MUSIC

Following the release of his album trilogy (Kwaidan, Komachi and Kofū), Meitei has established himself as a defining voice in contemporary Japanese music. By sharing intricate sonic stories and impressions of his nation's rich culture, he has built an aural world around his notion of the ‘lost Japanese mood’. His latest project, under the new moniker Tenka, aims to work without the boundaries of theme, storytelling or audience expectations. Spending many hours in the mountain forests that he lives close to, his latest project Hydration explores the rich sensory pleasures of his natural surroundings, focusing on colour, sound, smell, humidity, touch, atmosphere and taste. “For me, making music is not a concept of enjoyment or pleasure, but something that becomes a part of my life, a record of my daily activities, like seeing something with my eyes or breathing in something with my lungs.” A lot of the music on Hydration was created back in 2019, but Tenka felt that there was something missing in the final delivery of the work. Eventually this led to a conversation with the Berlin based, Japanese born scent designer, Ryoko, in which the pair discussed collaborating on a scent to pair with the audio. Designed as a way to give the listener a deeper connection to their own senses and the experience of the music’s author, the combination of ollifactory and aural components connect a shared love of Japanese ecosystems and traditions. ‘I began to feel that in addition to music, there needed to be another essential element - and that it must be a "fragrance”.’ Hydration is available from September 14 on LP, CD and digital formats. The fragrance can be purchased directly from the Métron Records Bandcamp page and comes in a 10ml bottle of diffuser oil, great for home diffusers, as well as an empty 10ml spray bottle in order to create a body or room mist by mixing the oil with water (instructions included for best results). All customers who purchase the fragrance will receive a copy of the album on CD with a companion booklet with words from Tenka and Ryoko about the project.

‘’之 / OF is a word that can be used as a preposition to express the relationship between a part and a whole. It is an unfinished tone, a broken sentence, a start and a whole. It is sustainable, full of potentials and longings.’’ London based performance and sound artist Li Yilei shared an experience familiar to many migrants during the past year of COVID-19 chaos. With their UK visa set to expire, and family back in China, Li made a last-minute dash to return to their nation of birth. Able to board one of the last few flights to China during the initial turmoil of the coronavirus outbreak, Li made it back to Shanghai for a two-week stint in a quarantine hotel. Though Li had already begun creating OF, the reality of the pandemic began to seep into the recordings. Each of the 12 tracks is a study in horology, using metaphorical sound transcriptions and atmospheric extractions to focus on the temporal relationship between experience and surroundings. Li’s awareness of their own understanding of time became increasingly heightened during quarantine and the emotional involvement found within these new realities informed many of the sounds created. ‘’I tried to portray each song as a short, scattered poem - a moment that I captured to represent each hour.’’ Composed using analogue synthesisers, vocal samples, field recordings and string instruments such as the violin and guqin, Li indulges in moments of grief, panic, healing, cessation, melancholy, vastness, hope, joy and emptiness as they explore the acoustic relations between humans and the many forces of nature. The art of the Song Dynasty, with its ancient traditions of poetry and timekeeping, were also great sources of inspiration for the album - whilst paintings from the period, specifically those of flowers and birds, are common themes throughout the tracks. Indeed, it is within the vastness of time that the album artwork comes to relevance. The eighth emperor of the Song Dynasty, Huizong, was a revered artist and a scene from his work ‘Finches and Bamboo’ adorns the album cover. 之 / OF is available from August 16 2021 in a limited pressing of 500 140gm vinyl in a natural translucent colourway. In support of the release Li has made a limited number of handmade xun (a traditional Chinese vessel flute used as far back as 7000 years ago) - these can be purchased from Metron Records bandcamp page. credits

