Buscar:social noise

Last album recorded by Colombian rock pioneers Los Speakers in 1968 after leaving behind its affinity with yéyé and go-go music. One of the most brilliantly whacked-out psych LPs to emerge from South America. Originally self-released on their own Producciones Kris label, this is an almost impossible to find cult record. Officially reissued for the first time. By 1968, Colombian rock had left behind its affinity with yéyé and go-go music. In Medellín, Discos Fuentes had terminated its contract with Los Yetis, whose farewell record "Olvídate" set a strong anti-establishment tone. While the fire of protest that had spread rapidly among students in Paris was dying out, young people in Bogotá voiced their discontent. Aware of the effervescent political climate across the world, Los Speakers wrote their last record between June and September of the convulsive year of 1968. In order to give shape to these new songs they needed a space where they could experiment freely with sound. The music historian and critic and sound engineer, Manuel Drezner, made a providential appearance and offered the innovative Ingeson studios to the trio under one condition: that his company's name was included in the title of the record. For four months, Rodrigo, Manuel and Roberto created a record that was completely different to anything on the Colombian rock scene at that time. Los Speakers used cutting-edge equipment to record and mix "El maravilloso mundo de Ingeson", It was the first time local musicians had access to a multichannel mixing desk where they could experiment with all kinds of bold sound effects. The silences between songs were replaced with brief intervals of sound including the noise of a train running over a passer-by, a bomb exploding_ Although it's often labelled a conceptual record, the four compositions that each of the band members contribute reveal different aesthetic personalities. From the strong influence of Renaissance and Baroque poetry and music to the virulent social critique and pacifist statements, suffused with religiosity and mysticism. Armed with the demo tape, Los Speakers presented the project to CBS, Philips, Sonolux and Bambuco. The labels' verdict was unanimous: not very commercial and very costly. The group reacted to this negative response by pooling their personal savings, inventing a fictious record label called Kris and released the record just as they had imagined it. This led to the creation of a graphic concept unheard of in Colombia: the record included a booklet containing photos, texts and illustrations. Although there was a big media roll out, which included TV appearances and features in newspapers and magazines, as predicted the album was a commercial failure_ "El maravilloso mundo de Ingesón" is one of the most brilliantly whacked-out psych LPs to emerge from South America.

The first Austin Psych Fest was held in March 2008, and expanded to a 3 day event the following year. From there the festival quickly developed into an international destination for psychedelic rock fans, with lineups spanning the fringes of indie rock, from up-and-comers to vintage legends, and capped off with headlining performances from The Black Angels each year. The Black Angels and Levitation helped spark a movement, inspiring the creation of similar events across the globe and a burgeoning psych scene that would soon ignite. The series captures key moments in psychedelic rock history, and live music in Austin, Texas. The artists and sets showcased on Live at Levitation have been chosen from over a decade of recordings at the world-renowned event, and document key artists in the scene performing for a crowd of their peers and fans who gather at Levitation annually from all over the world. When it comes to following the beat of their own drum, New York’s Psychic Ills have exemplified the phrase since their beginnings in 2003. Initially spawned from electronic-centered home recording experiments, they progressed into all-night full-band exploration in a neighborhood where noise wasn’t a problem. They soon after evolved into a live band seemingly at home within the extended jam, exploring a variety of musical terrain. The early years saw several releases for Social Registry, tons of time on the road, and collaborations with artists as diverse as Gibby Haynes (Butthole Surfers) and Sonic Boom (Spacemen Three/Spectrum). We are proud to welcome Psychic Ills to the Live at Levitation series. The release showcases the band's appearance at Austin Psych Fest 2012. Mixed and Mastered for Vinyl. 1) Midnight Moon 2) Mind Daze 3) Incense Head 4) Ring Finger 5) Electric Life 6) Meta 7) Diamond City 8) January Rain 9) I’ll Follow You Through The Floor

Recommended If You Like: Deerhoof, Tune-Yards, CAN (if they were a band in like, 2070), Blonde Redhead, Horse Lords, Tigue, Lil Nas X (in spirit). Over eighteen boundless albums as experimental as they are pop, Deerhoof has continuously quested for radical sounds and daring storytelling.

Dates Aug 28 Summerhall, Edinburgh, Aug 29 The Cluny, Newcastle Upon Tyne, Aug 30 Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, Aug 31 Electric Ballroom, London, Sep 01 Hare and Hounds, Birmingham.

Musician and sound/video installation artist Steve Batespresents a solo ambient/noise album ofmelodic smear, radiostatic blur, panoramic noise clouds and dissolving tones. Made primarilyunder the self-imposed 'limitation' of a Casio SK-1, this is his first entirely solo full-length albumin almost a decade. All The Things That Happen showcases the more deliberate, intensive, noise-clustered side of Bates' wide-ranging sonic sensibilities and practices. An isolation record (like so many), itcombines an ineffable melancholy with claustrophobictension and simmering political rage.Powerfully composed from layers of glistening distortion-drenched melody, pulsing and droningoscillation, bursts of blown-out chords, sweeps of static and sheets of crackling hiss, Bates hasmade an impressively dynamic, ardent and iridescent noise album of real depth and underlyingdevastation."This was supposed to be an ambient record; quiet, minimal and sad. These tracks all startedoff that way but I kept reaching for more texture and noise. Somehow the noisier the record got,the less sad it was also. I was listening to, and loving, a lot of music by Andrew Chalk and I hadfinished a year-long run of listening to Eno's 1 and 4. I preferOn LandtoMusic for Airportsalthough I love both.On Landjust has a darkness and uncertainty that appeals to me. Addingmore noise also got me excited about ways this material could be played live even though italso felt like that could never happen again.In 2022, I opened for Godspeed You! BlackEmperor in Saskatoon to give it a try and waspleasantly pleased to hear it all live and loud."A fixture of Winnipeg's burgeoning punk and social justice community in the 80s-90s, Batesplayed in hardcore and indie rock bands (Pull My Daisy, Bulletproof Nothing) prior to foundingthe Send + Receivefestival in 1998. A crucial development in putting Winnipeg on the map foravant music and sound art, Bates helmed Send + Receive for seven years, then moved toTiohti:áke/Montréal, became Sound Coordinator at Hexagram (Concordia University), releasedsolowork on Oral and two albums with his Black Seas Ensemble on Dim Coast, and pursuedmyriad other ongoing audio research, installation and collaborative projects. Relocating toTreaty 6/Saskatoon the year before pandemic,All The Things That Happenis Bates' mostrecent purposive and purely 'recorded' work.Thanks for listening.

Pale Waves’ third studio album is a bold statement of reclamation – from the lyrics to the title itself. 'Unwanted' reaches out into the community of misfits and LGBTQI fans around the band, tapping into darker emotions than ever before while striking a fresh tone of defiance. Since their 2018 debut 'My Mind Makes Noises', the band has accumulated over 1.5 Million+ Social Followers, 250 Million+ Steams, and have grown to embrace their queerness... these experiences have shaped Pale Waves’ music over the last few years, but they jump to the fore on Unwanted. Recorded in Los Angeles with producer Zakk Cervini, 'Unwanted' is 13 tracks of classic pop punk with an edge; It feels like the purgative scream at the end of a years-long inhalation. Pale Waves' latest album follows 2021's 'Who Am I' and 2018's 'My Mind Makes Noises' which reached #3 and #8 on the UK Album Charts respectively.

