MUSIC

Strut presents an exclusive new collaboration between UK jazz keyboardist Greg Foat and Venetian ambient / electronic maestro Gigi Masin on ‘Dolphin’. Recorded remotely during 2021-2022 the album took shape in the form of mutual compositions, gradually developed and embellished online. Final recording sessions took place at the majestic Chale Abbey Studios on the Isle Of Wight with Moses Boyd (drums), Tom Herbert (bass) and Siobhan Cosgrove (flute, clarinet) adding elements to several pieces. Tracks include the reflective, wistful single ‘Viento Calido’ and drifting ambient piece ‘Sabena’, a beautiful tribute to Gigi’s wife who sadly passed away during 2022. Greg Foat has recorded prolifically in recent years for Athens Of The North, Jazzman and Strut including acclaimed albums Symphonie Pacifique (2020) and The Mage (2019). Best known for his 1986 ambient masterpiece Wind and as a member of Gaussian Curve, Gigi Masin has enjoyed a revival in recent years through his Calypso album on R&S’s Apollo label and renewed touring. Dolphin represents Greg and Gigi’s first landmark recording collaboration together. “I first heard Gigi’s album Wind in 2016,” remembers Greg. “I was living in Miami and I heard it playing one Summer evening. Since then, it has always been in my mind to be able to record together.” Dolphin is mastered by Mark Ashfield at Cosmic Audio with newly commissioned artwork by Niul Foat. The LP comes as transparent vinyl in a thick card outer sleeve.

We invite you to embark on a captivating sonic odyssey with Quiet Logic, a masterpiece co-crafted by electronic maestros Mixmaster Morris and Jonah Sharp at Haruomi Hosono’s Studio back in 1997. It encapsulates a time when electronic music was undergoing rapid transformation, and these artists were at the forefront, pushing boundaries and redefining soundscapes. Inspired by their unique musical backgrounds, from Hosono's immense contribution to electronic music, and a key figure in the renowned group Yellow Magic Orchestra, to Morris's illustrious worldwide chill out DJ performances and Sharp's pioneering San Francisco Reflective label, Quiet Logic delivers a blend of intricate rhythms and celestial environments remastered for 2023 and available for the first time on vinyl format. Listeners are invited to once again traverse its ambient realms and complex beats. For fans of Haruomi Hosono / YMO, The Irresistible Force, Spacetime Continuum, Dreamfish, Tetsu Inoue, FFWD, H.I.A., Fax +49-69/450464, and mind expanding musics.

The musician and DJ Ken Ishii sits right at the pinnacle of techno's most noteworthy, but although a game changer for the artist personally - and for Japanese electronic music in general - his 1994 album 'Reference to Difference' is something of an unsung gem today. Now reissued and remastered, released to mark the 30th anniversary of Musicmine / Sublime Records, and available on vinyl with its original track-list for the first time, this stunning, lesser-known classic is ripe for rediscovery.