A new avatar on 3XL, someone you may or may not have encountered before on the experiences / west mineral axis, tending to the inner life with a lush fantasy of sound-bathing beatdown and mossy atmospherics somewhere between Ulla x Malibu x Headz-era Mo Wax. ‘Earth FF’ yields a delicate bouquet of synaesthetic ambience designed to sooth yr frayed nerves. The album transposes a flickering vibe to inner sanctums, painting an organically detailed vista that hinges around late ‘90s/early ‘00s illbient/trip hop atmospherics referencing classic Mo Wax / Headz, and melting out into a sanguine bbblisss enhanced by a patina of field recordings. Distinguished by a tender grasp of tongue-tip thizz and lysergic nuance, the 10 tracks fan out in pruned designs between pads and whispered vox reminding us of Kenji Kawai or Nozomu Matsumoto on ‘Evil Day’, via the silvery contrails of ‘Beacon’, the eyrie illbient of ‘Root Loop’, to purest writhing-in-the-floatation tank kiss-off on ’Sunn’ replete with ASMR gynoid vocals on a Perila x Ulla x Malibu tip. With no sharp edges to snag your tumescent skin, it’s all low-lit neon, palm trees gently swaying in the breeze, eyes-rolling in the early-hours, blissed sorta gear.

You could call Gabber Modus Operandi’s PUXXXIMAXXX LP a ‘scene-defining’ record. That’s except there’s no real ‘scene’ to speak of where the DIY electronic duo come from, deep in the belly of the neo-colonial beast of Bali—an island province of Indonesia where tourism is its biggest industry, mainstream house and techno its musical staple. “Bali is like an Australian backyard for some people,” jokes Ican Harem about the capital of Denpasar where they both live, just a four-hour flight from Perth. “It’s basically like when you go to Ibiza. Those are the sounds, that’s the kind of the people, that’s how they dress up, that’s how they dance.” Otherwise known by the project’s GMO initialism, Harem and DJ Kasimyn (aka Aditya Surya Taruna) first released PUXXXIMAXXX on influential Yogyakarta label Yes No Wave in 2018, before performing the Javan capital’s Nusasonic festival that same year. It takes its title from their original name that is a play on an unmentionable curse word, and it’s the result of a clusterfuck of influences that blew up with access to the internet in Indonesia, enabled by cheap Chinese smartphones in the mid-2010s. “Now, all the content that we posted in social media basically came from this layer,” says Kas about this new medium for cultural expression across the country’s diverse and disconnected archipelago—a girl in a remote village dances on Tik Tok, construction workers play act while on the job. “This is like the amazing channel where they make their own content. They make these absurd jokes—like, local jokes. They just celebrate it. I don’t think they think about making content. They just want to record shit, but it’s kind of an explosion of this amazing and beautiful thing; of people crossing the Island and then showing them, ‘Oh, basically behind my house, there is a traditional party where people get possessed by a tiger’.” From the derivative metal, punk and rock influences of the country’s first ‘indie explosion’ to the ‘lowbrow’ pop and local dance music hybrids of funkot and dangdut koplo, PUXXXIMAXXX is a brilliantly chaotic pastiche. It references breakcore and gabber while framed by traditional gamelan pentatonic scales. There’s the high-pitched trumpet opener of Sangkakala I and the ritualistic beat and looped vocal samples of Hey Nafsu, along with a fascinating montage of the Javanese jathilan possession dance for their wildly popular Dosa Besar music video. “If you think we’re doing ritualistic stuff, or playing gamelan, we’re not,” adds Kas. “We are around that area but at the same time, we also listen to Prodigy.” GMO’s speculative Indonesian rave is infectious. It’s been dubbed ‘post-alay’ by the duo in tribute to the cheesy cultural phenomenon of the suburban teenager and has since caught on worldwide. Follow-up EP HOXXXYA was released on Shanghai label SVBKVLT in 2019, earning the band slots at CTM Berlin, Kampala’s Nyege Nyege Festival and performances in China with Asian Dope Boys. This is a level of recognition that’s well-deserved for a sound that snubs the western canon in favour of a hybrid post-colonial sound that’s pure imagination. “We just kind of like suck that energy that, actually people kind of enjoy their identity,” says Kas. “Especially the people not from the big city, because people from big cities, they always want to have confirmation from the West. Like, ‘I would love to play techno, and then play in Berghain in Berlin and LA’, that kind of stuff. But there is a layer that people don’t give a shit about that, they just want to have fun.”

