Techno News

Mythology for the posthuman age. From "The New Kind" to "Posthuman Wonderland", Simon Grab's album "Posthuman Species" is a sonic journey through an astonishing land of fragile feedbacks, pulsating drones and opulent outbursts of noise.

Recorded on a no-input-mixing setup consisting of low frequency oscillators, filters, analogue effects and a mixer patched with itself, the album sneaks up on dub and leftfield electronica from the side. Over time, the self-oscillating setup falls in and out of tune with itself, emphasising its transient nature. The album is a work of science fiction, telling the story of a time when "The New Kind" shapes its own wonderland.

Swiss sound artist and musician Simon Grab explores new grounds by negating assumed borders. In his recent work, he focuses on reduction, and the peculiarity of self-referential systems.
The album "Posthuman Species" follows his recent EP "Extinction" on -OUS. His "Diamonds EP" in collaboration with Togolese rapper Yao Bobby and Asian Dub Foundation's Dhangsha releases on Bristol's LavaLava Records in September 2019. Simon Grab's recent works includes "Hirnmusik 1 & 2", in which he dives deep into musical imagery by transferring his sonic ideas directly from his brain to vinyl.

The vinyl LP comes with a printed inner sleeve designed by Hammer and a download card that includes the digital only tracks "Transformation" and "Posthuman Wonderland".

Wa Wu We is the artist alias and vinyl only label from Sebastian Mullaert. This is the third chapter, crafted in the Swedish woods. The first 6 episodes of the Wa Wu We label will form a collection of records, united by their significant and unique cover art and the way they've been recorded; this being the focus on improvising expression, resting in meditation and the nature surrounding Sebastian's studio. All 6 of these episodes will be released as vinyl only and will be limited to 500 copies each.

THE STORY Wa... the Wu are We Let the question appear, and dissolve in the dance! Wa Wu We is back with the third vinyl release, and like before its vinyl only. Deep jams nurtured by the Swedish woods, the home of Sebastian Mullaert.

The beautiful four colour sleeve is designed by art director Markus Clemmedson and include Sebastian's poetry.

For the 12th installment of Jose Cabrera's self-titled imprint, Mario Castillo appears under his long running 'Kastil' moniker to deliver a four track EP of mechanical dance floor sounds. With 'Anemic Lust', the resident of Vitoria- Gasteiz, comes up with a worthy addition to his rapidly growing discography. After a period of DIY work through his own label STALE, Castillo returns to the imprint where he last released his collaboration album with J.C. in 2017.

Musically, Castillo's palette is ever expanding, threading into the murky waters of mechanical textures and balanced, hypnotic beats, Anemic Lust is showcasing Castillo's love for dubbed out chords, orchestrated string work and power driven drum programming. The opening track 'Submissive' is a firm work of dance floor techno which uses a drone-like scream as it's back bone. While the bass and drums alternate skillfully, the hats and percussive elements penetrate entire spectrum and act in a vanguard-like fashion.

'Omniscience' is a work of growling and low down dub chords that are supported by a vigorous kick drum, slabs of fx, and high spirited hi-hats that change throughout. 'Red River' is the first effort on the B side if Anemic Lust. Castillo changes the pace to introduce a more inky side to his music. The drum work and bass sounds are ominous but the mood is shifted by a more soothing ambiance around the two minute mark.

Also on the B side, label owner J.C. translates Red River into an experimental sounding work of wintry drums and notable sound additions.

Anemic Lust comes in a 12" vinyl package

Elf Jahre nach ihrem letzten Kollaborationsalbum "Inlandish" veröffentlichten Hans-Joachim Roedelius, deutscher Experimental-Musiker und Krautrock-Legende (Cluster, Harmonia), und Tim Story, US-amerikanischer Neoklassik- und Ambient-Komponist, ihr neues Werk "Lunz3", angelehnt an ihr gleichnamiges Werk aus 2002. Das Ergebnis ist eine facettenreiche Exkursion im Spannungsfeld zwischen Electronica, Neoklassik, Ambient und Drone.