Trees Speak are back!
Speak’s new album, “Vertigo of Flaws: Emancipation of the Dissonance and Temperaments in
Irrational Waveforms” comes as a double-vinyl edition, single CD and digital release. The limitededition first pressing only of the vinyl includes a bonus 45 enclosed in an 8-page 7”x7” booklet
insert housed within the gatefold sleeve with cover artwork created by Soviet Union propaganda
artist Lazar Markovich Lissitzky in 1911.
Trees Speak are back!
This new release is a vast leap into an ocean of space and sound, a quantum leap into cybernetics, biology, anti-gravity,
time travel, dream speech and transfiguration. A seriously next step release!
Showing no signs of slowing down their rapid creative pace – incredibly this is their fourth album in the space of just over
one year – ‘Vertigo of Flaws’ is a mighty 29 tracks, one and a half hours of music across one double album that is surely
going to be a defining point in their musical career, a giant leap into the sonic unknown, an epic exploration of intensity
and sound.
Alongside their now trademark German krautrock motoric-beat rhythms, angular New York post-punk attitude, tripped-out
60s spy soundtrack, psyche-rock, and 70s synthesizers and vocoders, here you will also hear a new cosmic spacial
awareness (both personal inner space and galactic outer space) and a truly wilful pushing of sonic boundaries - as police
sirens, static noise, alarms, radio signals, avant-garde voices, and orchestral string quartets, all collide to add beautiful
dissonance to uber-powerful, intense, addictive and propulsive rhythms - in the process creating a truly unique
soundscape that Trees Speak have made wholly their own.
If you ever wanted to hear Can, Hawkwind, Destroy All Monsters, Pere Ubu, electric eels, John Cage, Liquid Liquid,
Tangerine Dream, Suicide, Neu!, Laurie Spiegel, Art Ensemble of Chicago, John Barry, Mother Mallard’s Portable
Masterpiece Company, Sun Ra, Stockhausen, John Carpenter, Electro-Acoustic and Musique Concrete and Mars in one
band - then this is it!
Trees Speak are Daniel Martin Diaz and Damian Diaz from Tucson, Arizona and their music often draws on the cosmic nighttime magic of Arizona’s natural desert landscapes. ‘Trees Speak’ relates to the idea of future technologies storing
information and data in trees and plants - using them as hard drives - and the idea that Trees communicate collectively.
Special guests from the hyper-creative hub of the Tucson music scene on this release are Gabriel Sullivan, Ben Nisbet, Saul
Millan, Stephani Guilmette, and Davis Jones.
The album Vertigo of Flaws was recorded in Brooklyn, New York, and Tucson, Arizona during the plague of 2021.
Extract from Vertigo of Flaws sleevenotes:
‘As we travel through space and time, avoiding the discarded remains of the industrial period, the
deconstruction of social norms through the expression of art, music, and philosophy guide the human
experience towards the unknown.
All that remains are musical echoes scattered throughout the universe, like ancient vibrations that now
populate the cosmos. These waves now show signs of decay. Melody, beauty, tonality have all but fallen
away as dissonance blossoms. As John Cage wrote in 1937,
“Whereas, in the past, the point of disagreement has been between dissonance and consonance, it will be,
in the immediate future, between noise and so-called musical sounds. New methods will be discovered,
bearing a definite relation to Schoenberg’s twelve-tone system and present methods of writing percussion
music and any other methods which are
free from the concept of a fundamental tone”.
Similarly, George Van Tassel claimed the Integratron as capable of
rejuvenation, anti-gravity, and time travel. So, what remains of the
“people”? We have adopted from them our own Zeitgeber: their pulses
now guide our sun, our planets, our earths, and are the new circadian,
diurnal, and ultradian rhythms of the galaxy. Traumsprache, dream
speech, is now the internal language of trees.
Decaying metal and machines liberated the note unto nature’s table,
and we sip the delicious nectar of music once more irrational, elaborate,
violent, vast. The past is the future, musical disintegration its own rebirth.
We are nature, once more the computer of the Universe.’

‘Social Graces’ is the debut album from Australian
post-punk outfit Loose Fit. Made up of Kaylene Miller,
Anna Langdon, Max edgar and Richard Martin.
 Kaylene and Anna met in fashion school and instantly
bonded through their love of experimental music.
 After toying with lo-fi bedroom recordings, the pair
recruited Max edgar on guitar and Richard Martin on
bass and started making some actual noise.
 Kaylene is also behind the cult knitwear brand WAHWAH Australia, with items worn by Noel Fielding,
Courtney Barnett and Kim Gordon.
 The band’s rhythm-heavy sound contains echoes of
UK post-punk titans such as PiL and A Certain Ratio.
 “Their post-punk indebted sound is barbed, wiry, and
overwhelmingly infectious.” - Clash
 “This is music to truly let loose to” - So Young
Magazine
 “If you thought they were going to make a quiet
entrance, you thought wrong.” - DIY
 “Loose Fit have ever been producers of the most
kinetic percussive tracks that have a restless and
visceral energy about them.” - Backseat Mafia
 For fans of Shopping, The Slits, Delta 5, Dry Cleaning,
Amyl & The Sniffers, Sonic Youth, A Certain Ratio

Another new colour pressing we have 200 only white vinyl coming in Mrch. Single LPs w/ printed inner sleeve + lyric insert and Download card. The Armed return with their first new album in over three years and Sargent House debut, ULTRAPOP. The album reaches the same extremities of sonic expression as the furthest depths of metal, noise, and otherwise "heavy" counterculture music subgenres but finds its foundation firmly in pop music and pop culture. As is always The Armed's mission, it seeks only to create the most intense experience possible, a magnification of all culture, beauty, and things. The band goes on to explain, "crafting vital art means presenting the audience with new and intriguing tensions sonically, visually, conceptually. Over time and through use, those tensions become less novel and effective and they become expectations. The concept of "subgenre" becomes almost the antithesis of vitality in art itself a fetishization of expectation. ULTRAPOP seeks, in earnest, to create a truly new listener experience. It is an open rebellion against the culture of expectation in "heavy" music. It is a joyous, genderless, post-nihilist, anti-punk, razor-focused take on creating the most intense listener experience possible. It's the harshest, most beautiful, most hideous thing we could make." ULTRAPOP follows their recent contribution to the Cyberpunk 2077 soundtrack “Night City Aliens” and 2018’s critically acclaimed album Only Love, which landed on ‘Album of the Year’ lists from The Atlantic, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Vice, Stereogum, and many more. The album was co-produced by the band's own Dan Greene in collaboration with Ben Chisholm (Chelsea Wolfe) and features contributions from Mark Lanegan, Troy Van Leeuwen (Queens of the Stone Age, A Perfect Circle), Ben Koller (Converge, Killer Be Killed, Mutoid Man) and many more. Kurt Ballou (Converge, High on Fire, Russian Circles) remains at the helm as executive producer. An interactive ARG campaign with numerous stages of engagement is underway and will continue through release. A website, media mailings and various social media interactions are leading fans to find easter eggs including songs, album info, videos and much more. A livestream performance confirmed for same day. Videos for all three focus tracks (“All Futures”, “Average Death” + “An Iteration” are completed and will be released along with each song.