Hole Erth, Chaz Bear’s eighth full-length studio record as Toro y Moi, is the genre shapeshifter’s most unexpected and bold move to date, with Bear diving headlong into rap-rock, Soundcloud rap and Y2K emo. The album blitzes anthemic pop-punk next to autotuned, melancholic rap – two genres that inform one another now more than ever before — and packs in the most features ever on a Toro y Moi album. We get Don Toliver’s moody crooning on the anti-love song “Madonna.” We get Kevin Abstract and Lev’s breathy reflections on “Heaven.” We get emo king Benjamin Gibbard, the beating heart of millennial indie for crying out loud. Recorded in the span of a few months across late 2023 and early 2024, Hole Erth’s features built naturally over that short span, with Bear simply reaching out to long-time friends. The sum of Hole Erth’s parts is massive, and demonstrates Bear’s deft abilities as a producer, especially in hip-hop; his role in the culture has long been solidified from previous collaborations with some of rap's biggest trailblazers. It’s a daring left turn for Bear, but the feel is effortless, the make-it-look-easy of a master at work. All told, Bear pushes himself into new sonic ground for the TyM oeuvre while embracing the project’s celebrated, well-known electronic beginnings. Hole Erth is brand new, but somehow perfectly at home. The album’s title is an homage to Whole Earth, Stewart Brand’s DIY periodical from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, the central purpose of which was to empower people to be holistically self-sufficient. From product reviews of carpentry tools, to how-to guides for growing your own food, to techno-optimistic analyses that’d go on to inspire Silicon Valley startup culture, parallels of the catalog’s DIY ethos can be found all throughout Hole Erth. Bear cites gorpcore, a new-age fashion trend of functional, outdoorsy outerwear worn as streetwear, as influencing the album’s aesthetic. This also ties back to Brand’s influential counterculture catalog. Bear notes: “Things have gone in a more gorp-y direction. Humans are tapping into this more tribal, earthier aesthetic. The Whole Earth catalog is this encyclopedic, self-sustaining guide. With the album title alone, that’s something I wanted to spark as a conversation. We can be off the grid, and also be on the internet, and try out all of these different lifestyles at the same time.” This sense of duality exists within Hole Erth: it’s seeped in the technological world while embracing real-world human connection. The sounds that make up Hole Erth might feel like new territory for Bear, but in reality it’s a return to form for Toro y Moi – a project that has always orbited electronic music. “Toro is not a rock band,” Bear assures. “To me, my folk records and psych rock records are the side quests. What I fell in love with with the Toro project were the electronic productions – the samples. There’s always more to be done in the electronic world.” His experimentation with electronic production is most obvious on tracks like album opener “Walking In The Rain,” an immediate immersion into the brooding pulse of Hole Erth. Given Bear’s work with some of modern rap’s most influential acts, it’s no surprise that his autotuned cadence and cheeky play-on-words calls to mind the moody braggadocio of today’s popular hip-hop. “Hollywood,” featuring Benjamin Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service fame, places warped vocals and ephemeral sound bites of internet dial-up beneath watery ruminations on celebrity and the delusions prevalent in Tinseltown. The track’s nostalgic nods in combination with Bear’s genre fluidity is a Toro y Moi trademark that can be heard throughout his discography. From the twangy, laidback reflections that comprised his most recent Sandhills EP, to the retro-futuristic grooves of 2019’s Outer Peace, Bear is no stranger to flexing his muscles as a forward-thinking musical chameleon, while still managing to make music that feels eternally familiar yet compelling. A sense of nostalgia sneaks its way into almost every Toro y Moi release, but angst is an emotion that Bear has never intentionally explored the way he does here. Tracks like “Tuesday'' channel a specific, yet forever-relatable sense of adolescent unease. A distorted guitar riff leads into a repeating chorus that conjures misunderstood teenagers singing aloud, maybe too loud, while riding bikes through American suburbs. This foreboding can also be heard on “HOV,” though not without poking some fun with lines like “Romance is so cold / My advice? To bring a coat.” A sense of playful ambition and experimentation sits at the core of Hole Erth. Bear has the energy, but is acutely aware that his energy isn’t forever. At a time when the internet is blending multiple genres into one at an increasingly rapid pace, Bear accomplishes the rare feat of keeping up with the contemporary alternative listener. Constantly changing, evolving and experimenting is the heart

Canadian producer Dylan Khotin-Foote has kept his Khotin alias going for the better part of a decade; the impressionistic electronic project shifts with the movements in his life. Sometimes it leads, like when the club-friendly grooves of 2014’s Hello World immersed him in the heart of Vancouver’s underground dance scene, and sometimes it follows, like 2018’s Beautiful You, a downtempo salve for DJ fatigue. His melodic sensibility and playful ear for atmosphere remain the rippling core of the project’s fingerprint; whether beat-driven or ambient, a foggy smear or a dusted and pristine print, a Khotin track has a distinct and instantly recognizable swirl. During and after the 2020 release of Finds You Well, his second LP on Ghostly International, Khotin-Foote settled back into a slower vibe in his hometown of Edmonton. Even before the pandemic, his pivots to softer production, and away from DJing, left him with fewer opportunities in Vancouver and club bookings overall, and as a self-identifying introvert, he was fine with that. But the change of pace did open space for Khotin-Foote to grapple with concepts of adulthood and career. At his lowest, he almost walked off this musical path altogether; instead, he doubled down on the craft — the tone, pacing, and dynamism of new material — arriving at a definitive full-length. With Release Spirit, Khotin releases himself from the pressure of expectation, fusing and refining everything we know about his music. The warmth and familiarity of Khotin’s dreamy, dulcet style meet new ideas and frameworks, a natural progression, a modest revelation; Khotin confirms it is okay to move slowly and he’s never sounded better doing it. The album title borrows from the “release spirit” mechanic in the video game World of Warcraft. When players die, they are prompted to release their spirit and return as ghosts to find their corpses and come back to life. Khotin sees it as a worthy metaphor for the impending change his return home presented and the resulting process of purging artistic expectations to find his creative self again. On this go-around, he is freer, more playful, and more intentional within his palette of warped synth, breakbeats, and piano sounds — including the classic Casio SK-1 presets he’s used since the start — mingling with wistful samples, field recordings, and other abstract snippets. For the first time, he enlisted Nik Kozub to do the mix and assist with sequencing. Khotin-Foote has long worked with the Edmonton-based musician and engineer in the mastering phase, as well as their days co-running the label Normals Welcome, and this time was able to involve his ears earlier given their newfound proximity. “I think it’s my best sounding record to date.” We begin on “HV Road” or Happy Valley Road, where Khotin-Foote spent time during a family vacation in British Columbia’s Okanagan Lake. His plans to record crickets at night are quickly foiled by his younger siblings; the cute exchange orients the listener to a core memory of sorts, setting the tone of universally understood warmth and wonder that has defined some of Khotin’s most transportive tracks. Hazy percussion takes hold, and we are swept further into the wisp of “Lovely,” a grooving, melodic standout built on the interplay between the beat and human voice-like hums. Khotin knows this zone well; equally suited for a reverie or a club warm-up. The bubbling atmosphere and absurdity of “3 pz” offer a cosmic/comic interlude and also speak to reflections on his family’s move to Canada two generations ago, and the audio tutorials they used to learn English. “I can only imagine my grandparents repeating some of the bizarre phrases.” “Fountain, Growth” finds Khotin in collaboration with Montreal’s Tess Roby (Dawn to Dawn) for the project’s first-ever vocal track. Roby’s soft cadence echoes atop spiraling air pockets of rhythmic production, lending a breezy, almost shoegaze pop feel. Throughout the single and the album, wind gusts between the compositional layers, akin to the roaming spirits of its namesake, curving around the birdsong of “Life Mask” and seamlessly reaching “Unlimited <3.” The latter bumps in slow motion; disembodied whirrs from his Casio collide with 808 drums and sub-bass for a vibe that teeters on trap and instrumental hip-hop. Release Spirit rests in a dream sequence. Oscillating synth lines dance around the heartbeat of “Techno Creep,” a hyperactive REM state before the digitized ambient sprawl of “My Same Size.” In the final pass, Khotin imagines transcontinental travel from the glow of his screen. He recorded “Sound Gathering Trip” to soundtrack a genre of YouTube videos he’s taken to that follows train routes through Europe and Japan. The scene is serene and moving; piano keys warble as static-filled sound design shimmers off the rails, from cityscapes to the countryside, an introspective ride through a world beyond his bedroom. It doubles as an apt parting image for Khotin’s project as a whole: dreaming big but happiest when riffing on the details, shaping environments from the inside out. Over the last decade, he has stretched from his core in Edmonton, leaving a trace in Vancouver and beyond; but when all signs point home, he loops back to see it all from a different vantage, revitalized, refined, and free.

