with brushes, shouting at the clouds filling the red-loud sky. What is left? Just … sound, sound, sound." Percussionist Valentina Magaletti’s ‘Bubble Pain’ seethes like a boiling cauldron, her rapid, heart-fluttering rhythms inflected with bat screeches and canine yelps.

Borusiade – a stalwart figure in Romania’s queer dance community – unleashes ‘Our Hustle,’ the title referring to the urgency of gaining “an equal status in society.” A powerful industrial affair, the track sways with mechanic momentum. Also tuning into cyborg fantasies, Isabella, alone in the midst of the pandemic, conducts a ​​seance with her Elektron Octatrack – ’Cherry Sky’ blends mechanical synth with sticky-sweet lyrics. Formerly known as Inga Copeland, Lolina takes a bath with a drum machine, its waterlogged utterances meandering over her disquieting refrain: “Let me drown in sound.”

Closing off the B-side, ‘Dali's Elephant Caravan Melting Desert’ is a recording of a performance held in a former brothel – perhaps the oldest – in Hudson, New York. Emulating the motion of a train thundering past the building, Deradoorian encapsulates the dynamism of the city, its ghosts and obscured history of labouring sex workers. Reaching climax, the record concludes with Fetter’s ‘Karma’ – a cacophony of raucous punk-noise, exploding into incandescent fragments as sharp as broken glass.

You’ll Never Get To Heaven (Alice Hansen and Chuck Blazevic aka Slow Attack Ensemble) returns with their fourth release Wave Your Moonlight Hat for the Snowfall Train, a collection of ethereal songs that move through the mercurial weather patterns of minimalism and dream pop.

The duo named this album after the closing track on Phil Yost’s 1967 release Bent City, inspired by its prescient use of delay processing in elevating spare beatless arrangements into haunting arrays of sonic afterimages — an approach Hansen and Blazevic explore on this outing in their own way, with a few favoured instruments and a Chorus Echo and Revox in hand. The result is a collection of sparse, lightly dub-infused songs and instrumentals, equally icy and wistful, characterized by melodic fretless basslines, spaced-out harmonics, watery piano and marimba, hushed vocals, and tape echo treatments.

Stylistically, it’s almost as if the duo was imagining what an early This Mortal Coil demo might have sounded like had Ivo enlisted in lieu of the usual cast, with a pared back L’Empire Des Sons as the session band, and June Hardin or a young Julee Cruise on lead vocals. The album evokes an overcast autumnal evening of cloud-watching, an inner journey witness to an expansive spectrum of moods, from nimbus clouds to shimmering sun showers. RIYL: Broadcast, Weekend’s ‘81 Demos, Chantal Weber, Orquesta de las Nubes, Hydroplane, The Moon and the Melodies, Eberhard Weber

Honey Dijon was asked the remix her “favourite band” Blancmange and choose the magnificent disco oddity, 1983 hit ‘Blind Vision.’ The result is stripped back, bumping houser that sounds as much Green Velvet as it does Talking Heads. Urgent percussion and oscillating synths drive things forward, allowing a full Blancmange vocal to unfold aloft to great effect. Also features the original and sought after extended mix. The first in a new series of ‘London Records Remixed’ releases on 12” and digital. Now at its new home as part of the Because Music Group the London Records catalogue is being revisited by pioneering, contemporary electronic producers.

*2021 repress*

Minami Deutsch is back at it again with their latest LP "With Dim Light". Whilst softening their sound and cushioning the blow, you can expect a more profound diversity in their sound, whilst retaining the principle ingredients that make Minami Deutsch so great such as their signature fuzz, thumping bass and dream like vocals. There is a heavier experimentation in regards to genre exploration.

With hints of post punk and nods to late 60s psychedelic rock, this shows that Minami Deutsch is willing to push musical boundaries further whilst retaining a clever songwriting ability to achieve this album.

=Band Description=
Minami Deutsch was formed by Kyotaro Miula (guitar, vocals, synthesizer) in Tokyo in 2014. The band members being self-professed "repetition freaks" who heavily listen to minimal techno.

Produced by Oscillian, Richard X and Sunglasses Kid, 'Sleepwalking' creates the illusion of timelessness over eleven tracks as it rejuvenates an 80’s synthwave musical aesthetic while simultaneously presenting a modern pop vibe. NINA’s lyrical depth paired with instrumentals that are both dynamic and delicate create a quality sonic experience.

Inimate British pop for fans of Spike, The Cleaners From Venus, Felt, Durutti Column, Black Ark Studios and Aladdin. Charming lost tapes from the early ‘80s, treasured only by family members until now.

"Jim and I met at university in Liverpool in nineteen seventy-five and immediately began making music together. We both had rooms in the same big Victorian house in the centre of town and our evenings were spent hanging out in the nightclubs of Toxteth, like Dutch Eddie's where the DJ played Trinidadian music all night long.

Liverpool has always been somewhere with its own distinctive culture, poetry, and music. In the nineteen seventies it was absolutely magical. The city was still bathed in the afterglow of the Beatles and there was a kind of creative anarchy about the place. There was this band called Death Kit who used to put on multi-media events with people in fancy dress and random bits of theatre. We'd turn up completely out of our heads and it felt like we were deconstructing ourselves as individuals.