Proper Grounds was an alternative rap-metal band from Los Angeles that first formed in 1988. After being discovered by Madonna and signing to Maverick Records, they released their first and last studio album Downtown Circus Gang in 1993. Proper Grounds was able to merge the gritty realities of life on the street with the intensity and velocity of heavy metal. Formed by frontman The Sandman (who is also on the cover of the album) and bass player/producer Danny Saber, they had a deep-rooted social consciousness that neatly subverted the mindless violence and material worship that engulfed rap in the Nineties. They called their particular brand of noise “anguish rap metal”. Soon after the release of Downtown Circus Gang, Proper Grounds disbanded and rap-metal moved to the suburbs where iconic bands such as System Of A Down and Papa Roach found their origin.

"Social injustices are implanted into our society, and the powerful are not willing to make way for real change. Urgency is the force driving us both in musical improvisation and life. Our sounds are war sirens against an ongoing disaster."- Simon Grab & Francesco Giudici

Simon Grab & Francesco Giudici's 'No Surrender' is a strong and uncut manifest against social injustices, packed into screaming feedbacks and towering drones. Grab lures tender noises and pulsating frequencies from his fragile no-input-mixing-setup, while Giudici adds linear and visceral guitar drones, opening a dialogue between the two musicians, the room, and the surrounding context. Together, they create a uniquely soft but angry musical creature that feeds from emotions of loss and anger to become a haunting call for change.

The album's cover presents a portrait of 'Madame Rochat' by photographer and film maker Aline d'Auria. The seemingly indestructible concierge was stripped from her home of half a century on the day of her retirement. Still, she persistently continued to fight for the working class' rights. '

Focusing on reduction and the peculiarity of self-referential systems, Simon Grab plays fragile feedbacks, pulsating drones and opulent outbursts of noise on a no-input-mixing setup. His has previously released"Posthuman Species" and "Extinction" on -OUS, while "Diamonds", a collaboration with Togolese rapper Yao Bobby and Asian Dub Foundation's Dhangsha, came out via LavaLava.

Experimental musician and sociologist Francesco Giudici plays guitar in bands and creates music for films, installations and theatre pieces. He has released three albums with his band 'Black Fluo' on PulverUndAsche Records. His research as sociologist and demographer focuses on social and economic inequalities, social gradient in health, gender inequalities, occupational and familiar life trajectories.

Box Records is pleased to welcome the debut album from Leeds noise rock band THANK.

'Thoughtless Cruelty' is a stark observation of human cruelty filtered through the band’s grim fascinations including long term nuclear warnings, CNN’s Turner Doomsday Video (opening song 'From Heaven' is a partial reworking of the Latin verse from 'Nearer My God To Thee', the hymn performed in that video), the writings of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, and the "business as usual" liberal politics which has given way to the global rise of the far right.

Unlike THANK’s previous material, which was largely honed at gigs and then recorded almost entirely live, the pandemic found the band in unchartered territory as they hit the studio having not been in the same building for months, including most of the album’s writing period.

Says vocalist Freddy Vinehill-Cliffe on the recording of the album - "It was a very different way of working for us; most of the songs did not have an arrangement figured out, we added layers to serve each track without worrying about how it would translate in a live setting. I guess that's the norm for a lot of bands, but it was a very novel experience for us."

A Beautiful Revolution Pt. 2 was created with hope and inspiration in mind. The spirit of the album was meant to emulate what a greater day would sound and feel like. We were in the midst of some tough political and socially challenging times. There was still hurt, anger and pain lingering, so I was thinking, “what is the next step in this revolution?” I thought about what being still in these times had brought me and that was a peace beyond understanding, a greater love for self, a closer connection with God, and more appreciation for my family, friends and the simple things in life. I wanted to write about that and create music that embodied that. What does a new day, a brighter day feel like being told through an emcee and some gifted musicians? How could this music be an example of the beautiful aspects of revolution that include joy, self-love, compassion, dreams, peace and good times? As a piece of art, I believe we took it to different places musically only to come back to the original intention. To bring joy to people’s hearts, fun to their lives and smiles to their souls. ABR2. Love Common RADIO: 6Music A List, Album Of The Week on 6Music, support across BBC R1, 1XTRA, Radio 2, 6Music. PRESS: Features in Huck, New Cue, DIY, Daily Star, The Guardian, Line Of Best Fit, MOKO, Clash, NME and more… “If ‘…Pt 1’ felt like a look at the progress we made last year, then this follow up stares down the road ahead – not with trepidation, but with boundless optimism” – DIY **** ‘A Beautiful Revolution, Pt. 2’ is the soundtrack to a new revolt. It’s about unity in the face of adversity and bringing awareness to the Black struggle. But at its core it’s a celebration of Black pride that sees Common in full swing as a champion of peace, love and freedom.” - NME “This is Common’s most hopeful album in years” – The Independent “A late career high” - Clash

**LIMITED BLACK VINYL** Rival Consoles returns with a resonant
and explorative soundscape of original
music, composed for renowned
choreographer Alexander Whitley’s
contemporary dance production
Overflow.

Exploring themes of the human and emotional
consequences of life surrounded by data, the piece
echoes the concept of social media, advertising,
marketing companies and political factions
exploiting our data to gain wealth, political
advantage and sow division. Key reading for the
project was based around the contemporary
philosophical work Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism
and New Technologies of Power by Byung-Chul
Han.
“The piece opens with Monster which has a kind of
drunken madness to it, highly repetitive to mirror the
repetitive nature of how we as humans engage with
technology such as social media. It’s sometimes
edging towards chaos but yet always returning back
to the same starting point, but eventually giving way
to exhaustion. I wanted to create a bold opening
piece for Overflow,” states West.

I Like features the mapping of data from dancer Tia
Hockey’s personal monologue, which allows chords
to be heard - but only based on the activity of her
voice, drawing attention to things happening behind
the curtain, invisible systems, algorithms.
The album also features the previously released
standalone slice of euphoria, Pulses of Information
— described by UK mag Clash as “typically
entrancing, Pulses of Information seems to
encourage a form of internal dialogue, between our
inner and outer selves.”

Overflow was premiered by the Alexander Whitley
Dance Company in May 2021 at the Sadler’s Wells
in London and is scheduled to tour through theatres
in Europe in spring 2022. The score will be released
by Erased Tapes on limited edition vinyl and CD as
well as digital formats on December 3.