Since debuting his Khotin project in 2014, Edmonton’s Dylan Khotin-Foote has fine-tuned an impressionistic, dream-like style of music that straddles multiple sonic worlds. His output often sways from gentle synthesized atmospherics to hypnotic, dance-minded frameworks. His self-released 2018 LP, Beautiful You, offered a study on melody and memory; the album’s nostalgia-nudging use of passing environments, voices, and abstractions captivated a cult following, a rare 4.5 review in Resident Advisor and the attention of Ghostly International, who pressed the cassette on vinyl for wider circulation in 2019. Now, Khotin reveals his first collection of new material since the signing. The album is a fluid continuation of his blissful and melancholic songcraft, extended humbly and warmly, Finds You Well.

As tongue-in-cheek as the title may appear, the phrase has haunted the producer for some time. Most often seen at the start of correspondence, the words “I hope this email finds you well” can land with varying levels of sincerity, depending on context and mood. Khotin-Foote started to read the line more ominously during the onset of the pandemic. So, this set of music winks at both possibilities, mixing a platitude’s opaque optimism with lurking uncertainty.

Finds You Well can be heard in near-symmetrical halves: its 10 tracks represent the selections from a bounty of demos that, with less modesty, could have filled two records, one active and the other ambient. The resulting set isn’t an even split but it’s close. The A-side centers on the album’s steadiest sequence of beat-centric material. “Ivory Tower” is inextricably tied to benchmarks set by late ‘90s downtempo forerunners, spilling lucious and narcotic synth modulations across a sprinkler’s spray of breakbeats. Khotin’s sprightly melodic noodling brings that touchstone sound into vogue, bubbling up in free-form spurts. The sequence continues through the propulsive “Heavyball,” into “Groove 32,” which begins with a funky bit-clipped drum and bongo boogie. A tight bass-line plugs into place, building a grid for square-wave pads, shimmering melodic textures, and stuttering vocal samples to percolate in.

Khotin’s tone stabilizes on the B-side, balancing decidedly bucolic terrain with suspiciously eerie melancholy. Voices wander in the sprawling frequency sweeps. Organic textures sizzle and sputter in the clouds. “WEM Lagoon Jump” references local West Edmonton folklore, the time a kid jumped from a shopping mall's second-floor balcony into the main pavilion’s fountain. After the splash, we land in the record’s most satisfying stasis, “Your Favorite Building.” A brittle clave and muffled kick hover in a wobbly mist of organ chords; the building is gorgeous, but seen at night, and empty, and from this angle, those shadows seem to crop up more of those subdued tremors, those nostalgic creeps, those droll musings. From behind a wall of melody, a kid peeks their head and softly sings, “you must love the world because it’s wonderful,” the vocal snippet comes courtesy of Khotin-Foote’s sister, Amaris.

For much of Find You Well’s second half, Khotin dabbles in a dusty and slightly detuned piano sound, revealing an artist unafraid to change shapes but maintain course. This set of chimeric visions sidesteps the subdued bombast that fills the A-side; instead, it suggests a counterpoint emphasizing the uncanny overlap between well wishes and empty promises. 