After we left college, Jim began living in Cambridge and I returned to London where I'd grown up, but our musical relationship continued. We knew people who were making commercial sounds and having success with them but that wasn't what we wanted to do. We performed occasionally, albeit very erratically, mostly as a duo but sometimes with other musicians.

What we were really interested in was musical exploration. Jim built a studio in his back garden, bought some multi-track recording equipment, and began experimenting. We wanted to produce something that was just for ourselves. We were undoubtedly very naïve but naivety and innocence were hallmarks of that time.

In my childhood, I'd been fascinated with the story of Aladdin. Now that fascination began to be reflected in the music we were making. Here was a story about a boy who transforms his world and enters the magical realm. That seemed to be exactly what was happening to me. For all sorts of reasons, I hadn't particularly enjoyed my childhood but now I had managed to step out of the everyday reality, to find a place where I belonged and where I had a kind of power.

The name we used for the band came from a song recorded in 1949 by a singer called Mel Torme. There's a line in that song that goes, "Careless Hands don't care when dreams slip through." That seemed appropriate since dreams were part of the territory we were exploring.

I had got married immediately after leaving college and by now I had a daughter who was afraid to go to sleep at night. She wanted me to be present in her dreams with her. That became the inspiration for a period during which Jim and I tried to recreate the shifting landscape of the night-time imagination.

Unfortunately, the choice of name turned out to be horribly prophetic when in a freak accident Jim fell into a lake and was drowned. It seemed to me that for some time, he had not been paying enough attention to his own life. So I wasn't exactly surprised when I heard the news but I was completely devastated. After Jim's death, I put away his guitar and never played again. I went on to make a career as a novelist.

Most of the recordings we produced were lost over the years. A bunch of master tapes was accidentally thrown into a dumpster and others were left in the attic of a house I lived in at some time during the nineteen nineties. This album has been pieced together from fragments that somehow survived the cull."

- Brian Keaney November 2020

Limited Edition of 500 copies - comes with poster.

"Arthur Russell meets The Style Council on this EP retrospective of lost Mancunian sophista-jazz-popoutfit, The Bernhardts. -

The Bernhardts are Simon Milner (vocals, trumpet), Steve Hopkins (keyboards), and Neil Fitzpatrick (percussion, guitar), a trio that formed in Manchester in the early ‘80s. Simon and Neil have been good
friends since grade school, and before The Bernhardts, they released a few singles at the end of the ‘70s with their pop-rock outfit, The Smirks. On the side, the pair played regularly with their self-styled ‘jazzpunk’ ensemble at various local bars and venues. Steve was playing keyboards and producing music for Pauline Murray, John Cooper Clarke, and the Invisible Girls, and Manchester bands such as Jilted John, Dislocation Dance, the High, Chris Sievey, and Happy Mondays. He happened to attend one of Simon and Neil’s late evening punk-cabaret shows, captivated, he approached them about collaborating.

Stylishly laced in tuxedos, with their hair elaborately coiffed, the three played around Manchester as The Oscar Bernhardt Ensemble, a group dedicated to the romantic jazz nostalgia of the ‘20s, ‘30s, and ‘40s. By night, they transformed into Rio Fortune (Steve), Claude Walloon (Neil), and Oscar Bernhardt (Simon), conjuring yearning memories of a distant musical era. Away from their gigs, the trio assembled under various names for their studio experiments. They captured and updated the spirit of the decadent ‘20s as The Rum Babas, their interests in Eastern melodies saw them as The Rickshaw Gang, but ultimately, as all their influences spun together and the recordings developed, they simply went by The Bernhardts. Meddling around in the studio, they would add drum machines to some of their favorite jazz standards, giving an electronic tinge to classics like “I Get A Kick Out Of You” and “Moonglow”. The concept expanded into a fantasy that a 1930’s group had been abducted into outer space to run a cabaret in the stars; It was space-age meets sequencers. They crafted a handful of original songs that they felt were fit to shop around to labels.

The band got busy on the phone, posted out demo cassettes, and managed to set up some A&R meetups for a potential deal. It was a challenging experience to pitch their outer space voyage to less imaginative labels, but they landed a place on Parlophone with some determination. Together with producer Mike Howlett, they polished a handful of their songs in various studios around Manchester. This EP compilation contains released and unreleased songs from those sessions; a sampler of the different sides of The Bernhardts. Each song, intricately woven, paints the picture of the sophisticated celestial moods the group was trying to capture.

Although the group had radio play, played occasional promotional gigs, and had the backing of a major label, it was difficult for them to expand to a wider audience. The Bernhardts members eventually moved on to other projects a couple of years after their sole single, “I Hear You Calling”, was released. They shifted focus slightly, playing together as Distant Cousins along with Simon’s wife Doreen whom he’d met during The Bernhardts’ recording sessions. Currently, the group still maintains good friendships and strong interests in music. Neil plays indie-pop with his daughter Hann, Simon can be found busking regularly around Manchester with The Charleston Charlies, and Steve has returned to running a Latin-soul-jazz quintet after taking a detour to earn his Ph.D in laser physics."