A Beautiful Revolution Pt. 2 was created with hope and inspiration in mind. The spirit of the album was meant to emulate what a greater day would sound and feel like. We were in the midst of some tough political and socially challenging times. There was still hurt, anger and pain lingering, so I was thinking, “what is the next step in this revolution?” I thought about what being still in these times had brought me and that was a peace beyond understanding, a greater love for self, a closer connection with God, and more appreciation for my family, friends and the simple things in life. I wanted to write about that and create music that embodied that. What does a new day, a brighter day feel like being told through an emcee and some gifted musicians? How could this music be an example of the beautiful aspects of revolution that include joy, self-love, compassion, dreams, peace and good times? As a piece of art, I believe we took it to different places musically only to come back to the original intention. To bring joy to people’s hearts, fun to their lives and smiles to their souls. ABR2. Love Common RADIO: 6Music A List, Album Of The Week on 6Music, support across BBC R1, 1XTRA, Radio 2, 6Music. PRESS: Features in Huck, New Cue, DIY, Daily Star, The Guardian, Line Of Best Fit, MOKO, Clash, NME and more… “If ‘…Pt 1’ felt like a look at the progress we made last year, then this follow up stares down the road ahead – not with trepidation, but with boundless optimism” – DIY **** ‘A Beautiful Revolution, Pt. 2’ is the soundtrack to a new revolt. It’s about unity in the face of adversity and bringing awareness to the Black struggle. But at its core it’s a celebration of Black pride that sees Common in full swing as a champion of peace, love and freedom.” - NME “This is Common’s most hopeful album in years” – The Independent “A late career high” - Clash

Fractal City, the latest Cubenx album is a collection of terrestrial jams and arachnean ambient ballads that are particularly apt for urban listening. If its predecessors cracked the musical codes in force and shone by the versatility of their references, this new opus offers its listener an intense and symbolic sound environment.


The raw material of Fractal City was first conceived as a series of sound patches, designed to run in parallel with Canadian digital artist Maotik's installation. Broadcasted in real-time by generative patches reacting to various external and non-human data, those musical excerpts have been rendered in hundreds of nuances and extended over infinite durations. This unusual approach confers to the recording of the finished album's outstanding immersive strength.

Recorded live on a single track over a short period of a few weeks, the nine compositions of Fractal City capture the obsessions of its author for postmodern urban landscapes, and the revelation of new perspectives on the city of Paris.

The opening piece `Ssarg´ seems to hide the figure of the Mexican ambient producer Jorge Reyes. Cubenx built a cocoon of energetic layers, a new home of the mystical kind harmoniously integrated in a flourishing rainforest ecosystem.

`Transect ´refers to the urban development model of the same name, which is based on a division of the city into autonomous "fractal" zones. It also echoes the concept of "metro polarities" which considers the city as a mosaic of social groups. "By cycling in the evening with a friend, we could get away from the city centre to the suburbs of Paris. The contrasts are striking. You move from chic districts to bedroom communities, from industrial zones to improvised caravan camps. But there is a kind of energy in this heterogeneity that pushes you to always pedal further."

A few miles away, it would look like Art and urbanism have tried to level the cultural and social discrepancies of the outskirts of Paris. "Architectural sites like the Arcades of Bofill are splendid. There are completely extravagant projects, which seem to emerge from nowhere."
These buildings with ambitious aesthetics off the beaten tourist track, deteriorate over time and often remain far from the expectations of the local population. A feeling of nostalgic beauty is particularly perceptible on the slowest and most introspective ballads of the album as 'Urban Decay', 'Hagel' or 'Axe Majeur'. The producer leaves nonetheless no room for melancholic emptiness. "Every time, I have the impression that urban culture is taking its rights back and that young people appropriate the places in one way or another."

Just like `Transect', ` Quantified' and `Fractal City' present themselves as mirrors of a daily urban life in constant motion. All three are empowered by an overheated factory, which dispatches hypnotic beats and burst of analogue compressors with a clinical precision and direct them straight away to the reptilian areas of their listener's brains.

The sequencing leaves however space and time to take breath and makes way for aerial sonic excursions of spiritual and enlightened nature. On `Human Dilemma', Cubenx shows some concerns to opening the Pandora's box of transhumanist theories. While a long cosmic wave gives the listener a feeling of perfect fullness, a dizzying guitar distortion cast doubts on long term outlooks. `Smash Other' on the other way alternates gentle dissonances over an ocean of white noise and concludes the album on ethereal note.

With ´Fractal City", Cubenx eludes his irreconcilable love for shoegaze pop song and techno to concentrate exclusively on the production of mutant experimental materials. The result is an uncanny musical object, rich in image and sensation. Cubenx give us a guiding framework, enthralling enough to engage the listener to a tour of town. But he leaves it to the sole listeners to design their own projection of the city.

»Dog Mountain« is the second release by the Zurich-based producer and composer Laurin Huber on Hallow Ground. After last year’s »Juncture« saw the Edipo Re co-founder work mostly with synthesizers and programmed rhythms, the four tracks are much more restrained, drawing on tape loops and feedback, recordings of acoustic guitar and synthesizers such as the Korg MS-10 as well as field recordings that relate to the overarching topic that informed the making of the record. While »Juncture« had previously aimed at deconstructing the binaries and dualities that shape our lives and thinking, »Dog Mountain« is dedicated to geographical divisions that result from political processes and social constructions. »›Here‹ means one nation, ›there‹ another,« writes Huber in a literary piece that accompanies the record. »Being in sound, such a separation seems odd.«

While treating the metaphor of the border as a »membrane, registering and translating the vibrations of its surroundings« and thus as something that is constantly (re-)defined, maintained and defended however, the artist also takes into consideration that »one cannot escape one’s standpoint,« as he puts it. The music on »Dog Mountain« may transcend and overcome certain borders, but it does not deny the realities that they impose on each and every one of us – whether in our political lives or in the realm of sound. This is mirrored in Huber’s engaging in the structural and sonic interplay of repetition and difference. Working with slowly evolving and modulating elements that are exposed to slight shifts, »Dog Mountain« puts a focus on the interaction between small elements that together form a bigger whole which is marked by constant evolution and change.

Opener »Raja« (»border« in Northern Sami and Finnish) starts off with a two-note melody played on an out-of-tune guitar. Different field recordings and synthesizer sounds drop in and out of the mix until the dynamic shifts and Huber starts playing more notes on his instrument, thus increasing the tension. It’s a meditation on minimalism, but also a piece that mediates between notions of what constitutes the difference between noise and music or referentiality and abstraction in sound. After »Nickel« (named after a Russian monotown near the border to Norway) dedicates itself to explore the friction between hissing white noise and melancholic tape loops, »A Town Is Not a Town« (a phrase taken from the documentary »Kiruna – Rymdvägen«) structurally mirrors the experiment of »Raja« with very different sonic means.

Closing the record, »Storskog-Borisoglebsk« (the title refers to the northernmost land border between Schengen-Europe and Russia) is the longest and most challenging piece, working with both long-form drones and musique concrète elements. It proposes a synthesis of the opposites that are explored patiently and with much attention to detail throughout this record.

Clear Vinyl

Post-minimalist American composer Rafael Anton Irisarri makes his Umor Rex debut with his new album, The Shameless Years. Inspired by a troubled socio-political climate, buried melodies punch their way through a bleak cover of noisy drones, periodically veering into some of Irisarri's most eerily pertinent music to date.