French lifeguard and sonic artist Roméo Poirier’s long sold out debut tape finally gets a vinyl reissue. Plage Arrière is a deep sea meditation on a constellation of Greek beaches across three islands. Trumpets, echo-clicks and Harold Budd-esque shimmer piano whirl together on these sand-caked missives, tumbled and re-engineered by their surroundings like seaglass. Plage evokes the sub-aqeaous ambitions of Jürgen Müller, or Jan Jelinek inspecting a coral reef. The album has been remastered for vinyl by Sam Annand of Esk. Building on its original artwork, the vinyl edition features new photography by Roméo himself. Released alongside our friends SWIMS.

Alleviated Records presents the first-time vinyl reissue of Larry Heard's mid-90's gem "Sceneries Not Songs, Volume 1". The album stems from a time when the tempo slowed down and Heard reached a perfect synthesis of jazz influences, deep electronic ambiance and the house sound he was known for. The result is a brilliant album that should cater to both house and R&B heads alike. Now for the first time released as a 2x12'' with an extra track previously only available on cd.

On New Year's morning, Cousin took a weary-eyed walk... ‘HomeSoon’ he thought, whilst cutting to the path by the Angophora Forest. As he made it down to the overgrown sidewalk, he caught a sudden sense of warmth from the surrounding flora. On closer focus, it was as if the plants and flowers had come alive...pulsing forward down the path as they bounced, smiled, and sneered all around him. Against logic, he was struck by an almost Garsonian desire to communicate with them. This feeling lingered, persisting through several studio sessions. The music written over this period makes up this EP. How directly this experience informed the music is hard to say. What effect it had on the surrounding plant life is even harder to tell… we do hope, however, through listening to it, you’re a little more tuned in to them.

The Diskotopia team is excited to announce the debut EP from the new project rush2theUnknown — a pairing of documentary writer and director Nick Dwyer (who helmed the Red Bull Music Academy's Japanese video game music composer documentary Diggin' in the Carts) and producer & musician Devin Abrams (aka Pacific Heights). rush2theUnknown is a project that was born in provincial New Zealand, developed in the hills of Izu Peninsula, Japan, but forged in the fire of potent teenage memories of the future sounds of jungle and drum ’n’ bass that exploded onto dance floors across the urban centres of New Zealand in the mid 90’s. Two old friends, both who played pivotal roles in the development of New Zealand’s own jungle and drum ’n’ bass scenes in the 1990s, estranged for decades, reunited to begin experimenting in an attempt to recapture the feeling of having their heads overwhelmed by sounds they couldn’t quite comprehend as adolescents. They channeled the energy, spirit, and vibes of (specifically) 1995-to-1997 jungle, where the ever-mutating evolution of the sound intersected with the dawning of drum ’n’ bass to create a utopian future vision before the latter genre changed course and moved increasingly darker. By weaving in the influences that the two artists had accumulated over the decades — most notably from ambient, kankyõ ongaku, new age, minimalism, and some of the deepest research into the history of Japanese video game music ever conducted — the pair aimed to discover new terrain from a specific era of dance music that was never fully explored.

Khotin by Vancouver producer Dylan Khotin-Foote is a reissue of the cassette release that sold out instantly at bandcamp in 2018! The profound ambient sound is a chill-out refinement of the unfathomable depth of the previous work, which is both immersive and sleepy, and has been beautifully incorporated into the lo-fi feel of the artwork while maintaining the vibrancy of the spiritual & naturalistic sound world. This is a masterpiece of beauty that cannot be described in words, with a profound sound world that creates a dreamy fantasy land on a windowsill in broad daylight, only to sink into the border between Hades and reality. A masterpiece of unspeakable beauty. Highly recommended for all music lovers from new age to ambient and Balearic.

‘Gaia: Selected Ambient & Downtempo Works (1996-2003)’ is a new in-depth compilation of works by Japanese musician Dream Dolphin. Co-compiled by long-time friend of the label Eiji Taniguchi, it draws from a vast discography of music oscillating between IDM, Pop and Ambient. First appearing on Eiji’s compilation ’Heisei No Oto - Japanese Left-field Pop From The CD Age (1989-1996)’, this selection of rediscoveries, further shines a light on the singular musician known as Dream Dolphin and her place in Japan’s rich electronic music legacy. Dream Dolphin was originally an Ambient and Electronic project by the Japanese artist referred to simply as Noriko, who moved from studying classic Italian songs as a child, to increasingly being inspired by artists such as PIL, Yellow Magic Orchestra, KLF and movies such as ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ and ‘Le Grand Bleu’. The music she released under the name Dream Dolphin, from the age of sixteen, is unique and versatile in style, encompassing Ambient, IDM, Techno, Trance and even Drum & Bass, whilst fusing natural sounds with her own spoken word lyrics. Dream Dolphin released an incredible twenty albums in just eight years. In addition to her own projects, she has also put together a number of fascinating compilations herself, as well as composing ambient music to be used in hospitals and other caring contexts. ‘Gaia: Selected Ambient & Downtempo Works (1996-2003)’ contains 15 tracks thoughtfully selected from various albums that until now were only released on CD format. MFM062 will be released in 2xLP, 2xCD and digital format.