Fine debut album from blue-eyed soul crooner Seán Being, a softly smudged suite of gauzy, subtly autotuned vocal harmonies a la How To Dress Well, Olan Monk or groggy aspects of pigbaby, wreathed with folksy strings and fractured grooves Seán’s succinct bouquet of seven songs, ‘Faux Window’ is a real one for the daydreamers. Its septet of carefully frayed paeans float by in a gentle haze from the ambient spritz of ‘Fake (Window)’ thru introspective thinking-about-thinking liens of thought recalling a lo-fi Laura Groves in ‘On’, to dialled-down R&B in ‘Everything’, whilst ‘Wasting’ shimmers with a knackered folksy lustre akin to pigbaby, and ‘Otherwise’ continues that drafting smudge to more Americana themed strums. The harmonised glossolalia of ’F.T.O.’ calls to mind Elaine Howley via How To Dress Well to these ears, and ‘This Is What I Want’ keens off into hazy middle distance ambient-pop style with shades of more eaze & claire rousay’s pop works.

Keita Sano marks his return to ROW Records with his second offering for the German imprint, delivering five cuts of experimental electronics, warbling bass and a remix from fellow Japanese producer Dayzero. With a discography spanning sought after imprints including 1080p, Discos Capablanca, Holic Trax, Let’s Play House, Mister Saturday Night and Spring Theory, Keita Sano relocated from Japan to Berlin circa 2019 to take his music further afield and perform in New York, Miami, Paris, Milan, Munich, Oslo, Montreal and London. Now back in Japan, Sano rekindles his time spent in London experimenting with music, specifically in Leyton, perhaps inspired by the future bass and grime scenes of the capital. Nonetheless, what’s on offer here is a resplendent array of rhythmic explorations spanning trilling techno and bass. ‘Blur Ceramics‘ is powered up with a gritty and granular synthetic texture, embellished with 909 claps and mutant bass, brought to life with a timbral drum pattern, sounding similar to the output from Shackleton.

0on Zero-on, a label run by the percussion group "Kodo 鼓童" which has its roots on Sado Island, has released a cassette recording of a solo performance by percussionist Yuta Sumiyoshi, a member of the "Kodo" group. 

“Mogari” is Yuta Sumiyoshi’s debut solo album. Features six tracks of 100% shinobue (bamboo flutes) music, recorded entirely at his home studio. This uncharted exploration of shinobue sound drifts and shapeshifts through drone, noise, minimalism and more, leading to untold possibilities. Limited release of 100 cassettes + download code.

Recorded in 1997 in Vienna as part of a workshop named "Greguar" which took place at the University of applied Arts in Vienna, and was produced by the Institute of contemporary Art Vienna. Official re-release!

Daucile Moon, which follows Unknown Mobile's releases on No Bad Days, Normals Welcome and Young Adults, started four years ago in Vancouver when Levi Bruce was recovering from a broken toe and collecting MIDI files he found in an old Geocities archive. It was finished earlier this year in Montreal with help from Mike Silver, AKA CFCF, who added plaintive guitar to complete the album's placid and stargazing style of ambient and downtempo music. The album takes its name from an old, obscure Canadian jazz song that Bruce describes as "pretty but also with a serious amount of melancholy," which could also describe his new record. In the vein of Pacific Rhythm label-mate Khotin's standout New Tab album, Daucile Moon comprises drowsy beats and spaced-out loops, referencing the pinnacle of early '90s chillout and ambient while infusing it with the dazed sound of Canadian electronic music in the 2010s. Bruce's process in making Daucile Moon was long but leisurely. He took the melodies from those MIDI files and moved them over to his analogue outboard setup and then back to his computer, creating a digital-analog hybrid that sounds as pleasantly worn as a dog-eared novel. Live instrumentation, like Silver's classical acoustic guitar stylings on "A Windless March Ouest," mingles with occasional dance music references like the subtle acid squelch of "Ravers Sojourn" or the hazy breakbeat of "Oenology." The album was inspired by various happy memories, from sharing wine with friends ("Oenology") to a dog that Bruce met ("Simone Can't Swim"). The result is a patient and personal record that highlights the best qualities of Bruce's previous work as Unknown Mobile, with his distinct style of melody and soundscaping set free from kick drums and the dance floor. It's telling that Bruce originally sent the record, at first called Melancholic Songs For Dogs, to his parents and two grandmas—this is beautiful, relaxing music whose appeal is universal. Thanks for listening!