One of Rafael Anton Irisarri's most thematically and sonically cohesive records to date The Shameless Years came together in a relatively short burst of creativity starting at the end of 2016. Rediscovering some relatively older tools - namely Native Instruments' Reaktor, Absynth, and Kontakt software - Irisarri combined them with his collection of guitars, pedals, amps, and analogue processing gear, turning his Black Knoll Studio north of NYC into a powerful writing tool. Completed quickly by Irisarri's standards, let alone during a period of social upheaval in American society, the record faces down several key personal themes. The title, suggests Irisarri, could in fact be seen as a reflection of the era of shamelessness we're currently living in, a time of fake news and alternative facts.

Two tracks were completely remotely between Irisarri in New York and Umor Rex veteran Siavash Amini from his home in Tehran, Iran. This music came together at the peak of all the anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric happening in the USA, not to mention the banning of Iranians from entering the country, explains Irisarri. The diptych with Amini, 'Karma Krama' and 'The Faithless', seems bathed in additional waves of sorrow and dread. The wash of symphonic stormclouds of synth drones and processed notes on the latter gradually appears and disappears over the course of thirteen mournful minutes.

'Rh Negative' marches gigantic guitars through towering valleys of scarred ambient noise dealing with Irisarri's own heritage, many of his ancestors having come to America to escape poverty and oppression. The refusal of modern America to extend similar sanctuary to refugees escaping turmoil weighs heavily on the composer. Elsewhere an emotional onslaught of notes buried in mounds of greyscale noise on 'Sky Burial' aims to deal with Irisarri's very own mortality - something he was recently confronted with following health scares, an accident, and a near-death experience in 2016. Pushing 40 as this album was being made, the composer is constantly aware that he's already outlived his own father, who died at the age of 32. Facing down both intolerance and the void, the epic soundscapes of The Shameless Years are a vast cry of emotion from Irisarri. The clock is ticking - gotta make the most out of it while you still can.

All songs written and performed by Rafael Anton Irisarri, except #5 & #6 written and performed with Siavash Amini. Design by Daniel Castrejón, photos by Camilo Christen. Mastered by James Plotkin.

This New Collection Is Released To Celebrate The Electronic Music Pioneer Being At The Forefront Of His Genre For Over 50 Years. This Extensive Double Album Comprises 41 Tracks That Has Jmj Hand Picked Himself. All Songs Have Been Digitally Remastered. Formats Include A Limited Quadruple Deluxe Lp Set, Deluxe Double Cd And A Super Deluxe Limited Fan Box Set. Press Ads, Features And Reviews. Online/social Media Activity. Poster Campaign And Database Mailout.

South London-based band Soothsayers are set to release their ninth studio album 'We Are Many'. Held together by heavy basslines, solid grooves, and socially and politically charged lyrics; the album takes the listener into different sonic spaces with elements of dub, Afrobeat, improvisational jazz and electronica.

The initial steps in recording 'We Are Many' came in January 2019 when the band's founders - saxophonist Idris Rahman and trumpeter Robin Hopcraft - set out on a journey to Brazil. With executive production in the Sao Paulo studio by renowned music journalist and author David Katz, they hooked up with bass player and producer Victor Rice who they'd met sharing the bill at Freedom Sounds festival in Cologne, Germany a year earlier. Victor organised a session in Studio Traquitana, home of acclaimed Brazilian band Bixiga 70, and invited a selection of local musicians. Percussionist and singer Ligia Kamara contributed lyrics and melodies written in the studio, and drummer Bruno Buarque, guitarist Joao Erbetta and bassist Victor provided some solid, personality-driven input. Fresh and vital, what came out was a fascinating blend of Soothsayers' dub and Afrobeat mixed with distinctly Brazilian inflections.

After arriving back in the UK, Idris and Robin set about creating the remainder of the album in a different, yet complimentary way, and called on the services of Wu-Lu and Kwake at their The Room studio in South London. Things started to take shape very quickly, Wu-Lu and Kwake combining Soothsayers' music with electronic elements, while also referencing elements of the current UK jazz scene.

When lockdown hit in March 2020, there was still a lot of work to do in order to complete a full album and Robin and Idris set about working on tracks with their musicians remotely. Having time to consider the album as a whole, they found strong connections between the music recorded in Brazil and the tracks recorded in London and they set about fusing and combining these elements further into a satisfying whole.

UK based Sengalese singer Modou Toure was enlisted to guest on one track while percussionists Satin Singh and Maurizio Ravalico were engaged to help affirm a sound-world where Brazilian flavours, such as the low-end Surdo drum, were combined with sounds more readily associated with reggae and Afrobeat.

Soothsayers' three part vocal harmony is a defining factor in this album. With strong references to the vocal styles of reggae legends such as The Gladiators, Mighty Diamonds, Heptones, and Abyssinnians; it has benefited from the long-standing friendship between Robin, Idris and Julia Biel. Lyrics, melodies and harmonies were presented, discussed, explored and recorded at Idris' and Julia's home studio in Streatham in a relaxed and positive way, with concepts from social and political commentary turned into powerful songs.

Themes cover political observations of Trump and beyond alongside Brazil's president Bolsanaro (Rat Race), speaking out against increasing levels of violence from the Brazilian government towards its native and indigenous people (Love And Unity) and keeping hopeful despite the impending horrors of a no-deal Brexit (We Won't Lose Hope).

Elsewhere they discuss striving to create space for meditation and reflection against the background noise of 24/7 news and social media (Move In Silence), the daily grind (No Sacrifice) and workers' rights (Slave), while highlighting those that fall through the cracks in society and end up without a permanent address, what led to this and how close we all are from this happening (One Step Away).

'We Are Many' represents a positive and uplifting statement in the face of challenging times - the overriding force, power and positivity of the music to continue forward, pushing the boundaries of musical concepts into the future.

"Whilst heavy questions of life and death and the future of our species surround us all, music is a guide that can help us perceive the challenges in a different way - a guide that can help us towards a deep inner peace. If we listen, music can help light the way. We hope you will listen, and we hope you will experience the joy, meditative power and beauty in the connection of different musical cultures that was experienced in the creation of this album."

South London-based band Soothsayers are set to release their ninth studio album 'We Are Many'. Held together by heavy basslines, solid grooves, and socially and politically charged lyrics; the album takes the listener into different sonic spaces with elements of dub, Afrobeat, improvisational jazz and electronica.

The initial steps in recording 'We Are Many' came in January 2019 when the band's founders - saxophonist Idris Rahman and trumpeter Robin Hopcraft - set out on a journey to Brazil. With executive production in the Sao Paulo studio by renowned music journalist and author David Katz, they hooked up with bass player and producer Victor Rice who they'd met sharing the bill at Freedom Sounds festival in Cologne, Germany a year earlier. Victor organised a session in Studio Traquitana, home of acclaimed Brazilian band Bixiga 70, and invited a selection of local musicians. Percussionist and singer Ligia Kamara contributed lyrics and melodies written in the studio, and drummer Bruno Buarque, guitarist Joao Erbetta and bassist Victor provided some solid, personality-driven input. Fresh and vital, what came out was a fascinating blend of Soothsayers' dub and Afrobeat mixed with distinctly Brazilian inflections.