We invite you to embark on a captivating sonic odyssey with Quiet Logic, a masterpiece co-crafted by electronic maestros Mixmaster Morris and Jonah Sharp at Haruomi Hosono’s Studio back in 1997. It encapsulates a time when electronic music was undergoing rapid transformation, and these artists were at the forefront, pushing boundaries and redefining soundscapes. Inspired by their unique musical backgrounds, from Hosono's immense contribution to electronic music, and a key figure in the renowned group Yellow Magic Orchestra, to Morris's illustrious worldwide chill out DJ performances and Sharp's pioneering San Francisco Reflective label, Quiet Logic delivers a blend of intricate rhythms and celestial environments remastered for 2023 and available for the first time on vinyl format. Listeners are invited to once again traverse its ambient realms and complex beats. For fans of Haruomi Hosono / YMO, The Irresistible Force, Spacetime Continuum, Dreamfish, Tetsu Inoue, FFWD, H.I.A., Fax +49-69/450464, and mind expanding musics.

Kompakt is proud to announce, finally, a reissue of the first, self-titled GAS album. Originally released on electronica imprint Mille Plateaux back in 1996, it’s been unavailable in its original form ever since – the version of GAS included in 2008’s Nah Und Fern box featured several different tracks. Here, however, GAS is restored in all its glory, the debut full-length from Wolfgang Voigt’s most enigmatic, quixotic project. There had, of course, been signs of what was to come. Back in 1995, Voigt essayed the first GAS release, a slender, yet remarkable four-track EP, Modern. Its centre label featured a reduced symbol – an overhead or lamp light, switched on, its glow radiating outwards in four bold black lines – a perfect representation of the tight, stylised ambient electronic pop contained on that 12”. A few curious compilation tracks were floating around, too, for Mille Plateaux’s Modulation & Transformation and Electric Ladyland series. If you were attentive enough, you could tell something was up. But nothing quite prepared us for the languorous, effervescing loops and regular-like-clockwork beats that Voigt folded together on GAS. Its six long tracks, all untitled, neither begin nor end but hazily fade into earshot, vibrate majestically in your cochlea for fifteen-or-so minutes – some a bit shorter, some longer – and then meander away, reading the mise-en-scène for the next example of Voigt’s drift and dream logic to unfold. The material is referential in the most distant way, and you can sense only the most evanescent of ghostly presences, haunting these six compositions. GAS feels, also, like a more pliable hint at what’s to come, as the GAS concept really solidified on its successor, 1997’s Zauberberg, and reach its apotheosis on Königsforst and Pop. Those three albums share a very similar palette – blurred, hazy samples, often of classical music, stacked and cross-thatched across a muted 4/4 thud. GAS, then, is an outlier of sorts: it’s more expansive in its remit, lighter in its mood, perhaps more fleet of foot. This, of course, is part of its charm. In clearing space for Voigt, by preparing the terrain, GAS sits both at the edge of the forest, and at the verge of an expansive, wide-eyed future; one where GAS would become truly eternal.

Kompakt is proud to announce, finally, a reissue of the first, self-titled GAS album. Originally released on electronica imprint Mille Plateaux back in 1996, it’s been unavailable in its original form ever since – the version of GAS included in 2008’s Nah Und Fern box featured several different tracks. Here, however, GAS is restored in all its glory, the debut full-length from Wolfgang Voigt’s most enigmatic, quixotic project. There had, of course, been signs of what was to come. Back in 1995, Voigt essayed the first GAS release, a slender, yet remarkable four-track EP, Modern. Its centre label featured a reduced symbol – an overhead or lamp light, switched on, its glow radiating outwards in four bold black lines – a perfect representation of the tight, stylised ambient electronic pop contained on that 12”. A few curious compilation tracks were floating around, too, for Mille Plateaux’s Modulation & Transformation and Electric Ladyland series. If you were attentive enough, you could tell something was up. But nothing quite prepared us for the languorous, effervescing loops and regular-like-clockwork beats that Voigt folded together on GAS. Its six long tracks, all untitled, neither begin nor end but hazily fade into earshot, vibrate majestically in your cochlea for fifteen-or-so minutes – some a bit shorter, some longer – and then meander away, reading the mise-en-scène for the next example of Voigt’s drift and dream logic to unfold. The material is referential in the most distant way, and you can sense only the most evanescent of ghostly presences, haunting these six compositions. GAS feels, also, like a more pliable hint at what’s to come, as the GAS concept really solidified on its successor, 1997’s Zauberberg, and reach its apotheosis on Königsforst and Pop. Those three albums share a very similar palette – blurred, hazy samples, often of classical music, stacked and cross-thatched across a muted 4/4 thud. GAS, then, is an outlier of sorts: it’s more expansive in its remit, lighter in its mood, perhaps more fleet of foot. This, of course, is part of its charm. In clearing space for Voigt, by preparing the terrain, GAS sits both at the edge of the forest, and at the verge of an expansive, wide-eyed future; one where GAS would become truly eternal.