A collection of forgotten fragments, abandoned ideas, loops, alternate takes and outtakes. Recorded in 2006, mixed and arranged in 2019.
If you can picture the very furthest, coldest, darkest part of Norway, that's where Mind over MIDI resides. If you want to get an idea of what it's like there, and can do without the frostbite, then this is the perfect solution. Helge Tommervag produces sweeping, icy synthscapes, with digital snowflakes since 1995.

It's been three years since founding UVB-76 member, Pessimist put out a Drum & Bass release. The last time you could find a 170 track by Jabs was back in 2017 for his critically acclaimed self- titled debut album released on Blackest Ever Black. So we present in 2019, the Burundanga EP for UVB-76, which has been destroying dance floors across the planet.

The Burundanga EP consists of three Drum & Bass cuts. Think Ruffhouse meets tribal shamanism, gutter breaks with amazonian field recordings and thick atmosphere, you'll feel like you've been spiked by some ritualistic witch doctor. Also included within the four track EP is the long awaited Paian remix by Downwards Records and CUB affiliate, Simon Shreeve aka Mønic & Kryptic Minds, taken from Jabs's debut EP for The Buzzer. Trust us when we say this is not for the faint hearted, we're truly excited to have Pessimist back on the label with these four vintage, signature Pess, killer cuts.

Giorgio Gigli and Bichord team up for the first LP in the Planet Rhythm Black series. With their intricate drum patterns, sophisticated rhythms, and extended pads, these tracks will fit perfectly in any deep techno set. They take their atmospheric sound and submerge it deep in the ocean where only a few rays of light can penetrate. Nevertheless the music breathes and still has a very spacious and airy quality.

Original photography on the poster by Christopher Michel.

Mára is the solo project of Faith Coloccia, the hermetic composer, songwriter, and vocalist who has a central figure in numerous projects including Mamiffer and her ongoing collaborations with Alex Barnett. Her arrangements for piano, organ, electronics, guitar, and voice often take the form of deconstructed plainsongs, as elegant variations of a melody that smolder and dissolve into heavy-lidded assemblages of shadow, fog, and echo. As Mára, she continues with her signature aesthetics, while laying bare the emotional core of her being.

Here Behold Your Own follows the very limited Surfacing cassette from 2015. The album began to take shape shortly upon the conception of her son and evolved to encompass her becoming a mother in conjunction with the re-engineering of her creative processes. Coloccia reflects upon the album’s origins, stating "A lot of the material that I used to make this record felt like the last glimpses of ‘me’ before I became another me. Almost as soon as I conceived I felt the old me slipping away, and so these recordings and photographs were like the last time spent with myself before I changed."

Mára’s melodies draw from the lullabies that Coloccia would sing to her son. Dating back many years, she has employed the practice of hastily recording fleeting ideas, fragmented songs, and melodic phrases onto tape and then later drawing from this vast archive of documents to flesh out the broader compositions and arrangements. On Here Behold Your Own, the leitmotifs repeat as ghostly reminders of things past, appearing once as a soothing vocalization and later through church organ or piano and vice versa. It is not only the melody but also the encompassing swathe of timbral residues that lend to the album’s emotive thrust of the bittersweet, the nostalgic, the solemn, and even the holy.

Coloccia sites Gavin Bryars’ Jesus Blood Never Failed Me as a principle inspiration in the making of this album through its intertwine of sadness and joy. In truth, there is a very similarly sculpted cascade of passions evident on Here Behold Your Own with further comparisons to be found in Áine O’Dwyer, Philip Jeck and The Caretaker.

Jim Haynes, August 2019

Our loyal companion "Steve Parker" continues to raise awareness off what he can do in the scene. This "Interplanetary Dust LP" is another example of what he is capable of. A 2x12" containing 8 powerful tracks that fits right into the resume of our widely ranged techno collection.

Veyl Industries is releasing ‚Dreams & Memories‘, the debut work from Ori, one half of TV.OUT. This 8-tracker
features malevolent electronics, experiments with noise, textures and blood.

Pale Bloom finds Sarah Davachi coming full circle. After abandoning the piano studies of her youth for a series of albums utilizing everything from pipe and reed organs to analog synthesizers, this prolific Los Angeles-based composer returns to her first instrument for a radiant work of quiet minimalism and poetic rumination.