After arriving back in the UK, Idris and Robin set about creating the remainder of the album in a different, yet complimentary way, and called on the services of Wu-Lu and Kwake at their The Room studio in South London. Things started to take shape very quickly, Wu-Lu and Kwake combining Soothsayers' music with electronic elements, while also referencing elements of the current UK jazz scene.

When lockdown hit in March 2020, there was still a lot of work to do in order to complete a full album and Robin and Idris set about working on tracks with their musicians remotely. Having time to consider the album as a whole, they found strong connections between the music recorded in Brazil and the tracks recorded in London and they set about fusing and combining these elements further into a satisfying whole.

UK based Sengalese singer Modou Toure was enlisted to guest on one track while percussionists Satin Singh and Maurizio Ravalico were engaged to help affirm a sound-world where Brazilian flavours, such as the low-end Surdo drum, were combined with sounds more readily associated with reggae and Afrobeat.

Soothsayers' three part vocal harmony is a defining factor in this album. With strong references to the vocal styles of reggae legends such as The Gladiators, Mighty Diamonds, Heptones, and Abyssinnians; it has benefited from the long-standing friendship between Robin, Idris and Julia Biel. Lyrics, melodies and harmonies were presented, discussed, explored and recorded at Idris' and Julia's home studio in Streatham in a relaxed and positive way, with concepts from social and political commentary turned into powerful songs.

Themes cover political observations of Trump and beyond alongside Brazil's president Bolsanaro (Rat Race), speaking out against increasing levels of violence from the Brazilian government towards its native and indigenous people (Love And Unity) and keeping hopeful despite the impending horrors of a no-deal Brexit (We Won't Lose Hope).

Elsewhere they discuss striving to create space for meditation and reflection against the background noise of 24/7 news and social media (Move In Silence), the daily grind (No Sacrifice) and workers' rights (Slave), while highlighting those that fall through the cracks in society and end up without a permanent address, what led to this and how close we all are from this happening (One Step Away).

'We Are Many' represents a positive and uplifting statement in the face of challenging times - the overriding force, power and positivity of the music to continue forward, pushing the boundaries of musical concepts into the future.

"Whilst heavy questions of life and death and the future of our species surround us all, music is a guide that can help us perceive the challenges in a different way - a guide that can help us towards a deep inner peace. If we listen, music can help light the way. We hope you will listen, and we hope you will experience the joy, meditative power and beauty in the connection of different musical cultures that was experienced in the creation of this album."

- Idris Rahman and Robin Hopcraft

In pursuit of new distinctive and wide-ranging music, Jupiter4 found DVLVCRVZ as an intriguing and enigmatic beatmaker from Texas, well known in the local scene for grow a very own and personal sound that comes from trap and hip hop but is coloured by shoegaze, ambient and noise, submerged in a constant dialogue with tape delays and big room reverberations, creating the sense of cold and distant emotions that represents his own life in music. Edge of reality is a sensitive and unique record that refuses to settle on a specific gender, starting with breaks, beats, pads and deep melodys in the first tracks, to then give space to some voices and lyrics from collaborators as Lunatic and STONEDOGG. The b side shows some New Wave influences with Anxious and concludes with an ode to darkness and a meaningful speech in Bound by evil.

3d amorphous characters are again present on the artwork, and short videos from this ones are displayed on the social media, developed by Buenos Aires based Narf Alvarez.

The title Ghost Frequency works on several levels. I was introduced to the term when I first began learning about recording techniques. It was used (usually negatively) to describe sounds that appeared on recordings due to signal interactions that resulted from “improper” mixing or recording and read as “noise” rather than the “music” that was being recorded. I became instantly fascinated with the phenomenon and intentionally creating these sounds in my recordings by deliberately using supposedly incorrect techniques has become a big part of my composing and recording process, probably the most central and consistent practice of it. I’m interested in how the presence of these sounds, and traditional production’s insistence on eradicating relates to larger ideas about the eradication of vital social practices relating to the dead such as ancestor worship, mediumship and history itself in favor of state and market dictated modes of understanding existence. The internet abounds with references to the the term, but applied to ultra low frequency or “infrasound” which can allegedly be responsible for inducing supernatural perception experiences. These posts from the margins posit a Ghost Frequency that operates on the same level as a radio station, one can simply tune into paranormal activity. It’s also a pun on an imaginary metric of how frequently ghosts might be around at any given moment. The songs on the EP employ (as does all of my music) a large amount of Ghost Frequencies (i.e. sounds that appear on the recording as the result of signal interactions rather than those sounds being performed on an instrument) and they also orient themselves toward interaction with the dead as a necessary component of human experience, and a mode of resistance to state power and it’s accompanying carceral technologies.

Jatinder Singh Durhailay and David Edren released Tea Notes as a cassette back in April of 2018. London-based Jatinder Singh Durhailay is a painter and student of Indian Classical music. He has trained in both the sitar and the Hindi singing technique, Dhrupad. He also plays two traditional Sikh instruments; the bowed, stringed Dilruba and Taus. Poetic Pastel Press issued his solo debut, The Last Ballad Of Mardana, in 2017. David Edren`s expertise lies with machines and modular synthesis. His Kosmische and New Age-Inspired electronics have featured on numerous cassettes, and compilations, produced for imprints from the current Belgian underground, such as Jj Funhouse, Social Harmony, and Ultra Eczema. These recordings appearing, since the turn of the millennium, either under his own name, or the moniker DSR Lines. Jatinder and David’s collaboration, Tea Notes, is a celebration, a meditation, on both the beverage, and the communal time shared imbibing. The coming together to partake in its ritual. Each of the six tracks represents a different infusion. The opening piece is a tribute to semi-oxidised Oolong, from China`s Wuyi Mountains, with hammered dulcimer-like glissando. Gongs shimmering, gently crashing, as if signaling a change in the weather. A calm of thin, stretched synths and Ai angels introduces Tulsi from India. The Holy Basil of Hinduism, used in the worship of Vishnu, Krishna, and Rama. A traditional herb of Ayurveda and Siddha medicine. Automated arpeggiated sequences raising a vibrating wall of hallucinatory sound. Pairing swooning strings with a racing robot heart. Ceylon is a modern twist on the classical raga. Serving to tell the story of a tea smuggled into Sri Lanka in the 19th century. Plants stolen from South West China, where the brew had been enjoyed since the days of the Shang Dynasty (1766 to 1122 BC). The contraband founding fresh industry in its new home when the indigenous coffee crops failed. Muted organ and sleepy, treated sine wave microtones describe Kava, the Polynesian fireweed root, whose extract serves as both sedative and euphoriant.Shincha are the first young leaves of the season. Picked in Southern Japan and steamed to prevent oxidization, retain their flavour and green / gold colour. Their musical counterpart finds Edren establishing an ecclesiastical drone, while Durhailay`s strings chart an ancient romantic ache. Sonic stars shine. Singing out to the infinite, the universe, before dissolving into knots of Radiophonic Workshop noise.Melodies treated with subtle sustain and delay denote Pu-Ehr, from the Yunnan province. The only truly fermented black tea - made distinctive by the action of bacteria, moulds, and yeasts. Its musical themes hovering in the vapour trails, the atmospheres, they themselves create. Spiraling, soaring, reaching for the heavens, while pretty music box glitches - tiny chimes turned in on themselves. Catching, reflecting, like light at play on fresh running water. (words: Robert Harris)