Kris Baha returns to his imprint since ‘Mind Your Head’ in 2016 with 4 mutant industrial cuts ready for a dancefloor of 1.‘Behave’ begins with a hypnotic sequence guiding the listener through the piece as sonic sirens screech from the cavernous dystopian wastelands of 2020. The future is...

‘Hi-Fi, Lo-Fi, No-Fi’ - the sound of Wormhole / The Wormholes. For this release on Allchival we fast forward to the 90s – 1991 to start with, when Metal, Hard Rock, Punk and a love of Fugazi brought the Carroll brother s – Dave & Anto – together with Graham Blackmore as Wormhole. 18 tracks spanning their three LPs, with the full permission of the labels involved – the revered Dead Elvis, the American based Chunkin’ Bronchii’ and Lo Recordings – and remastered by one of their original collaborators and producer of their debut Marc Carolan.

All three were residents of Ringsend to the south of Dublin’s city centre. Graham, the youngest of the three, was already a gifted guitarist/singer, with Dave a natural self taught drummer/singer and Anto locking bass to his brother’s beat. Early gigs had a special chemistry that set them apart from the rest of Dublin’s nascent indie rock scene of the time.

Working class lads in it for the long haul they soon attracted the attention of Eamonn Crudden who became their manager and tireless supporter. He helped set up a label called Dead Elvis which would release their debut album “Chicks Dig Scars” in May ’94 - the labels first release. Selling out its run of 500 copies alongside some low budget grainy videos, also directed by Crudden, which had heavy rotation on Irelands first late night, left of centre music video show Donal Dineen’s “No Disco”.

There was a flurry of attention from UK labels and the group ended up signing with Roadrunner records. Known primarily for metal, the label was trying to branch into other areas but for a host of reasons it never quite worked out – the departure of a supportive A&R, the rise of English centric Britpop - and the mixed bag of reviews and radio play wasn’t enough to generate the sales necessary to keep the labels interest . Although they got to support the Fall on a UK tour and the label funded a demo session for the next album - Parijuana – they were let go in 1995.

Far from splitting up, it gave them a second wind and willing collaborators were still available with Stano taking the boards for their second album “Scorpio: The Album”. Released in 1997 on an imprint set up especially for them Chunkin’ Bronchii’ it showcased a heavier darker sound. It found a small audience leading to a collaborative LP with Welsh producer Richard Thomas via Jon Ty’s Lo Recordings. “Seven Point Plan To Destroy Astrology “ released in 1998 followed by a remix 12 the pick of which, a collaboration with Dublin’s Decal titled “Free The Tones” , is featured here.

Crudden had not given up on the Parijuana demos from 95 which finally saw the light of day on a reactivated Dead Elvis in ’99 with the subtitle “4 Years in Captivity”. Released to little fanfare outside their fanbase by now the group had run its course with real life interfering and Graham departing. Anto and Dave drafted in Fergus Cullen for the free form E+S=B (Electronic (sometimes European) Senoria Band) and continued to gig in Dublin. In 2019 The Wormholes were back in the studio with Stano when Dave suffered a stroke and was diagnosed with Stage Four Cancer. He died three months later.

Melodic Energy Commission is a Canadian gem and an interesting branch of the Hawkwind family tree (featuring Del Delmar on electronics.) Hailing from British Columbia, their unique blend of space rock, progressive and hippie psychedelia began in 1977 as a recording-only project titled "The Melodic Energy Commission of Collected Artists."

+ Eindeloostoogfilosoof (locked groove)

Alex Deforce, poet and Brussels bar-culture connoisseur makes his appearance on Lexi Disques, in collaboration with NY-based Charlotte Jacobs and Wiet L (Sagat). The result is a playful mix of spoken word and electronics infused in contemporary flemish poetry and radio practice. Including a 12 page booklet with texts and visuals by Alex.

A new sub-label of the longstanding Canadian electro imprint Suction Records, Ice Machine — focusing on old-school wave/post-punk sounds — continues its Ceramic Hello reissue campaign with the 1st-ever reissue of their 1980 7” debut, “Climatic Nouveaux”.

Limited to 300 copies, the 7” contains the exclusive b-side instrumental, “Theatre Matrix”, and comes housed in a striking re-creation of the original sleeve, now printed on solid reverse board.

Ceramic Hello hailed from Burlington Ontario, about an hour outside of Toronto, and comprised of Brett Wickens and Roger Humphries. Clear nods to then-contemporary UK synth pop acts like John Foxx, OMD, and Ultravox can be heard in full effect. Shortly after the 1981 release of Ceramic Hello’s debut LP, Wickens moved to the UK to work for legendary Factory Records-associated design firm Peter Saville Associates, where he created iconic LP covers for the likes of New Order, Joy Division, and Peter Gabriel.

Spirit & Form unfolds a rippling waterfall, an oceanic wave of sequenced sound to safeguard against the drowning of a city-stressed soul. Like a spa for the brain, relaxing your meditation muscles with melodies of deep dreams and high hopes. A digitech video ad for a coconut-flavored aperitivo with ice-tickling images, new age flavors, fluorescently-lighted polygon meshes and deepdark shading. Well, all these spirits are taking new form here; electronic exotica and slow burning ambient prepared from a deep-felt love for specific vibes and spaces. A very personal and perfectly paced soft swinging masterpiece.