Recorded at Berkeley, California's famed Fantasy Studios, Pale Bloom is comprised of two delicately-arranged sides. The first – a three-part suite where Davachi's piano acts as conjurer, beckoning Hammond organ and stirring countertenor into a patiently unfolding congress – recalls Eduard Artemiev's majestic soundtrack for Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris. "Perfumes I-III" employs the harmonically rich music of Bach as a springboard for abstract, solemn pieces that sound as haunted as they are dreamlike.

While the first half of Pale Bloom showcases Davachi's latent Romanticism, the sidelong "If It Pleased Me To Appear To You Wrapped In This Drapery" reveals the Mills College graduate's affinity for the work of avant-garde composers La Monte Young and Eliane Radigue. Softly vibrating strings rise and fall like complementary exhalations of breath. As the fluctuating pitches create overtones that pitter and pulse, the piece slowly and subtly evolves – suggesting a well-tempered stillness, yet without stasis.

Davis returns on his own imprint with some dense atmospheric techno

Berlin based producer ''Synthek'' is a renowned name within contemporary Techno. Besides succesfully running his label Natch Records, he has been also a resident at the infamous Tresor.

For the seventeenth installment in the string of Attic Music releases, Synthek (Luca Landolfi) comes up with a staggering EP that contains a lot of adventurous drum patterns, bold arrangements and swells of daring FX.

On the A side we find ''Loser'', which is a brave cut of spherical yet moody techno that uses a buldging percussion line and otherwordly fx to create an ominous vibe. ''Uneven Mind'' is an exotic cut with tough drum sounds that uses a hypnotic synth swell that cuts throughout to create an alarming atmosphere. French producer and Concrete resident Antigone comes up with an uplifting (eight minutes long) remix for ''Uneven Mind'' on the B side which is beautifully orchastrated throughout.
''Faithless''is a percussive cut with intense FX blips.

Few albums have treated human voice and drone as a whole entity like ABoneCroneDrone, the third in a trilogy for Real World Records that this record closed back in 1996. In Sheila Chandra’s own words “it was about the gateways between vocal techniques from different cultures and how it was possible to cross between them within a single word or phrase.”

Indipop Recordings founder Steve Coe, probably best known for helping to popularise the term World Music in the early eighties, produced and worked with extreme accuracy along with Chandra on all drones and set a new industry standard of what was possible in the treatment of voice. With the help of bagpipes, didgeridoos and guitars, ABoneCroneDrone puts drones under the microscope and encourages listeners to retrain their ears to hear the nuances that musicians have always heard in them. Emitting low, chantlike waves, Chandra sings deep spaced atonal words while haunting chord sounds flow and drones slowly interact with listener.

This is the first vinyl pressing. It includes a fold-out insert with a new Sheila Chandra interview, original sleeve notes edited by Chandra herself and unseen pictures taken from the 1996 sessions. Limited to 500 copies, no digital release this time.

“The artistry of ABoneCroneDrone is in the attention to detail. The album is beautifully performed, mixed and compiled with intelligence and strong sense of structure. It makes good use of a listener’s valuable time while issuing a challenge to hear in a fresh way.” John L. Walters, The Wire issue 150.

While being best known for creating deeply immersive live psychoacoustic experiences, the London based Pataphysical have allowed us to use 'Periphera', the fruits of their debut studio work, as the label's eighth musical oblation. It would have been an exercise in futility to try and replicate the immediacy of their live performances on this record, but we feel that across these 8 disparate tracks inner worlds have been rendered real. Through the careful positioning of field recordings and the creation of soundscapes somewhat reminiscent of heyday Mille Plateau the group have held fast to a desire to craft involved and captivating synthesis.

Marshstepper are the most radical incarnation of Ascetic House, the collective and publishing house based in the desert city of Tempe, Arizona.
Marshstepper's dark electronic ritualism is performative, violent, unusual, shocking, unpredictable and raw.
During their Berlin Atonal show in 2016, they were joined by Drew McDowall, Jonas Ro¨hnberg and Juan Mendez.