Under the alias Ciel, Xi'an-born/Toronto-based producer, pianist, DJ, and Discwoman affiliate Cindy Li embodies the social conscience of progressive electronic music. She is at once a local and global artist, having flourished at the fringe of cutting-edge club culture since 2015, firmly rooted in her adopted city while reaching increasingly outward, her sets echoing from Berlin’s Berghain to Chicago’s Smartbar to Lisbon’s Lux Fragil. Back in Toronto, she co-runs the label Parallel Minds and event initiative Work In Progress, an extension of her radio show in both name and M.O. to improve female representation in the scene. She’s helped write safe space policies, hosted DJ workshops, and applied activist pressure on promoters through varying methods with a single-minded resolve. Those efforts have evoked responses, which Li has spent time reckoning with over the past two years. Now, manifesting as a self-guided reaction to her experiences as an artist and activist is Ciel’s Spectral Sound debut, Why Me?, a deeply personal and physical work.

Ciel’s stylistic pocket as a producer remains that of “soft-touch slammers,” but fans will note the material on Why Me? hits harder. “I wanted to write something that was heavy,” she says of the title track, the result of processing the noise leveled at her specifically after she amassed a database of female and nonbinary talents to highlight the lack of bookings amongst a subset of clubs in the community. “I was dealing with a lot... anger, despair, paranoia, feeling unjustly targeted.” She channeled these antiphons into her art. The cut’s namesake is sourced from the foregrounded sample, a snippet of dialogue from an old film about a man who believes he’s been abducted by aliens. Pulsing metallic drum patterns steer through the hypnotic passage; permeating beneath the beats are lush pads, washing the rattled urgency with unease.

Hardware-built tracks “Go Fish” and “Uri’s Song” came together over studio time with friend and occasional collaborator Colin Sims aka Wiretapping. Ciel brought her sampler to the sessions, with Sims contributing additional drums, which she’d arrange further at home, adding synth parts and basslines and effects, distilling it all down to its most potent core. The latter track — an effervescent minimal techno exercise both tender and tough — expresses Li’s reflections on today’s cyclical conditions for activism, dissension, and, ultimately, optimism. “These are harsher sounds but they also have elements that are really beautiful about them. I wanted to communicate that nothing is permanent, that there’s always hope for understanding and resolution.”

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1
Breach One
9' 36''
2
Interlude One
3' 26''
3
Breach Two
7' 05''
4
Breach Three
9' 32''
5
Interlude Two
2' 29''
6
Breach Four
7' 34''
Breach dives into chaotic systems and reflects on the recent events of protests and riots in the world, exploring the build up and release of tension and energy in a new form of pitch black metal electronics and polyrhythmic structures.

Zeno van den Broek is a Dutch-born, Copenhagen-based composer and artist. Van den Broek works in a multi-sensory way to research and express physical, social and acoustic notions. He utilises audiovisual means to create site and concept specific works. This trans-disciplinary method has a strong conceptual foundation, originating from a background in architecture, which enables Zeno to comprehend and reveal the richness and complexity of spatial, visceral and physical perception. He works with a characteristic artistic language based on minimalist and fundamental elements such as sine waves, lines, noise and grids.

Liška, the Czechoslovakian word for fox. Beguiling in its beauty, cunning in it's charm. Said to be one of the most intelligent animals on the planet its global family consists of thirty-seven varieties; all of them recognised, respected and feared for their persuasive, creative, resourceful and elusive nature. The Liška we will talk about today is no exception to these hereditary rules and within the grooves of this record Finders Keepers present an 'elusive' musical artefact that best exemplifies every facet of this composer's animal namesake.

Had he not been born in the small Bohemian town of Smecno in the early 1920s the story of The Fantastic Mr. Liška might have well taken a different course. Alternatively, fettered by the hampers of communism, this lifelong resident of Czechoslovakia would never quite find his seat at the same table as the likes of John Barry, Ennio Morricone, Michael Nyman and Stanley Myers, nor drop enough phonographic breadcrumbs to track his legacy. But having waited patiently behind the borders of the wider landscapes of international cinema, Liška's musical brood, spanning multiple stylistic decades and generations, has now started to walk proudly amongst his would-be, latter-day compeers. In an era where music lovers have almost become immune to adjectives like 'lost', 'rare' and 'unreleased' in a climate where previously lesser-known off-kilter master composers such as Vannier, Kirchin and Axelrod have become widely revered, it is perhaps the perfect time for discerning listeners to advance above the feeding trough and seek out this truly pioneering and revolutionary Eastern European composer. Rivalled only by the likes of Krzysztof Komeda and Andrzej Korzynski in Poland, alongside Alexandr Gradsky in Russia, and often splitting workloads with fellow Czech composers like Luboš Fišer, Zdenek Liska's filmography of over almost 300 fully formed movie scores virtually eclipses the achievements of these socialist era luminaries. Respected unanimously in both Czech and Slovakian by studio bosses, producers, directors and actors alike Liška is widely known for his ability to take the existing energy in a reel of film and literally change the polarity to suit his own interpretation while maintaining the full support from his 'client' who would in-turn end up working under this composer's creative direction. Not only was Liška a genius of emotive orchestral and coral composition, his grasp on small group arrangements and intimate, minimal scores set him above the competition. By utilising primitive sample techniques by 'looping' a films existing ambient noise, or rearranging found sounds and dialog into subtle melodic arrangements, Liška would independently develop his own techniques which had simultaneously become known in Paris as musique concre`te. It is a direct extension of these experiments that saw Liška also draw parallels with Walter Branchi (Ennio Morricone's main electronic sidekick) in Italy as well as Daphne Oram in the UK, making Liška a relatively untravelled pioneer of early electronic composition and sound design due to his unlikely global environment. Imprisoned, preserved or reserved; time has been kind to Liška's music.

"At the crux of American-born, Shanghai-based producer Eli Osheyack's debut album, Sadomodernism, is a question of agency. Borrowed from film theory, the album title was originally coined by writer Moira Weigel to describe a waning European art house tradition that vehemently rejects 'naïve pleasure'—the tranquilizing comfort of conventional cinematic narrative, like mainstream Hollywood—and opts for violence and pain, with the aim of shaking audiences out of cinematic manipulation and into their own position vis-à-vis the malaise of contemporary life. Echoing the work of sadomodernist auteurs, Osheyacks's Sadomodernism is a deeply political project with critical ambitions. The smashing and blending of genres, from techno, industrial, noise and gabber to ballroom and metal, even opera, and spontaneous percussion arrangements, sometimes mixed with distorted spoken word, do not mean to please, but provoke through disorder and chaos. Laden with Brechtian alienation affects, Sadomodernism interrogates the notion of autonomy in contemporary music, club culture, and social-political life."