“Clockworks”, composed in the 1970s by computer music pioneer Laurie Spiegel at Bell Laboratories on the GROOVE digital/analog hybrid system, is a mesmerizing and mathematical polyrhythmic number. Machineries of Joy is proud to present two remixes of this seminal piece of electronic music. On the A side, SØS Gunver Ryberg turns in an intense and atmospheric interpretation of the original, while on the flip side, David Morley crafts an elegant, focused and hypnotic excursion.

Svitlana Nianio and Oleksandr Yurchenko are musicians with a long history in the still-mysterious
Kiev Underground. Nianio’s first group Cukor Bela Smert [Sugar, The White Death] were active
from the late 80’s through to the early 90’s, and following an intense period of touring, collaboration,
experimentation and a string of mixtapes and self-published recordings, Nianio’s first official solo
album ‘Kytytsi’ was released in 1999 by Poland’s Koka Records. Oleksandr Yurchenko, a longtime
collaborator and a pivotal figure in the Kiev music scene, was instrumental in creating the Novaya
Scena, a loose conglomerate of artists who encouraged each other to excavate both the sounds of
the West and Ukrainian tradition. ‘Znayesh Yak? Rozkazhy’ (‘Know How? Tell Me’) is the duo’s most
fully realised collaboration, an enchanting, complete world in which Yurchenko’s instrumentation
and playfulness with form frames Nianio’s otherworldly soprano, recalling Liz Fraser steeped
in contrapuntal melody and hymnal improvisation. Originally made available on a self-released
cassette in 1996 (re-issued in 2017 by Ukraine’s Delta Shock label) where the album was twinned
with ‘Lisova Kolekciya’ (re-issued on LP in 2017 by Skire) this is the debut release of ‘Znayesh Yak?
Rozkazhy’ outside of Ukraine.
Recorded in an abandoned park in Kiev during a fertile period for artists and musicians following
the collapse of the Soviet Union, ‘Znayesh Yak? Rozkazhy’ sees Nianio and Yurchenko combine Casio
keyboard, hammered dulcimer, percussion, and Nianio’s unmistakeable soprano vocalisations to create
music sympathetic to the specific locations in which they chose to record. Yurchenko’s contribution
is perhaps more present on this recording than anything else we have heard from the duo. His
percussive dulcimer playing provides the basis on which Nianio can weave delicate keyboard lines
while playfully contorting her voice, shifting from a low register reminiscent of Nico to what could
be perceived as the call of a bird or an animal in distress. Whatever the intent, the effect is haunting
and beautiful in equal measure.
There’s a prevailing earthiness on the recordings, found in the warm hiss of the lo-fi means of
recording or the grinding, unspecified sounds that occasionally accompany the melody, like drones
created on the fly by hands trying to keep warm in the ice. A prevailing mood of fragility and beauty
seeps from these melodies, delicate moments of clarity spun by the two musicians. ‘Znayesh Yak?
Rozkazhy’ is a dream spun in twilight, a crystalline, private world where the listener feels both alien
and welcome. 

Limited edition of 500.

