Suche:the earl

Just in time for summer, Pampa issued Aimlessness, the long-awaited new album from Dntel AKA Los Angeles producer Jimmy Tamborello. His latest electronic suite brought forth stronger leanings toward house grooves, building upon the pop and IDM approaches he
explored earlier in his career as half of the Postal Service and a member of Figurine ñ with a healthy dose of Pampa otherworldliness on top.

Recent Songs is the sixth studio album by Leonard Cohen, released in 1979. It was a return to Cohen's acoustic folk music after the Phil Spector experimentation of Death of a Ladies' Man, (MOVLP476) but now with many jazz and Oriental influences. The album includes Gypsy violin player Raffi Hakopian, and even a Mexican Mariachi band. Long-time Cohen collaborator Jennifer Warnes prominently appears in vocal tracks. Members of the band Passenger played on four of the songs and Garth Hudson of The Band also appeared on the album. 'Came So Far for Beauty" seems to be an unaltered outtake from the unfinished 1975 album Songs for Rebecca , which also included early versions of "The Traitor" and "The Smokey Life" (then with music by John Lissauer)."Ballad of the Absent Mare"'s metaphoric lyrics are based on the twelfth-century Ten Bulls (or Ten Ox-herding Pictures). The song is covered by several artists, notably Emmylou Harris on the album Cowgirl's Prayer (as "Ballad of a Runaway Horse"). This album comes with a lyric sheet.

s one of the most successful artists in contemporary Techno Music Hendrik Weber aka Pantha Du Prince presents his new studio project together with Workshop's Stephan Abry: URSPRUNG.

After several studio sessions in the cold and charming winter of the Swiss Alps, Abry and Weber were driven deeper and deeper into some microcosm of sound to almost cut the edge to the myth. Influenced by Krautrock, the Ambient Music of Harold Budd and early Brian Eno, Avantgarde, and the minimalistic guitar sound of Durutti Collumn the URSPRUNG project can't resist to make the guitar a main source. coming together with highly futuristic sounds as we know from the researches of Pantha Du Prince. A truly unconventional structure of slowly growing beats hold this universe which came from the cold mountains together.

We celebrate our number 30 with a double pack, featuring one of the creators of techno in Spain: Groof.

Roberto Gemelin, from Madrid, is Groof. He's Robert Calvin too. No matter which of his alias you know him by, he's one of the most active producers in the Madrid arena.

Aka Robert Calvin, he released materials with Turbo (Tiga's label) in 2004, having previously collaborated with Star Whores in a joint release with Alek Stark (2002).
Also important are the remixes he did for Disko B or for Sindicato Records and MSX, paying tribute to Megabeat with his recreation of the great classic Strange.

His background as Groof is even more extensive, as his early steps go back to the times of Minifunk (the cheeky and shameless label from Barcelona that was then managed by Omar and Dj Loe). With them he recorded Mambo! (1999) and I want you (2000). He has also recorded with WarmUp, Fieber, Rainwaves or Shareware Records.

At the end of the ninetees Groof shared Quite Unusual with Oscar Mulero: the start of a deep friendship that nowadays brings us WU30 mini-album.

'Angel exterminador' is on the A side; modern and dark techno, based on cemented beats and deep synth work. A track that is constantly growing and evolving; quality and punch in one track.

'Diagrama esporadico' goes next: relaxed BPM, 909 beats, spacey arpeggios, and analogue synth percussions for a mental feeling.

'Gummy' starts with weird flanged noises, fed with distorted drums and drones that create an elastic feeling, hence the gummy name. Scientific techno.

'Amb' goes back to darkness, subtle ambiences and drones, fixed sequences and a clever arrangement.

'Vac 04' continues on the same mood: obscure synths, classic drum machines, sharp hats and white noise.

Closing the release, 'Islands' is a liquid track based on lush keyboards, and a dubby feeling with those endless delays. A classy number.

A nice mini-album which is diverse, complex, classic and futuristic at the same time.

*Repress*

PPU's first long-play LP highlights some of the early beginnings of one of the label's favorite producers, UKku Kuut. Written and recorded at Uku's home studio in Los Angeles and Stockholm between 1982 & 1989.
Some tracks co-written with Maryn E. Coote, famous jazz vocalist who had her beginnings in 1960s Soviet Union. "That's my MOM" recalls UKU, "I remember when I was little, sitting under the mixing board at her sessions". Growing up in studios, Uku's love of music production began early, and over the years he has amassed a vast collection of domestic and soviet electronic gear. In true PPU style this LP is a mix of Uku Kuut's raw cassette demos, forgotten masters and unreleased magic.