Spirit & Form is inspired by growing up in the 80's and 90's and all that this includes and inflicts; tv news intros and animated series, never ending ambient adventures and first person gaming, office clerk cubicles and its vestimentary code, hair highlights and glossy textiles, rompler synths and video manuals, digital high sheen and synthesized reality. All this in perfect harmony with nature's high frequencies and its effect on mood and composure, like calmness in the eye of a storm.

Spirit & Form is the brainchild of co-conspirators David Edren and Bent Von Bent, who both released soloalbums as DSR Lines and Ōgon Batto, respectively. S&F is a next step in their path of exploring various works of output. This new project breaks their initial setup of improvisation to explore a more compositional modus operandi.

Spirit & Form is the result of numerous programming and production sessions between 2017 and 2019, one being a week at a reclusive residence in the outskirts of Zeelandic Flanders (next to the renowned Drowned lands of Saeftinghe) where most of the album's tracks came together.

An hour of finely crafted grooves where cosmic atmospheres meet late night bangers !

While on a break due to a certain pandemic, L’Eclair threw itself in the making of a new album. Until that point recording sessions were usually really short. Former albums were made in only a few days and recorded mostly live on tape. That changed as the band decided to do four recording sessions over nine months, hence allowing the group and its sound engineer/manager Benoit Erard to spend more time and energy on the production. With the ability to step back and reflect on the work in progress, L’Eclair had the occasion to take things a step above in terms of arrangements, compositions and structures. The result is an hour-long 12 tracks record, which is more diversified and concise than previous efforts.

Titled “Confusions”, the album shows L’Eclair’s obsession with groove in all its forms. It blends club vibes with psychedelic grooves, rhythmic trances and ambient comedowns while retaining a true coherence. Produced and organic, danceable and ethereal, spontaneous and cerebral, joyful and melancholic, “Confusions” is always on the fence between very different moods without ever wandering off. The band’s never fading influences are still there: you can hear hints of CAN, Piero Umiliani or Tangerine Dream here and there. But it’s melted with different universes, such as late 80s Madchester or Aphex Twin and Boards Of Canada’s textured worlds. There is also a strong Hip Hop feel with sampled-based tracks and non-binary beats that recall the likes of great producers like Madlib, MF DOOM, J Dilla or even Timbaland. The record also has its fair share of dub and house influences, which connect with the group’s attachment to the club vibe.

Single-sided C-28 cassette tape placed in a cardboard box together with a porcelain drumstick splinter, a hand-printed letterpress poster and postcards.

Florian Bräunlich Safe Crash with a performance by Sven-Åke Johansson (13:36)

Edition of 100

Evidence hints at the event. Parts of broken drumsticks, a sound recording, a photograph and a written approach. Traces, relics. The work Safe Crash by visual artist Florian Bräunlich consists of porcelain drumsticks, plastic buckets, a wooden platform, varnish, cymbals, cymbal stands, a floor tom and a spotlight on which the second release of „dispari“ is based.

A sound recording witnesses Sven-Åke Johansson’s performance of Florian Bräunlich’s Safe Crash at HFBK, Hamburg in September 2020. The moment Johansson begins to play with the porcelain drumsticks, he transfers them into another state. In the course of the performance, the melodic-rhythmic sounds shift perceptibly towards the material exploration of the porcelain. Johansson – a style-defining drummer of the German free jazz era of the 60s and 70s; from the 80s onwards, he pursued an artistic path as a music performer in the circles of fine arts and new music – works out all aspects and parameters of the material’s sonority, tries to make the objects audible in their quality. His playing is an immediate response to the sound of the things he is working with. Listening to the recording reveals the insatiable curiosity with which he explores the material before it breaks. It is a venture he undertakes, an experiment, an investigation. Little by little, he adopts the dysfunctionality of the drumsticks. Owing to the way the material is used, the minimalistic piece seems like an adaptation of the orgies of material destruction known from Fluxus, which were paralleled by a musicalization of the everyday world. Any object could become an instrument.

Johansson carries Bräunlich’s sculptural work forward; based on his touch, his play, he amplifies what is already inherent in the form. Though the function and materiality of the objects initially appear as a contradiction, it is precisely this contradiction that heightens their performative quality. The ephemeral nature of sound is set in relation to the supposed permanence of the medium of sculpture. The process of fragmentation leads to the final state, the final form – splinters all over the place. For each publication some of the relics are placed in a cardboard box together with a sound recording on a single sided C-28 cassette tape, a hand-printed letterpress poster and postcards.

It is a play with the immediacy of the performance, the lingering sound – the during and the after.

Merle Radtke

Special limited edition LP of 200 copies. Download code included with bonus track.

Top Tape celebrates its 35th anniversary with the album "Madame Arthur" by PLASTIC COCON (1982-1983).