Indy Nyles BLK SYSTM EP delivers four tracks of contemporary sounding techno. “BLK HRT” is a fluid amalgam of rolling, glassy synth tones, “BLK MND” is an exercise in similar territory but some of the rough corners are shaved off to allow room for a snaking acid line that begins to emerge a mere 30 seconds in, “BLK SOL”, is a shuffling, rolling, acid track, which lacks a conventional four to the floor kick but is still a fantastic beat tool for the creative DJ. The EP closes with “BLK SYSTM,” which features a gorgeous, lush, beatless intro, like the stunning opening segments that used to grace Detroit tracks of yore. Sirena Negra’s second release is another reason to get excited about this fledgling label and makes it an imprint to watch in the future.

Terence Fixmer reached worldwide recognition with the release of his debut album Muscle Machine on DJ Hell's seminal International Deejay Gigolos imprint in 1999. The album opened a whole new genre by combining Electro, Industrial, EBM and Techno into a more dance floor-focused EBM style, simply called 'Techno Body Music'. The French producer and live act has consistently explored and redefined the boundaries of modern Techno -and he is not slowing down. Dance Of The Comets is the second release on the newly relaunched NovaMutelabel. NovaMuteis the seminal techno label that has been home to Plastikman, Speedy J, Juan Atkins, Luke Slater, Joey Beltramand more. NovaMute, born again, recently released Cognitive Resonance by Nicolas Bougaïeffand will release the forthcoming EP by Charlotte De Witte. Terence Fixmer'ssound deftly avoids repetition by developing soundscapes which maintain musical depth and integrity. He above all preserves an original style, an increasingly experimental, simultaneously ruthless and instantly recognizable aesthetic.

Mika Vainio left behind a lots of unfinished projects and unreleased music.

This archive series is presenting some pieces which can be considered as completed works.

The first volume comprise of two selections from the 48:22 long untitled recording Mika Vainio did as Ø for the radio project Ambient City at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki 1994.

Third EP by Dutch avantgarde techno artist Stefan Vincent, including a Artefakt remix.

Man Band delivers its first Various release with a stunning downtempo opener by the enigmatic DJ Sacom and an ever mind-bending trip by Forest Drive West, with his second hypnotic remix of Elise. More newcomers on the flip include Bristol based Patrick Flint with a celestial workout of swirling percussions, and a massive, dub inspired cut by Paris local figure HANAH.

Sliding Windows is a creation by Karl Bult diving into the world of ambient and deeper techno embraced with a collaboration between Jana Sleep, Fjader & Korridor. Together we create this space of sounds that will open the window to the second release on Nordanvind.

We remain suspended, fluctuating
In these waters of unknown wellness
Flooded by a silence of emotions.
Emotions that make our loneliness
More deep, clear and awful.
As nails that dig died skins,
As eyes that bleed making skins acid
As hair that strangles the crowd's voices
Thus we,
Remain suspended
in this air rarefied by thoughts
to make us more conscious of the restless lack
of the Hope from us stolen.

We are honored to have one of the best forward thinking artists in the roster back in our catalog, This time on Collective. ASC is back to with 3 original cuts that define hypnotism on another level. The record contains also a very rare gem, Acronym is back on the label, his remix of the title track 'Sentinel' is pure class.

We find ourselves increasingly in a swell of solastalgia. Day to day, a vision of what might come to pass builds; one dystopian impression at a time. Solastalgia is not a new phenomena however, rather it has haunted us over the cen- turies. Change has never been humanities’ strong suit, but it has been our shadow. The perpetual ruptures in what we know and how we live are an inevitability; time takes no prisoners, no matter how tightly we might grasp things from moment to moment.

It’s here, at this fractious nexus of unpredictability and an absence of control that Rafael Anton Irisarri has created his latest work. Building on the echoes of landscape that guided his previous Room40 editions, Solastalgia imagines that which is not yet known. It traces possible terminus points for futures that many of us will not live to see. Utilising a range of unexpected variables, automations and uncontrolled systems in the creation of the recordings, Irisarri has devel- oped a new approach to his work, seamlessly weaving together intense layers of texture and saturated harmony.