..another one! this time it's SKUDGE SKUDGE SKUDGE VS SAN SAN SAN PROPER PROPER PROPER..... BIG 12"! TIP
Skudge - Silent Running
Swedish duo Skudge ends Dekmantel's compilation the way we expected them to
do: with a fierce jacking and hypnotizing techno monster. Lights off and strobes on please, this is for the heads (do people still say that!)

San Proper - Rattle (Station2Station)
Like the earlier mentioned Juju & Jordash and Makam, San Proper has been involved in Dekmantel's activities from the very beginning as well. It seems that the notorious Dutchmen is getting better with every release. Rattle is an exiling piece of house music, that will shake up dance floors easily.

POP AMBIENT 2012 begins in an unusually new but nevertheless somehow familiar fashion. MOHN with MANIFESTO is the opening act. A manifest of slowness. A slowness that Jörg Burger and Wolfgang Voigt have taken up as new mission. MOHN is their new ambient-grunge-down-beat project, scheduled to depart on its official musical journey to Middle Earth early 2012.

Follow-up 4 Track 12' to the first Volume that was released earlier this year.In line with the concept of these two EP's, the tracks were again taken from Juergen Junker's
Live-Set, recorded straight out of the machines.

One can hardly imagine the genre-busting, culture-crossing musical magic of Outkast, Prince, Erykah Badu, Rick James, The Roots, or even the early Red Hot Chili Peppers without the influence of R&B pioneer Betty Davis. Her style of raw and revelatory punk-funk defies any notions that women can’t be visionaries in the worlds of rock and pop. In recent years, rappers from Ice Cube to Talib Kweli to Ludacris have rhymed over her intensely strong but sensual music.



There is one testimonial about Betty Davis that is universal: she was a woman ahead of her time. In our contemporary moment, this may not be as self-evident as it was thirty years ago – we live in an age that’s been profoundly changed by flamboyant flaunting of female sexuality: from Parlet to Madonna, Lil Kim to Kelis. Yet, back in 1973 when Betty Davis first showed up in her silver go-go boots, dazzling smile and towering Afro, who could you possibly have compared her to? Marva Whitney had the voice but not the independence. Labelle wouldn’t get sexy with their “Lady Marmalade” for another year while Millie Jackson wasn’t Feelin’ Bitchy until 1977. Even Tina Turner, the most obvious predecessor to Betty’s fierce style wasn’t completely out of Ike’s shadow until later in the decade.



Ms. Davis’s unique story, still sadly mostly unknown, is unlike any other in popular music. Betty wrote the song “Uptown” for the Chambers Brothers before marrying Miles Davis in the late ’60s, influencing him with psychedelic rock, and introducing him to Jimi Hendrix — personally inspiring the classic album Bitches Brew.



But her songwriting ability was way ahead of its time as well. Betty not only wrote every song she ever recorded and produced every album after her first, but the young woman penned the tunes that got The Commodores signed to Motown. The Detroit label soon came calling, pitching a Motown songwriting deal, which Betty turned down. Motown wanted to own everything. Heading to the UK, Marc Bolan of T. Rex urged the creative dynamo to start writing for herself. A common thread throughout Betty’s career would be her unbending Do-It-Yourself ethic, which made her quickly turn down anyone who didn’t fit with the vision. She would eventually say no to Eric Clapton as her album producer, seeing him as too banal.



Her 1974 sophomore album They Say I’m Different features a worthy-of-framing futuristic cover challenging David Bowie’s science fiction funk with real rocking soul-fire, kicked off with the savagely sexual “Shoo-B-Doop and Cop Him” (later sampled by Ice Cube). Her follow up is full of classic cuts like “Don’t Call Her No Tramp” and the hilarious, hard, deep funk of “He Was A Big Freak.”