These special cassette tape recordings have been lost for decades and are now being released for the first time on vinyl (magenta transparent) and remasterd by Rude66.
In the early 80s in Amsterdam there were circles from friends and musicians, in different configurations, which made music together at home for pleasure. Plastic Cocon was such a circle.

Plastic Cocon was based on experimental musical encounters by Robby Horsfall († 2013) and Menko Konings (founder S.M. Nurse). Some of these encounters were also attended by Anneke Stempher (S.M. Nurse).

Oak Corridor is the second full-length album from Newcastle, Australian duo Troth (Amelia Besseny & Cooper Bowman). It follows 2020’s warmly received album, Flaws In The Glass (Altered States Tapes) and 2021’s Small Movements In Radiance mini-album (Not Not Fun). While the same themes and intentions remain, this time Troth channel their ambient experiments into an environ located somewhere closer to minimal-wave and synth-pop.

While Oak Corridor is their most ‘song-based’ album to date, it continues the respectful treatment of natural themes found in their previous releases, further tying in elements of balance, truth, justice, humility, strains of mysticism from varied origins and an opposition to the encroachment of ill-advised development surrounding them in Newcastle (and Australia more broadly). The album is a truly collaborative affair and offers something of a sound-diary of the two’s relationship.

On the initiative of Unknown Pleasures Records, and the consequent adhesion to this project by Industrial Complexx and Oráculo Records, we pay tribute with covers by different bands to The Sisters of Mercy, the band that many of us identify as the most important of the gothic rock and dark post-punk that derived in the first wave of English punk.

Industrial Complexx has prepared for this occasion a special release in which we combine the album in cassette format and a book that tells the story of this band from Leeds. Unknown Pleasures Records is releasing this compilation on CD and Oracle Records on vinyl.

Die Form is the seminal post-industrial electronic act started in the late 70’s by French musician and multimedia artist Philippe Fichot. He began recording a number of experimental cassettes under different names but Die Form became the main project and with which he has developed a prolific career during more than four decades. Whilst the project was still in its first stage, the underlying concepts were already evident: a combination of esoteric electronic experiments with an underlying theme of eroticism, death and other taboo subjects, apparent in both the music and artworks.

“Ad Infinitum” was recorded with dark and stifling atmospheres almost simultaneously with the album “Confessions”. It includes cult pieces such as “Bite Of God” and “Chronovision”, which has made the success of Die Form in clubs, alongside more ambient and industrial tracks such as “In The Evening Of Life” or “Unlimited”.

“Ad Infnitum” was originally released on CD in 1993 by Hyperium Records and now is available for the first on vinyl record. This new edition includes the complete original track list plus a selection of instrumental versions and unreleased tracks from the same period. Limited edition of 474 numbered copies on double vinyl with a deluxe 16-page casebound hardcover book featuring unpublished images as well as other reworked photographs taken from “The Visionary Garden”. Every copy includes a certificate and one sticker.

“The taboo leads to transgression ... the taboo transgression spellbinds” (Georges Bataille)

Fictional larger than life characters come in all forms and ways but no one expected East Rome acid minimal synth-punk duo Holiday Inn to spread their cult in such a distinctive manner, overthrowing all sets of rules in the peninsula’s stuffy DIY circuit and uniting techno-industrial enthusiasts, hardcore noisers and theatrical dark wavers. At some point though someone just had to do it!

Co-released by Avant! Records and Maple Death Records, Torbido is Holiday Inn’s debut full-length and by all accounts their strongest manifesto yet. A collaboration between Gabor (Aktion, Metro Crowd) on voice and Frenchman Bob Junior (Trans Upper Egypt, Bobsleigh Baby, Hiss) on synth and drum machine, they leave their best on stage, live shows have cemented their ill reputation: Gabor is a lanky dude and struts onstage with a boxer’s pre match ritual dance, ready to vomit words in your face while Bob’s composure never fails to spread misery and mystery through his vintage noise assault setup.

Torbido kicks off with She, a hallucinogenic dub infused punk anthem, Dirty Town is an industrial boogie for wide eyed dreamers, Feel Free! is an electro jungle b-boys rhythmic speed induced breakbeat tune for the future. The feverish magic happens on No Speaking, where Holiday Inn turns an acid techno tune into a circuit breaking warped frenzy.

Holiday Inn are shaped and scarred by the unauthorized development of buildings once considered a sign of gleaming growth in the Roman suburbs. It’s nostalgic and nasty, and will not have a bright future and let’s not forget that Torbido means murky and sinister, so come on and take a plunge into Tevere’s mudbanks.

The principles of the inclusive band "21 downbeat": Intoxication and ecstasy, or thump and confetti! Beyond the usual boundaries and ideas, the band members create their very own sound from their own texts and poems by contemporary authors. Perhaps the musicians can be called Satyroi, cheerful demons in the wake of Dionysus, who is difficult to tame and for whom our current limits and ideas do not play a role. At appearances at Mensch Meier, the canteen at Berghain and at the Fusion Festival, the band has already put on spectacular stage shows that caused euphoria right down to the last row.

The now appearing debut ep "Shower" contains 4 pieces. Energetic percussion meets a rough synthesizer sound, the vocals are mostly polyphonic, clear and straightforward. All lyrics of the EP are based on poems by the award-winning author Yoko Tawada.