Within these works, distant melodies emerge and in their wake the listeners’ focus shifts again and again. A never ending loop of the unconscious feeding into the conscious is formed. Whilst the skeletal form of pieces such as 'Coastal Trapped Disturbance' might remain, the organic matter that is the body of the music is in a process of persis- tent transformation. These subconscious variations morph the pieces from within. This is a record of sublimation, and dwells in states of transition and becoming.
Recorded in two suites (one released on LP and the other on cassette) , each section is a distorted mirror reflection of the other. Solastalgia stands as a landmark undertaking for Irisarri, it encourages us to remain unsettled and attentive in the moment, and prompts us to listen deeper and imagine what lies beyond or in excess of our expectations.

Rafael Anton Irisarri is an American composer, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer living in New York. De- scribed by the press as “one of contemporary ambient music’s most celebrated practitioners,” Irisarri's music often has a mournful, elegiac quality where ostinato phrases tap into minimalist ideals while atmospheric layers of effects suggests a more cinematic approach. In all, his compositions are deeply emotive and epic, like a symphony record- ing that’s been rescued from attic entombment after half a century. Irisarri concerts at museums, churches, syna- gogues, and other non-traditional performance spaces explore the physicality of sound. Combining an array of heavy metal bass amplifiers, multiple loudspeaker configurations, synthesizers, bowed guitars, notebook computers, video images, and lighting, Irisarri decontextualize the audience’s relationship to the venue, creating an immersive, otherworldly environment. Irisarri’s recorded works are widely published internationally.

Format draws from its Latin origin: "formatus", meaning "to be formed". Over two years, Germany's Max Wureden produced a variety of tracks using completely different approaches. It wasn't until they were placed together in unison that the strengths from the variety of productions came together. Max's studio recordings lined up alongside live performances; field recordings of foot-steps and sounds from deep forests amongst broken leaves and custom synthesizers; processed guitar-loops weave amongst soaring ambient pads and energetic driving analog pulses segue classic 90's ambient depicting the very furthest reaches of space. Max's abstract impressions were weaved together and Format was born. The result captures the very best of Max's multi-disciplinary techniques we've come to admire throughout his many productions and collaborations over the years with the likes of Thore Pfeiffer and his releases on Kompakt's Pop Ambient series.

Debut release from London based Hooverian Blur. Obfuscating the rave with breakbeat music for the now. Smudged soundscapes, chopped warehouse breaks, rude warehouse bass, obscured sentiment. Hooverian Blur is a new project from genre hopping DJ Warlock, coming back full circle with his Hardcore legacy and Rag & Bone aesthetic.

Early support from West Norwood Cassette Library, Ben UFO, Alienata.

I descend in this arduous water,
Filthy by the deeds done
The light runs out at each movement,
The sound becomes gloomier, at each eyelash beat
And I try undaunted to find a handhold
In these putrid ropes that drag me inside
A condemned cave, where water gets lost,
With my orientation
The breath lacks, there is no time,
I fall more in dephts, looking for a sure moment.
I found even darker and stunned by the scare,
I've let that an even gloomier sound
Flooded my body, stained in black

- UTOPIAN SOUL -

Pale Bloom finds Sarah Davachi coming full circle. After abandoning the piano studies of her youth for a series of albums utilizing everything from pipe and reed organs to analog synthesizers, this prolific Los Angeles-based composer returns to her first instrument for a radiant work of quiet minimalism and poetic rumination.

Recorded at Berkeley, California's famed Fantasy Studios, Pale Bloom is comprised of two delicately-arranged sides. The first – a three-part suite where Davachi's piano acts as conjurer, beckoning Hammond organ and stirring countertenor into a patiently unfolding congress – recalls Eduard Artemiev's majestic soundtrack for Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris. "Perfumes I-III" employs the harmonically rich music of Bach as a springboard for abstract, solemn pieces that sound as haunted as they are dreamlike.

While the first half of Pale Bloom showcases Davachi's latent Romanticism, the sidelong "If It Pleased Me To Appear To You Wrapped In This Drapery" reveals the Mills College graduate's affinity for the work of avant-garde composers La Monte Young and Eliane Radigue. Softly vibrating strings rise and fall like complementary exhalations of breath. As the fluctuating pitches create overtones that pitter and pulse, the piece slowly and subtly evolves – suggesting a well-tempered stillness, yet without stasis.