Raw and direct tracks on the Appointment label, which was born from a fusion of Livejam & restoration records. Four tracks with influences of the pure tracks that have been brought by the early pioneers

2024 Repress
Following the legendary first two, stoically super minimal records “SOG 1“ and “SOG 2“ that provide ecstasy disguised as boredom on Kompakt Extra/Speicher in 2007, and the outstanding beautifully bizarre “SOG - Abweichung“ on Profan in 2010, we are now listening to “FREMDE HÄNDE“. Like its predecessors, this SOG stands in the tradition of „The Art of Omission“ with Wolfgang Voigt variegating his preference for the bluntly straightforward quaver bass in two different forms. The A-side contains a tonally noncommittal sequence ambling across the keyboard in quantised form, reminiscing of the arpeggiator (accompaniment function) function of early 70ies' and 80ies' synthesizers. On the B-side, daring and thoroughly unquantised quaver rhythms rock around a bass drum that, as the only straight element, tries to keep the whole thing together. The result sounds a little like a delirious Can Live.

Nach den legendären ersten beiden stoisch-superminimalen, als Langeweile getarnten Ekstase-Platten “SOG 1“ und “SOG 2“ auf Kompakt Extra/Speicher in 2007 und der überaus skurril-schönen “SOG - Abweichung“ auf Profan in 2010, hören wir nun “FREMDE HÄNDE“. Auch diese SOG steht natürlich ganz in der Tradition der “Kunst des Weglassens“. Wolfgang Voigt variiert hier seine Vorliebe für den stumpf-geraden Achtelbass auf zwei verschiedene Weisen. Auf der A-Seite haben wir eine tonal unverbindlich über die Tastatur wandernde Sequenz in quantisierter Form, die an die Arpeggiator (Begleitautomatik) Funktion früher 70er und 80er Jahre Syntheziser erinnert. Auf der B-Seite kreist die Achtel-Rhythmik in eher rockigem Sound ganz und gar unquantisiert und rhythmisch gewagt um die Bassdrum, die das Ganze als einzig gerades Element versucht zusammen zu halten. Das klingt ein bisschen wie Can live im Vollrausch.

Give It To Me Hot is a 4-track EP that pays tribute to one of the hottest, raunchiest (but sadly short-lived) funk/punk groups from the early 80s, Sexual Harrassment.

After the grand success of Brother's 'Hidden Depths' LP last year & Madmen & Poets 'Scandinavian Sunday' early 2010 Fokuz stumbled upon another hidden talent. Hailing from a unusual place is Command Strange.. He is probably Kazakhstan's first dnb producer at the moment. Yet not bound by borders or boundaries it's the music what counts here at Fokuz and Command Strange is seriously one of those producers who you'll need to keep your eye on.

you secretly believe that all of the best dance music has an undercurrent of melancholy then you are in for a treat. 0.5, the debut EP from the Fascination Movement, doesn't skimp on either the dancefloor rhythms or the windswept yes-we-remember-New Pop romanticism. The Fascination Movement is looking forwards, not backwards: just because this is music that adapts the same vocabulary created by bands like New Order or early Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark doesn't change the fact that from the first arpeggios of "Just Pretend" you feel the shock of the new. Of course, you may be too busy humming along to the choruses to notice how slyly the band makes a classic sound fresh again...

Slap - one of the most obscure and forward thinking acts from the early 80s meets the spearhead of today's electronic music, Ricardo Villalobos. The originals are disturbingly brilliant electronic excursions, while Villalobos' jazz-fueled rework is one of the deepest mixes he has ever done.

Kenny Gino and Big Mike a.k.a. the Solid Gold Playaz both started playing records in the late 70's/early 80's. Having family from Chicago, who were DJ's and down with some of the big guys at the time, "heavily influenced our music and production styles" both say. "Living so close to the city, we could go down to all the legendary night spots. The Rainbow and the Warehouse, the Box, the Shelter... places where you could just feel the vibe. And you could hear guys like Farley Funkin' Keith, Ron Hardy, and Jammin' Gerald (the Chicago DJ/producer who is Kenny's cousin) play these incredible records". They both were hooked on the house sound, and would bring it back to their home, a small city named Racine, Wisconsin, located about an hour and half north of Chicago. They continued to develop their DJ and production skills into the 90's, but musically, weren't taking things very seriously until they met Chicago producer Louis Bell. He introduced them to many of the people who were building the mid-90's Chicago sound. "Louis gave us access... access to places we hadn't been before. He took us into the offices of Cajual/Relief Records and Underground Construction, and suddenly we were face to face with guys who were doing what we wanted to do... Cajmere, Paul Johnson, Glenn Underground... showing us that we could do this too. We did a few releases just to get our name out, and soon we had some pretty big named DJ's playing our music. We had DJ's actually looking for our records, and telling us how much they liked our sounds... that just blew us away, especially with very little promotion and in the limited numbers we were pressing... our music just started to build a name for itself."