'Burn Slow' is a 10-track album from Chris Liebing with
vocal contributions from a diverse range of artists: Miles
Cooper Seaton (Akron / Family), Mute labelmate Polly
Scattergood (onDeadWaves), Cold Cave, Aleen and, of
course, Gary Numan.
'Burn Slow' is a minimalist electronic epic and the start of
a new chapter for one of techno's leading authorities. It
might not be what you expect for a DJ synonymous with
fast, hard and heavy techno but, according to Chris
Liebing, he's always been something of a slow starter:
'I've wanted to do something like 'Burn Slow' all my life,'
he says.
While retaining the framework of the techno beats that
Chris Liebing has dedicated his life to for the past 25
years, here he also seeks out new harmonic territories,
taking aim at the heart rather than the feet, in order to
tackle some deep themes. The key concept of presence -
the idea that everything is happening in this moment and
that everything in the past is mere memory - form the
thematic backbone of the record. It's something Liebing
got in touch with via philosopher Alan Watts, not to
mention decades of getting entire dancefloors lost in the
present: 'If people would stay in the now, everything in
the world would just have a bit more harmony,' explains
Liebing.
Liebing has teamed up with Ralf Hildenbeutel (a key part
of the long since defunct Eye Q family) for 'Burn Slow' and
it was at his new musical 'enabler' Hildenbeutel's Frankfurt
studio that Liebing began drifting into new territor.

On this third, consecutive 7" for Knekelhuis they showcase a slightly darker side, undoubtedly influenced by these current viral times. Still, shadows are always in need of light. These two anxious tunes are full of metal clanking, eerie synths and rolling basslines taking you straight into industrial territory, albeit with avant-pop leanings. De Ambassade will firmly hold their ground in the dead of night until the smoke clears and the agony of daylight returns.

Prequel Tapes is Marco Freivogel - a producer, DJ and live performer who’s been making electronic music since he was a teenager. What began with an accident and the rediscovery of some lost DAT tapes, has become the driving force for all his creative expression in the last years. Prequel Tapes previous albums ‘Inner Systems’ and ‘Everything is Quite Now’ received widespread critical praise for their originality, depth and composition. He has released two tape projects ‘The Pandora Star Sessions’ and ‘Dinge’ - a collaboration with the artists Mare Nero. Prequel Tapes live performances range from solo all hardware jams to a large-scale collaboration with butoh dancer Valentin Tzin and motion artist Ksenia Mozhayskaya aka nomoreless. His DJing is anything but straight techno with his recorded sets, podcasts and radio appearances chosen for mixes of the month by the likes of pitchfork, RA and dasfilter.

To many people the concept of Ruin is fearful, depressing, dark - conjuring notions of decay, fallen morality, or tragedy. But to others, the idea of Ruin is of hope for what may come after - opportunities to rebuild, rethink and challenge. Ruin may be the only chance to stop the passive march towards the destruction of the feral human spirit, the failure of our imagination to the homogenising power of capital. Both the music and the artwork reflect the artists long-held view that art should challenge, jarr and provoke. Offering the balance of what’s dark and disturbing to appreciate beauty and the light. Rejecting a world where the uncomfortable is covered up with plastic veneer and platitudes as a vital artistic expression.

Using a highly personalised setup of hardware collected over many years, Prequel Tapes wanders through concrete mazes and dark forests with infinite curiosity. In these cold empty spaces, Ruin oscillates freely between sunshine and shadows, where grit and gravel pay homage to the industrial anti-melodies of the 80s, appearing as earworms after the rain. The sonic DNA of teenage dreams are central to the aesthetic aspirations of Ruin, as are the sparse minimalist frameworks of composers like Arvo Pärt.

Drawing upon the stains of his musical history, Prequel Tapes merges each drop into an honest, singular sound, honing in on decades of love for abstract electronics with a profound emotional sensitivity. References may reveal themselves on close listen, but never command space, serving instead as subtle threads woven carefully into a tapestry of synthesis; aware of its past but firmly grounded in the present.

A special edition vinyl will be available through the Mannequin Records bandcamp, with photographs by Frankie Casillo whose work is also used for the cover art.

Mastered by Rude 66

Graphic design by AA.

Limited edition of 300 copies on solid orange vinyl.

"And the city opens up its streets to me again.Gloomy and damp, walled by wet surfaces, Which the pale glow Bouncing off a languishing moon. She shows me her reddish bars without any embarrassment, Where the sex yawns against the black decor."

Amsterdam based Spill Gold ( who previously released on Portland's Beacon Sound) with a jaunty 7 track mini album for Knekelhuis. sleeve art from Jacob Hoving.

The label say:
"The summer breeze has gradually turned into a cold wind and the trees showcase their typical variegated color palette; autumn has clearly arrived in all its golden glory, a transition exemplary for Spill Gold’s work. The Amsterdam duo’s music is every bit as colorful and moving as its seasonal counterpart, where one moment a cold and stormy wind swarms the air and other times calm and stillness prevail.