Next move from Artefakt and Delsin is a selection of their label back catalog remixed by a few of their personal favourites in modern techno days. Forest Drive West and Evigt Morker both deliver slamming and hypnotic techno workouts. Where Polar Inertia and Valentino Mora take a dive into deeper territories. It resulted in a well balanced pack of exciting drum grooves, hypnotic loops, smoky dub techno and cinematic ambient.

“Le Lisse et le Strié is a new work by french composer François J. Bonnet, released under his project name Kassel Jaeger. Based in Paris, Bonnet is the Director of INA GRM. He is also a writer and theoretician (The Order of Sounds, a sonorous Archipelago and The Infra-World have been published in english by Urbanomic). As a musician, Bonnet has been collaborating with artists such as Stephen O’Malley, Oren Ambarchi or Jim O’Rourke and most of his recent work has been published by Editions Mego.

Le Lisse et le Strié has been conceived as an exploration of the two antagonist concepts of “smooth” and “striated”, applied to the realm of electroacoustic sounds. If the “smooth” is linked to “nomos” as an open space of organic distribution, the “striated”, on the contrary, is associated to “logos”, as an enclosed space defined by a grid.

Elaborating a dialogue between these aspects, Kassel Jaeger draws here an intermediary space where pulsations become textures and layers, and where rhythmic elements are found in the qualities and bodies of sounds instead of being functionnalised, pre-determined sound objects, abstracted and frozen onto a temporal grid. The concept of “striated” is made audible only through the sonic landscape it inhabits, like the stripes of the camouflage fur of wild animals only exist as such in the woods and long grass, disappearing into a potentially uselessness in a desert plain.”

Has there ever been a better time to fuck off to the stars? Is a prison breakout ‘escapism’? Crisis carve some wound-space to let the dreams back in. In nights we turn to fire, in flight we burst into stone, where are the exits in this theatre of the damned? Strict luggage allocations – guitar (D. Knight), saxophone (S. Thrower) – and all the electronics your thoughts can carry. Headspin echoes, round and around, tilt wind-sails at a dark horizon, cut a stutter through the distance barrier. In to be out through the structure of the eye, encrusted with rotor-slime, pushing on through border erosions as everything melts into smoke, burning objects may be closer than they appear. Nebulae dazzle the shadows, tunnel through memories and the pulp-mass of neurons, forwards heading backwards, end of tether snapped, slide into the earth like ancient worms and breathe.

UnicaZürn’s core instrumentation blends analogue synthesiser, mellotron and electric piano with electric guitar and saxophone. Knight is reknowned for his pioneering multi-textured fretwork with Danielle Dax and Shock-Headed Peters, and his ambient guitar settings for Lydia Lunch, while Thrower’s reed playing provided rage and melancholy in Coil and turns to electro-acoustic texture in Cyclobe.

Semantica returns with Blazej Malinowski

"Matthew" is nailed together with driftwood from around the world. The waters of Italy, the pubs of London, birds of Japan, a phone call in Los Angeles.

Sullivan moved from California to London in 2016. Living in London was a pivotal time for Matt, as I see it. This record digests that time. Each sound on Matthew means something very specific to the artist. Locales and memories focus to mind as passages rise and sink. Us listeners cannot know what transpires across the speakers, however. Our own narrative is quietly built. I like records that don't concern the audience, ones that make you invest yourself; this is one of those records.

Fans of Sullivan's music know that he never gives an inch more or an inch less than he needs to. Bold and looming with few extraneous elements. Ekhein, Matt's former cassette label, and his new label, as of yet without name, also carry this motif.

Two side-long pieces, expertly woven, constitute this album. I admire Matt's ability to play with proximity and depth of field: fading sirens, ripping waters, and digitized breath. Like an hallucinating Bill Fontana, the two works are sensory travels folding into themselves. Matt is once again living in Los Angeles, and thus the nostalgic mist that forms within Matthew is all the more meaningful.

Sean McCann, February 2019

We discovered the church in Kyjatice three years ago during our irregular wanderings across southern Slovakia. We were completely enchanted by this well hidden medieval building standing over the village, surrounded by sunny fields and dense forests. We asked ourselves how we could bring life again to the church, how we could fill it with sound which would not interrupt the contemplative character of that specific environment.