We’re extremely proud to present Leaving Time, a new EP by Christoph de Babalon. The EP has all the menace and grit that the Hamburg-born, Berlin-based producer is known for, but packs a potent, dance-ready punch that breaks new ground.

Leaving Time begins with the snarling subs ‘The Upper Hand’, and momentum builds through the panoramic breakbeats of ‘I Trusted You’ and dubwise groove of ‘Steps Into Solitude’ to reach the symphonic release of ‘Got to Let Go’.

This record encapsulates everything we love about Christoph’s music – it’s doom-laden, introspective and crafted with intent.

In short, it’s CDB on a 140 / fwd tip - fuck the chairs!

About Christoph de Babalon:

Christoph de Bablon first became known for his work on Alec Empire’s Digital Hardcore Recordings in the early 1990s and has championed a misanthropic take on drum and bass that has stood the test of time.

A punk-influenced fusion of jungle, breakbeat and dark soundscapes, his signature sound has become the stuff of legend – Thom Yorke once said Christoph’s pioneering debut album 'If You’re Into It, I’m Out Of It’ was the “most menacing record” in his collection.

After a brief hiatus composing music for theatre (we’d like to hear what that sounded like), recent releases on labels such as A Colourful Storm, V I S and AD93 have sparked renewed interest in the German producer, and with much excitement from his loyal following of die-hard supporters.

"In 2021, we started the Mdou Moctar mixtape series. These releases compiled field recordings, cell phone voice memos, interview clips, conversations captured in the tour van, and blown-out board recordings from shows all over the world. As a continuation of those mixtapes, we present the Niger EPs, which examine the roots of the Mdou Moctar band. Early Mdou recordings were contained on cassettes, though the humble tape was soon replaced by the quick and easy facilityof cell phone technology. Long bus rides are common in West Africa. On one of these rides, you might be seated next to a stranger and ask "what are you listening to?", then a song exchange would begin over Bluetooth. This is a very real way artists found their music distributed far from home. In that vein, the Niger EP series features solely recordings taped in Mdou Moctar"s home country of Niger. Volume 1 begins the series with a mix of recordings from 2017- 2020, documenting the band at weddings, picnics, rehearsals, and even impromptu house concerts. A must have for any Mdou Moctar fan!" - Mdou Moctar bassist Mikey Coltun

"In 2021, we started the Mdou Moctar mixtape series. These releases compiled field recordings, cell phone voice memos, interview clips, conversations captured in the tour van, and blown-out board recordings from shows all over the world. As a continuation of those mixtapes, we present the Niger EPs, which examine the roots of the Mdou Moctar band. Early Mdou recordings were contained on cassettes, though the humble tape was soon replaced by the quick and easy facilityof cell phone technology. Long bus rides are common in West Africa. On one of these rides, you might be seated next to a stranger and ask "what are you listening to?", then a song exchange would begin over Bluetooth. This is a very real way artists found their music distributed far from home. In that vein, the Niger EP series features solely recordings taped in Mdou Moctar"s home country of Niger. Volume 1 begins the series with a mix of recordings from 2017- 2020, documenting the band at weddings, picnics, rehearsals, and even impromptu house concerts. A must have for any Mdou Moctar fan!" - Mdou Moctar bassist Mikey Coltun

Kaspi & Stride is a new project from Justin Tripp, best known as one half of the Georgia equation. Leanings has its origins in rigorous yet laid back studio sessions, dual personal practice sensibilities that seem to get at Tripp’s creative ethos as well as any descriptors might. The material here was born out of collaborative studio sessions with multi-instrumentalist Jimy Seitang (Conga Square/Stygian Stride) - the “Stride” of K&S. The music from these sessions has been reworked and recontextualized by Tripp to form the eight tracks found on the record. These compositions are heady and diverse, anchored by infectious drum patterns and intricate electronics, capably occupying a somewhat hard to define space between “club ready” and “home listening.”

“Vishing” throbs with a wide-eyed intensity, infused with the type of deceptively rudimentary synth stabs and bass swells that wouldn’t be out of place on an early Hype Williams record. With contributions from Mary Lattimore and Jon Leland, “Kaptoxa” charts a more ethereal, if no less dizzying, course. Indeed, this is an album that navigates dense, tactile passages and airy, celestial planes with aplomb, making a case for Tripp’s prowess as both composer and arranger with equal priority. The most important thing is to keep moving.