Dettinger’s Intershop and Oasis have long been held, by many fans of ambient and electronic music, to be some of the finest albums in their field. Produced by the mysterious Olaf Dettinger, about whom not much is publicly known, they were some of the earliest full-lengths released by the then-nascent Kompakt, and in many ways, they both articulated and defined the sound that would come to be known as Pop Ambient, while also existing, somehow, to the leftfield of any clearly recognisable genre. Beautiful, sui generis works, it is a rare pleasure to see them being reissued on vinyl for a new generation of listeners to embrace. Originally released on CD only in 1999, Intershop was Kompakt’s first artist full-length. The music here simmers and broods, with opulent banks of tone marking out territory for rhythms that seem to be built from the clacking detritus of technology – hisses, thunks, knocks. Bass is deployed carefully, each drop a dubbed-out depth charge; drones spin and spiral, warping and weaving between the beats. Oasis, released in 2000, refined the palette that Dettinger had explored on its predecessor. A blurred crusade of ambient texturology, its unassuming patterns, and subtle, incremental dynamics, admit to real beauty, and a kind of abstract sensuality that you don’t often experience with music that is, perhaps, similarly tooled, but not as poetic. Through seemingly simple gestures – whether lushly expansive repetitions, hyper-acute tremolo tones, or ear-tickling rhythms – it builds complex emotional resonance. It’s no surprise to discover Oasis is held in high esteem by artists like Panda Bear of Animal Collective, who once said of Dettinger, “For us, he was the dude.” There is, of course, other music to know Dettinger by, too – his three excellent EPs for Kompakt, Blond (1998), Puma and Totentanz (1999), the latter of which, Michael Mayer once argued, “invented dubstep.” There is also a small, yet graceful run of compilation contributions, many of which can be found on Kompakt’s Total and Pop Ambient series. All this music has plenty to recommend it, sharing a clarity of purpose, and a rare, human warmth and depth. But Intershop and Oasis are the releases that distil Dettinger’s singular vision, and allow him, should he wish, to claim his place as a modern master of ambient and electronic music.

The popular ambient project by Wolfgang Voigt, presided over by the prestigious , GAS released the early masterpiece "Königsforst" in 1998 from the prestigious on CD! It's a tremendous depth. It's like William Basinski meets DUB TECHNO ... A masterpiece with a mysterious dopeness that makes you feel like something you don't even know is writhing in the darkness of your heart, and it's about to crawl up. Dub / Ambient. It is a masterpiece that has reached a terrifying and solitary view of the universe!

The early masterpiece of 1997 released by GAS, a popular ambient project by Wolfgang Voigt, who presides over the prestigious , is reissued on CD! This is terrifying, like William Basinski meets DUB TECHNO ... A masterpiece dub / ambient with a miasma-like dopeness that blows up from the depths and envelops the sound field. It is a masterpiece that shows off a solitary view of the universe!

12" compilation with new tracks by Eoism, Voertuig, Colkin and a lost gem by Peter Seiler featuring Sheryl Hackett. Picture sleeve with a bold artwork based on a sculpture by Hede Bühl. Limited to 500 copies. Colkin (Raw Soul, Mauke Club) kicks off the a-side with a spheric acid house meditation. Next is a track by Peter Seiler which could be found on the extended reissue of his 'Flying Frames' debut LP on Innovative Communication in 1989. It features the soulful voice of Sheryl Hackett. An extraordinary groover that is meandering between song and jazz improvisation. Eoism (Pulse Drift, Undersound, Inch By Inch) complete the a-side with some low-swung electro flavors, driving you straight into sunset. On the b-side Voertuig (Tonal Oceans, Cobra Club) hit us with a serious and raw acid jam - dark and dirty. On the following track they show us their experimental jazzy side and cool things down again. A track the 1990s downbeat era was missing. Eoism close the first volume of FUTUR with a floating, futuristic banger from their lab. Benedikt Meger's aspiration for funkscapes was always to feature funk grooves, old and new, fresh and relevant for today. Whether some rare, not so rare or just under the radar recordings from the past or new productions from today's artists across different electronic genres. This idea now culminates into the selection for the compilation FUTUR. Enjoy the ride.

Blinding double pack of heavily old school influenced bleep, direct from the depths of England by prolific young producer, Tom Carruthers. These are heavily sample based mpc productions that harken to the carefree days when the pills were pure and the music was fresh and never stopped. When house was techno and techno was house, this long player takes the best elements from say Chill Records, early-Warp and the best Nu-Groove creating timeless dance tracks made for the warehouse dj. Essential stuff here.