Joe Powers is from Edinburgh, far outside the network of the Grime capital of London. His caffeinated productions as Proc Fiskal are faster than usual, with many clocking in at 160bpm. 'The Highland Mob', his 2017 debut EP, opened up his music to open-eared footwork and drum'n'bass fans as well as the grime crowd. After following that up with a jungle-inflected EP on Cosmic Bridge, 'Insula' switches the feel and intention towards a personal, and melodic music with one foot in Grime, infused with often comic, often wistful recorded moments from his environment. He says 'I wanted to be aware of where the music is coming from, referencing things I'm presently experiencing, like making Grime, my Radar radio show, phone addiction, alcohol, my surroundings, girls, depression, positivity, being unemployed, being employed and hating it, my friends etc. Trying to be true to myself instead of relying on other peoples' nostalgia, and focusing on now.'

The record is a huge leap in vision, with delicate, pointillist melodies and intricate edits reminiscent of Grime producers such as Terror Danjah. It also resonates with Japanese video game music like that recently explored on the 'Diggin' In The Carts' compilation.

'I think I probably make tunes to get out emotions I don't express in day-to-day life. I used clips of my friends talking, drunk folk, and general Scottish life to preserve and represent what my experience is like right now, like a time capsule. Social media notification sounds are designed to release serotonin, which is what I'd like my music to do, to make me, and other people happy, and in using these manipulative noises in a positive way, I like to think I'm taking back the power of the manipulation.'

Proc Fiskal is adventurous and thoughtful as a producer, and at the young age of 21, his debut album is very advanced in its ideas and execution.

Having grown up with and on the internet, Martin Steer (1986) has transformed its pull into a concept album that is just as immediate and intangible as the digital world. Bad Stream is guitars and machines vanishing in the spaces between Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails only to reemerge amidst Ambient, Noise, and Drone. Bad Stream, then, is his modus operandi - a hybrid soundtrack to the feelings of resignation, isolation, and cynicism within neoliberal cyberspace and to that strangely numbing comfort of bodies transmuting into zeros and ones in real time.
'I look at my phone even when I play guitar,' says Martin Steer, 'and that isn't even entirely voluntary. The 2010s really changed my perception of how digital technologies and social media affect me as a musician. Through Bad Stream I want to make sense of this particular kind of anxiety, and to use sensory overstimulation as a way to develop an independent and progressive musical language.'
The past seven years took Martin and his laptop and guitar from Berlin to Mexico and Nepal and, as a founding member of Frittenbude, into the German charts and to various festival stages. And yet, Bad Stream is a true 'Berlin album,' out of Friedrichshain, Neukölln, and Kreuzberg and will be released on Martin Steers own label ANTIME. It was recorded with real drums and programmed beats, with shoegaze guitars, acid baselines, piano, smartphone synths, violins, field recordings from the darknet and his voice, whose hopeless timbre conveys reflections on systems, the future, drugs, people, and his own place. In his ever expanding A/V live shows and in the music videos, this is supplemented by complex visuals.

Since composer Sean McBride unveiled his first utterance as Martial Canterel almost 2 decades ago, he has produced a body of work both substantial and alluring within the field of live analogue electronic music. Effortlessly fusing a variety of styles and influences, Martial Canterel is one of the premiere outfits utilizing analogue electronics and modular synthesizers. In particular FM synthesis is employed to produce clustered polyphonies and organic atmospheres - a staple of his signature style.Three years have passed since Martial Canterel's last full length album Gyors, Lassù was released on Dais Records. During this down time, McBride found himself in a state of flux, ebbing back and forth between material displacement and musical aestheticism. His expert pedigree in electronic sound and arrangement bridges the gap created by an undecidability between life at home and abroad - his new album, Lost At Sea, is an attempt for the artist to locate common ground, mutating fable with reality, exteriority and interiority.

The album's introductory track, Giving Up, has all of the hallmarks that Martial Canterel has utilized in the past...melodic chorus, upbeat rhythm and classic sequential dynamism. Where the song diverges is in its core theme of nature: nature's return to a period of restoration after the failures and recklessness of humankind. Although this first glance refamiliarizes one with the tight, upbeat appeal typically found within the genre, Lost at Sea quickly takes a more serious and sobering tone.The slower pace of songs like Scampia and Puszta yearn for McBride's complex love affair with far flung destinations. Re-evaluating the political strife and social unrest in these historical locations, McBride delves deeper into political and geological reference points creating symbolic representations using mechanized percussion, white noise and various sine waves.The conceptual nature of Lost at Sea reaches even deeper depths within the waveforms of Astralize, a track based upon academic Donna Haraway's pre-civilized theories of human neglect after the 'azstralization'.

People Places & Things is the single project of Manchester born & London based Mike Checuti. Mike grew listening to a heavy mixture of horror & film soundtracks an equal dose of the early electro via the legendary Spin Inn records & then the hedonistic sounds of The Hacienda & the more underground Thunderdome nightclub.

Mike was encouraged to press ahead with the project after a visit to Los Angeles & spending time in the studio with Atticus Ross (Gone Girl & The Social Network soundtrack composer).

Treating Patient A is the first in a trilogy of releases by People Places & Things each pulling from the above mentioned influences but each EP having it's own variation whilst keeping the references points clearly audible along with People Places & Things own take of these sounds at the forefront.

People Places & Things along with Gabe Guernsey of Factory Floor have recently just composed the soundtrack for the latest film for the forthcoming Adidas Spezial range which commemorates 30 years of Acid house.

Artwork for each 12" is designed by Andrew Jackson & each sleeve is individually hand printed thus having its own unique imprint and limited to only 200 copies.

The press & publicity for the release and project as while will be handled by 'The Rest is Noise'

At the beginning of the 70s, in Italy, the revolutionary surge of 1968 was beginning to turn into something grimmer (and definitely not linked to left-wing ideology) but the concept of factory' still had a key role in the economic and social life of the country. It was not just an alienating workplace, where you often spent your whole life, but also - and overall - the place where demands were made and political struggles took place. Therefore, a feasible imaginary soundtrack for the factory was the daily noise of machines, tools, hammers: an idea that, years later, would be embraced by dozens of industrial bands all over the world. But, in 1972, that reality was documented by Gerardo Iacoucci: We went into factories and workshops and recorded the noise of the machines, then we put on it special musical effects and did an accurate mix', he tells in the liner notes. Industria N.1, divided in Fabbrica on the A side and Impianti meccanici on the other side, is an amazing work mixing field recordings and experimental music, proving how you can combine political commitment, art, avant-garde and pioneering noise music in a brave record.

NPVR is moniker taken on board by PITA AKA Peter Rehberg and Factory Floor's Nick Void. 33 33 is their debut recording made in July, 2017 at The Premises, London.

Peter and Nik both share formidable reputations in the post industrial shape-shifting world of sound and form with a vast range of releases and collaborative endeavours over a number of years. Together they tie together their collective experience into a vast array of sonic devices unleashing an album of pragmatic imbalance and psychedelic orientation. Blurring the lines of techno, ambient, avant garde, noise etc

33 33 positions itself in the nebulous realm of contemporary (dis)comfort presenting itself on the border of music and sound, the social and the private.

All tracks by Nik Void & Peter Rehberg
Recorded and edited at The Premises, London, July 2017
Mastered by Russell Haswell at Haswell Studio, London, August 2017
Cut by CGB at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin, September 2017
Artwork by Nik Void