The result should have been the sound intervention which would awaken and reveal every corner inside of the church. Just for a moment, we wanted to caress all the monumental fresco paintings, creaking wooden benches, pipes of howling organ, hand painted ceiling and carved saints by sound which could release them from the long guarded and abandoned silence.

In the two compositions for vibraphone she wrote for mappa editions, Sarah Hennies analyses the psychoacustic dimensions of space. Sisters is a sonic exploration which opens the space between the rough walls of the church, an infinite pulse penetrating into every crinkle, hole and fold. In the sense of her quote "When you pulse one note on a vibraphone for 20 minutes, why do you need to do anything else?", we witness the fullness of one single tone, disappearing resonances and gentle changes, which reveal various performative, spatial, psychic and listening situations.

Sisters was a challenge for Lenka Novosedlíková, who is slovak composer, performer and organizer. Novosedlíková is well known distinctive figure of the youngest composers generation in Slovakia. She moves across contemporary composition and interpretation (percussion instruments), improv or electronic music projects. She is member of Cluster Ensemble which is renowned Slovak ensemble with many international achievements.

The church in Kyjatice is a sacred place of mappa editions. It blesses all our activities. It's a place of inevitable distance from our everyday life. Here we find distance from our everyday lives.

By buying a vinyl you contribute to better accessibility and maintenance of this significant Roman-gothic monument with valuable fresco decorations.

The sound of sheet metal, ripping slowly, suspended in low gravity. Screaming in slow motion, claustrophobic and encapsulated. This is the result of Nino Pedone's reworking of Mumdance & Logos' dancefloor deep heaters 'Chaos Engine' and 'Cold', taken from the 2015 LP 'Proto', also released on Tectonic.

No beats, pure drama. Each of Shapednoise's versions pull the original tracks deep into a chasm of crushing reverbs and grinding atmospherics, stretching the originals to their limit - and well beyond. Prepare yourself for a journey that will take you deeper into the darkside.

Woe are King Midas Sound on ’Solitude’, their crushingly desolate new album, auspiciously cued for a Valentine’s Day release on Shapednoise’s Cosmo Rhythmatic label. A meditation on loss, narrated by Roger Robisnon and produced by Kevin Martin (The Bug), ’Solitude’ sees KMS gut out their sound following the bittersweet shoegaze-dub blooms of their ‘Edition1’ 2015 collaboration with Fennesz, resulting in a starkly noirish elegy to extinguished romance and love in the endtimes

Combining the grown-up, confessional vulnerability of Robinson’s lyrics and dreader-than-dread delivery with the most stripped back arrangements in Kevin Martin’s entire catalogue, the duo drill deep into emotional sufferation with simultaneously suffocating yet somehow beautiful results. Over the course of 12 songs, they glacially limn a coming-to-terms with a loss that has been enforced or unexpected, and ultimately arrive at the starkest conclusions with cinematic effect.

’Solitude’ pushes King Midas Sound’s pessimism to heart-rinsing degrees. Staging Robinson in a series of vantablack scenes veiled by smoky, minimal synth-lighting, the poet processes irrational and incessant feelings of rejection and loneliness. From the aching desolation of ‘You Disappear’ to the unflinching realisations of ‘X’, the ache imparted by Robinson’s lyrics is only amplified by his quiet stoicism, while Kevin Martin finds power in a sense of deferred gratification and his embrace of negative space.

The effect is nothing less than transfixing in the physicality of Robinson’s descriptions and the detached nature of Martin’s sferic electronics on ‘In The Night’, while pangs of lush optimism lend an exquisite contrast to the desiccated riddim and gloom of ‘Alone’, and the sylvan keys in their sensuous reverie, ’Her Body’.

‘Solitude’ is a more than worthy follow-up to King Midas Sound’s two albums for Hyperdub and their collaboration with Fennesz for Ninja Tune. It’s bound to reset what you know about KMS, and become a go-to album for anyone going thru conscious uncoupling, domestic strife, or meditating on love in the age of info overload.