‘Sun & Smoke’ is originally a 2-hour self-produced mix uploaded to Youtube and Soundcloud in 2018 by Greek artist, Theef. Consisting of unreleased productions, the set was uploaded as a safe space, with zero expectations of it ever gaining attention or release. After many late-night listening sessions, ASIP contacted Theef to discuss how a release might come to life. Originally consisting of 21 tracks in total –with two subsequently released on Morevi Records in 2022– ASIP had the honor of curating and sequencing an album from the remaining 19 unreleased productions, finally landing on those that best represented the intention of the original mix and the feelings it evoked upon those first moments of discovery. The appeal of Sun & Smoke can be found in its purity. Built with no intention or audience in mind, the album traverses core elements of deep techno, trance, and downtempo. Progressive atmosphere building, addictive underlying grooves, and expansive moments of euphoria; as a mixtape, Sun & Smoke is a zero-visibility haze of eyes-closed, body-moving, forward momentum. As an album, each track is now allowed the space to deliver on its own defining atmosphere. From the ambient beginnings of Sky Textures and the title track, Sun & Smoke, to the electro tinges of Primal Age, and the metallic swirls and glistening synths in Approaching Stars, the parts now have the chance to become greater than the sum of its original whole. Mastered by Giuseppe Tillieci (Neel / Voices From The Lake) with artwork photography by Juan Fernandez (edited by ASIP), Sun & Smoke is available on Transparent Red/Orange Smoke Gatefold 2LP + digital.

Silly track titles that are mostly in-jokes with my little brother, a.k.a. DJ Denim. A cliché unfair record deal. A conspicuously missing title track. A pretentious looking poem in French about the stupidity of poets. A grid of pillows on the cover that the Japanese audience mistook for bags of heroin, resulting in myths about my being a heavy user. Super nineties Photoshop swirls. A graphic overlay of a UFO turning into an oyster shell that opens to reveal a mountain inside? Those are just a few of the embarrassing things I had to come to terms with when preparing this thirtieth anniversary restored and expanded edition of my first full-length album, Tranquilizer. Originally released in 1994 by the New York label Instinct Records, Tranquilizer is admittedly a bit of a shit-show. The album followed up on my 1993 self-released vinyl EP debut, Comatonse.000, featuring "Raw Through a Straw" on the A-side, and "Tranquilizer" on the B-side. I put out that EP mostly for the experience of pressing a record, with no expectation of people actually buying or listening to it. Lacking a distributor, I loaded up my backpack and lugged copies to all the local record shops, a few of which took some on consignment. As I later found out, most shops never pay for consignment sales, nor return unsold copies, so in the end I basically gave away most of them for free. Then, to my complete surprise, David Mancuso began regularly playing the A-side, transforming it into a Loft house classic. Equally surprising, the B-side caught the attention of ambient producers like Mixmaster Morris and Bill Laswell. Those random bits of buzz caught the attention of Tak Uchida, a US-based buyer for the Japanese vinyl distributor Cisco Music, which would remain the leading supporter of Comatonse Recordings vinyl releases until they went under in 2008. All of that was just enough hype to catch the attention of Instinct, which offered me a textbook fucked up two album record deal. Not wanting to be taken for a sucker, I came in for a contract negotiation meeting with my bona fide real McCoy idiot lawyer who didn't give me an ounce of good advice, the paperwork was signed, and Tranquilizer was underway to becoming a reality. Instinct's plan was simple: grab control of as many tracks as possible on the off chance I (or anyone else they signed) might be the next Moby, who was their cash cow. With typical music industry sleight of hand, the album's title track "Tranquilizer" was cut and released separately on a compilation, contractually requiring me to come up with additional tracks to fill the album. So that solves the mystery of the missing title track. The majority of tracks on this album were actually already done before signing with Instinct. I recorded them as a hobbyist between 1993 and 1994 using heavily edited Korg M1 and E-MU Vintage Keys synthesizers, and two Casio FZ-10M samplers. Despite the silly titles and hobbyist approach, there were social messages to be heard. Many of them stemmed from my longstanding interests in constructivism, industrial ambient records, disco, and queer subcultures. All of these put me at odds with the new age spiritualism and "zippy" techno-hippy raver hooey that dominated ambient music in the US. For example, the opening track "040468," which is the date of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, features a recording of the police radio during the chase and escape of his assailant James Earl Ray. Recorded at a time when King's "I Have a Dream" speech was still being dubbed over house anthems ad nauseam, it was an antithetical choice pointing away from dreams toward hideous reality. As one would expect, all of this was lost on music journalists who - assuming nothing could be more than a simplistic projection of the musician's ego - usually mistook the title for my birthday. "Fat Chair" is a critique of the colonialist fantasies latent in most ethno-ambient music of the time. Rather than taking the listener on a soothing armchair journey to a third world paradise, it focuses on a recording from the Nigerian-Biafran war during the late 1960s, in which a Western journalist's meddling gets a Biafran hostage killed. "A City on Springs" takes its title from a line in a constructivist manifesto calling for the prioritization of engineering over art. While I have never shared constructivism's optimistic faith in humanity's ability to achieve social equality, be it through communism or other means, it did inspire my career long criticism of the social and economic functions of art and music. And "Hovering Glows" features a monologue from a Hal Hartley film about scratched records as a metaphor for abusive family ties. I had planned on including a text on these themes in the original CD booklet to Tranquilizer, but Instinct quickly made it clear that wasn't going to happen. They feared it would alienate their audience. In response, I wrote the "anonymous" little poem against poetics above. Initially in English, I asked my friend/day-job-co-worker/Comatonse-Recordings-label-mate Erik Dahl to translate it into French so that the staff at Instinct would be less likely to understand it. In the end, they included it as a graphic element adding a bit of romantic flair. Still, it left me feeling dissatisfied. Two years later I managed to insert more meaningful imagery into the design of my second-and-last album for them, Soil, but I still was not allowed to include any text. In this thirtieth anniversary edition, disc one depicts the full-length album as I had initially intended it to be released, restored to include the title track, "Tranquilizer." Due to CD time constraints, this meant removing "Meditation of the Mountain Oyster." I also replaced the ending track "Fina•Departure" with its longer, original version. For the completists out there, the 1994 album versions of both tracks appear in their entirety on disc two. Additionally, the second disc includes a rare vinyl mix of "Hovering Glows," featured on Instinct's Untitled Ltd. Edition Ambient Double Vinyl Pack (US: Instinct Records, 1994, EX-291-1). Another rarity is "Get In and Drive," which found limited release through the compilations Muting the Noise (DE: Innervisions, 2008, IV CD02), and Comp x Comp (JP: Comatonse Recordings, 2019, CxC). "20min. Epoch," "Fina," "Fina•Departure (Original Long Version)," and "Hovering Glows (Little Guy Mix)" all get their first proper hi-fi physical release here, having been included as hidden MP3 bonus tracks in my Dead Stock Archive: Complete Collected Works (JP: Comatonse Recordings, 2009, C.018). Considering how few copies of the Archive exist, they are sure to be new to most peoples' ears. Last (and perhaps least?), "Pome" and "Day Off" are previously unreleased. Oh, in case you were wondering, Little Guy was the name of my cat. He loved sitting like a loaf in front of my speakers to feel the 808-style bass hits in "Hovering Glows." - Terre Thaemlitz, 2024