On Highway Hypnosis, their first album on vinyl, Spill Gold masterfully juxtaposes darkness and light, playfulness and control, enhancing the transcendental character of the material at hand. Based on strong pop structures, the songwriting here traverses a world of Krautrock and cosmic influences at once catchy and alienating, opening the possibility for catharsis.

They’re a wonderful addition to the versatile nature of Knekelhuis. And they’re crazy good live as well."

Tester Housing was the short-lived band consisting of mates Bill Tolson and Ken Olver. The duo met during the early 1980s in the burgeoning Southside of Melbourne, St Kilda. Pitched along the bayside, St Kilda at the time was full of artists, painters, writers, poets and musicians. The suburb was the type of place where dwellers wore their hearts on their sleeves; the sort to be found sharing a jug at the pub after a fist fight. The St Kilda music scene during the late ‘70s and ‘80s was infamous, breeding bands such as the Primitive Calculators and The Boys Next Door.

Despite Tester Housing producing a modest handful of recordings, both were actively present in the St Kilda chaos. Bill established Prahran’s Greville Records in 1978 and later founded the prolific Rampant Releases in 1982, pressing the likes of Not Drowning, Waving and David Chesworth. The duo also played together in the new-wave group Gilded Youth, before joining forces and forming Tester Housing.

When asked about their reasoning for the bands short stint, they wink and answer “just say something interesting such as drugs and ego got in the way and after we both had a knife fight on St Kilda pier one night and we both decided to go into rehab for the next twenty years. Or alternatively, we just knew that if we continued to play music together we would become too rich and boring.”

To commemorate Testing Housing’s imprint Left Ear Records present Over You, a 12” of the bands two 1983 singles, The Clock Ticks Over and Into You with their counterparts, a dub version and a stripped back almost acapella. Their sound channels both that of the gritty Southside and the experimental Northside scenes to create youthful and enchanting synth-pop. Both arrangements are laced with themes of love, redemption and acceptance in a unique and compelling way.

Maroma was there long before the Moors. The Moors were there long before man landed on the moon half a century ago. Drum machines meant you didn’t have to take Ginger Baker our for a drink. Life takes on sublime logic. In retrospect, everything takes on a new meaning from a different perspective. The past is the future. From Glasgow to Edinburgh to Andalucia. This music is about a small journey, an aural triptych of sounds

"Tucked away in the Dutch underground of the early 80’s a young Hessel Veldman created his own music world in the small industrial sea town of IJmuiden. It was a world recorded on tapes and reels. A world where things happened according to personal logic based on sonic exploration, electronic sounds and improvisation. The approach was intimate, at times light-hearted, but often following deep inner contemplation and total immersion in the creative process. Above all, music was made according to the Do-It-Yourself principle of the home-taping culture."

For his first release with Artificial Dance, Black Merlin aka George Thompson takes a departure from the hard-wearing techno and intricate field recording work that he has come to be known for. Scape One is a fifteen-minute psychedelic diversion recorded in one continuous live session. While the track’s sonic characteristics may echo dance music from the turn of the millennium, its pulsating rhythm is more suggestive of the slowly evolving landscapes seen outside of a train window as opposed to raves from the late ‘90s.

Appearing on the B-side is Gordon Pohl’s remix of Scape One. Like its source material, this track is long and subtle in the way it develops over time, but Pohl dissects the most salient elements of the original to construct a new rhythmic urgency. The high frequency accent that guides the remix does so at a speed that recalls the rotations of Brion Gysin’s stroboscopic Dream Machine, which taps into your brain’s alpha waves, aiding drug-free hallucinations.

Pohl and Thompson are frequent collaborators and release music together as Karamika. While Scape One is not a collaboration in the strict sense, there is plenty of crossover in the working methodology of the two musicians, especially when it comes to constructing uncomplicated arrangements.

The repetitive nature of their respective tracks locks the listener into a contradictory sensation of travelling whilst staying seemingly motionless. This sensation is not altogether uncommon, but in this instance it’s not quotidian either. The result is a record that unravels slowly, leaving space for the listener to home in on all the available information and, in the process, discover elements that can be just as unnerving as they are satisfying.

If ever talking about a 'ghost' of an Austrian record, both in terms of getting info about and getting your hands on, the only output of short-lived band „Mad Voice“ would be a prime example of such. It took a couple of years to track original band members and the master tape down, which in the end made for Wiener Brut being able to carry out an exclusive re-release of this 7 inch. Perfect blend of minimalistic Pop, Synthwave and NDW!

The wave is back!. On this fourth edition you will find precious american synthwave, exquisite neue deutsche welle and british post-punk, representing all of them perfectly the actual palette of dark romantics sound. RIDE THE WAVE IV Ltd. Edition 12″ EP presented in a ONE-OFF truly limited edition of 300 copies lacquered pressed on 180 gr. high quality SOLID GREEN vinyl. All tracks have been specially remastered for LONG CUT vinyl by Daniel Hallhuber at Young and Cold Studios.

Neuauflage auf frostklarem-magenta-neon-farbenem 180g Vinyl.

Die Queen of Synthwave, NINA, meldet sich mit einem superben zweiten Album voller 80er inspirierter Synthpop-Hits zurück. "Synthian" entstand zusammen mit LAU, Oscillian, Richard X, Ricky Wilde und Till Wild und erscheint auf dem Retro-Label Aztec Records. Die in London lebende Berlinerin wird von der einschlägigen Presse gefeiert: "An artist at the peak of her form and going from strength to strength, pushing the boundaries and pre-conceptions of the synthwave genre." - Teases & Dares. "Utterly timeless chorus." - The Playground.

Produced by Oscillian, Richard X and Sunglasses Kid, 'Sleepwalking' creates the illusion of timelessness over eleven tracks as it rejuvenates an 80’s synthwave musical aesthetic while simultaneously presenting a modern pop vibe. NINA’s lyrical depth paired with instrumentals that are both dynamic and delicate create a quality sonic experience.

Das Debütalbum des australischen Synthwave-Künstlers Gryff erscheint auf dem Londoner Label Aztec Records, das sich auf 80er Retrowave, Synthwave und Synthpop spezialisiert hat. "Calypso Drip FM" klingt wie eine Greatest Hits-Kollektion aus diversen Styles und Einflüssen ihres Erschaffers. Gryff selbst sieht aus wie ein 90s Kid aus "GTA: Vice City" und hat sämtliches Material im Alleingang kreiert, mit Ausnahme der Produktionsunterstützung von Andrew Threlfo bei "Do You Feel Like This?" und dem Feature der New Yorker Sängerin und Co-Autorin Primo The Alien bei "Reverse". Neuauflage auf hellblauem 180g Vinyl.

A recording of Samuel Beckett’s “Text for Nothing #8” read by Jack McGowan 1958 (used without permission) is burned to a CDR with 99 index points. A Sony Discman in shuffle mode attempts struggles to play the disc. Electromagnetic signals of struggling CD player mechanics are recorded, edited and collaged into two pieces.

“Premières Données” (meaning ‘first data’) was the 1987 cassette-only release by Décades, the by then solo project of Laurent Bergot from Rouen, France. Both the band and the album turned out to become the most important cornerstones of the original French ‘cold wave’ genre, the term that began being used in the mid- late 80s to tag this music genre, characteristic for mostly beautiful melodies, romantic, heartfelt lyrics and heavy presence of bass guitar, synthesizers and drum machines. Not a single song by Décades has been ever released on vinyl before so, for starters, we have created “Premières Données +” as an improved, roundup version of this fantastic album, including the previously 100% unheard 1987 studio version of the song ‘Le Jour Se Lève’ that Laurent left out of the cassette release in favour of his own, rougher demo version. We also included the intro that Laurent wanted to use back in the day, but was also left out for technical reasons.

We are extremely happy to bring you this cold wave masterpiece in the form of a limited, hand numbered LP edition of 120 copies, housed in a matt finish sleeve with double sided lyric insert and including a download code.

One of the bright talent emerging from the current Netherlands‘ electronic underground scene is the German and Amsterdam-based, ‘fetish-inclined’, vocalist and performer Sophie du Palais ((Pinkman, Dekmantel Recordings)) also known as “Vrouwe Fataal”. She presents debut solo LP ‘Endurance of Pain is the Power of Being’

Sinister industrial wave music exploring themes of lust, hedonism, technological obsession & millennial alienation

Across six tracks, Du Palais unravels a potent signature, driven by fierce, imperious Anglo-Germanic vocals and eclectic, dissonant sounds. Connecting techno, EBM, acid and electro with vestiges of dub and experimental electronics, on ‘Endurance of Pain…’ Du Palais conjures an abrasive, intoxicating depiction of lust, hedonism, technological obsession and millennial alienation.

With the cruising techno pop menace of ‘Slow Steady Cum’, Du Palais introduces a nocturnal underworld. The descent is intensified by the mania and murk of ‘Glazed Disco Ball’ – a suspenseful dose of guttural low end, scowling spoken words, and crude drum machine clatter; if Gudrun Gut fronted Suicide. Then ‘Boys Tears’ elaborates on the dread and the sleaze with a horror show of gurgling synthesis, drubbing percussion and dissolute enunciations, halfway between John Carpenter and Unit Moebius.

From there ‘Up To No Good’ brings proceedings into a severe form of heat and frenzy, outlaying an exchange of raw jackhammer rhythms and vociferous punk chants that recalls Liaisons Dangereuses’ timeless underground classic ‘Los Niños del Parque’ if remade for 2021. ‘Smash The Mirror’ then finds room for scintillating dub recurrence and freakish machine funk before Sophie concludes the set with the sardonic electro-clash anthemics of ‘2001’, a provocative exploration of self, communication, and compulsion in the digital era. Miss Kitten meets Dopplereffekt for a technoid bonfire of the vanities.

‘Endurance of Pain…’ finds Sophie Du Palais seizing an uncompromising sense of style and intensity, an emergent new artist navigating a merciless, pleasure-seeking existence, from club to bedroom to screen, facing it all down with a cold glare, ready to light the fuse.

RIYL Miss Kitten, Toresch, Liaisons Dangereuses. Mastered by Rude 66. Artwork by Sander Molenaar.