At the latest with the release of the albums "Zauberberg" and "Königsforst", in the mid-1990s, one associates GAS, Wolfgang Voigt's very own artistic cross-linking of the spirit of Romanticism and the forest as an artistic fantasy projection surface, with intoxicatingly blurred boundaries of post-ambient infatuation and the impenetrable thicket of abstract atonality. The distant, iconic straight bass drum marching through highly condensed, abstract sounds taken from classical music by the sampler or modulated accordingly, and the enraptured gaze through pop art glasses into the hypnotic thicket of an imaginary forest, manifested over the years this unique connection of audio and visual, which to understand fully, then as now, would be neither possible nor desirable.

Quite the opposite. The album GAS - DER LANGE MARSCH once again invites us to follow the deep sounding bass drum, to give in to its irresistible pull into a psychedelic world of 1000 promises. In the process, the journey leads us past stations of memories sounding from afar, from "Zauberberg" to "Königsforst" and "Pop", from "Oktember" to "Narkopop" and "Rausch", back and forth, now and forever.

Way. Destination. Loop. Forest loop.

In the body of work of Cologne artist Wolfgang Voigt – who, like few others, has informed, shaped and influenced the world of electronic music with countless different projects since the early 1990s -, GAS stands out in particular as a saturnine sound cosmos based on heavily condensed classic sequences. Even after nearly 20 years, the sound of GAS doesn’t seem to have lost any of its luster, as shown by the commanding success of Kompakt’s fall 2016 re-release of the essential back catalogue as a 10xLP/4xCD box set.

The overwhelming feedback from a loyal international fan community and worldwide media outlets attests once again to the sheer timelessness of GAS. Which is why it will feel like hardly a day has passed since the release of the last official album “Pop” nearly two decades ago, when Wolfgang Voigt resumes this specific creative path with the upcoming new full-length NARKOPOP.

Even in the here and now, the unmistakable vibe of GAS immediately hits home, taking the listener on an otherworldly journey with the very first sounds, drawing him or her into an impervious sonic thicket, down to the depths of rapture and reverie. From wafts of dense symphonic mist emerges a floating and whirling feeling of weightlessness, before the listener steps into an eerily beautiful forest of fantasy, pulled in by the allure of a narcotic bass drum.

While earlier GAS tracks were often based on the hypnotic effects of looping techniques, the 10 new pieces on NARKOPOP unfold their magic in a more entwined manner, sometimes with the sonic might of an entire philharmonic orchestra, sometimes as subtle and fragile as the most delicate branch of a tree with many. A main characteristic of Voigt’s oeuvre, the coalescence of seemingly contradictory stylistic aspects such as harmonious and atonal, concrete and abstract, light and heavy, near and far is also a decisive feature of NARKOPOP.

In accordance with the transgressive spirit of his collective work, Voigt carries the aesthetic conceptions of his music over to the realm of the visual. Based on his abstract forest pictures, the GAS artwork addresses Voigt’s artistic affinity to romanticism and the forest as a place of yearning. For the first time, a closer look at the cover of NARKOPOP reveals signs of architectural fragments which hint at another, maybe parallel world behind Voigt’s forest. Truth is the prettiest illusion.