A Japanese synth curio? A lost techno-pop classic? So might run the standard view of the electronic album 'Boku・Neko・Platanus', recorded in 1984 by Shinichi Omata. The facts point that way. The futuristic 'Platonische Liebe' and Omata’s technodelic take on the traditional Greek folk track 'Omorfoula' (here titled 'Egyptische Knabe') are timeless electro tracks with a radically simple pop concept and robotic flavour that closely echo Japan’s most recognisable exports from the era - sounds and styles which rose to international prominence immediately following the economic boom that was taking shape in contemporary Japanese culture. But, focusing only on such fragments misses the greater charms of the album – an argument made more convincing by the inclusion in this expanded edition of an archive of unreleased material from the original recording period. The music spans an unusually broad and contrasting range of influences, exploring the possibilities of mood music, imaginary soundtracks and pop dissonance, while also borrowing widely from films and contemporary arts. How Omata transformed this vast range of influences into synth-pop is the real magic here. The original cassette edition was released by the Tokyo-based Indian grocery store, Ganso Nakaya Mugendo, located in the Koenji district of the city. During the early 1980s, interest in experimental music began to grow among a small group of committed local music fans and musicians. Small independent shops started playing a pivotal role in this nascent scene. First, they imported many of the obscure rarities that were gradually being reissued or bootlegged in the West. Later, as some of the regular customers and employees formed their own groups, many shop owners started establishing their own labels. Even then, 'Boku・Neko・Platanus' was issued in extremely limited numbers – so much so that it’s incredible it ever came to light at all. The album is perhaps best understood as an outsider one-off, adrift from place, style, market and audience. Omata was already garnering a reputation as a formidable musician before the days of 'Boku・Neko・Platanus'. An early follower of European classical, Latin and Western styles, he was an accomplished keyboardist and sitar player who formed close relationships with artists and musicians in the burgeoning Tokyo avant-garde scene of the early 1980s. He was fascinated by electronic music and used an array of synthesizers and rhythm machines early on in his career. He closely analysed the way rhythms emerged in a transitional period of music – such as the shift from four-beat to eight-beat used in much popular music of the 1960s – and that feeling of ambivalence and lag in both time and space is a recurring motif in his music. He uses these rhythmic techniques to magically fuse music from different backgrounds. In Japan, Omata is largely known only to electronic music enthusiasts and connoisseurs as a member of the cult synth-pop outfit DEA, whose 'Metaphysical Pop' was released in 1985 on LLE, a sub-label of Marquee Moon Records, itself an offshoot of the notable experimental music magazine of the same name. Yet he is the mastermind behind a daring techno-pop sound that has remained almost entirely hidden for nearly 40 years. What we can hear across the expanded edition of 'Boku・Neko・Platanus' is not only a highly skilful instrumentalist at the peak of his powers, but also a daring experimentalist, who employed emerging computer and synth technology in innovative ways, and revitalised old school music by adapting it into contemporary settings. Here, Omata’s excitement at playing with cutting-edge toys is palpable and what better use for the sparkling tech of the future than to cover 'Omorfoula', a 19th century folkloric song emanating from Florina, a small town in the West Macedonian district of Greece, written for dancing and typically performed in separate circles by men and women every Sunday after church? 'Idola Fora' is space-age pancultural pop that exudes charm, chutzpah and chops, while 'Natsu No Koibitotachi E' is a glittering fantasia on synths and rhythm machine. Whistle-along pop classic 'Modern Ballet II' is also here, but much of 'Boku・Neko・Platanus' is a beguiling experiment. “This was the kind of music I had always wanted to try”, he recalls in our sleevenote interview. Omata’s angle was that he was writing modern music, informed by contemporary developments elsewhere but without the stiffness of the formal academic scene. It’s all pop as far as he’s concerned. Available for the first time on vinyl, including over fifty minutes of unreleased music not featured on the original cassette release and produced in cooperation with Shinichi Omata for chOOn!!, a label specialising in obscure, archival and forgotten releases.

In 1991, Yuji Takahashi and Mamoru Fujieda collaborated in staging a sound installation at the Sezon Museum of Art in Tokyo, making extensive use of the new artistic possibilities provided by the advent of personal computers. In this installation, a culmination of their investigations into the aesthetic use of new technology, these two renowned leaders of Japanese experimental music used sensors and transducers on objects and in the space itself, via MIDI conversion, to trigger pianos, synthesizers and samplers. The four pieces here were recorded for a cassette-only release timed to coincide with the exhibition. This release continues the EM Records investigation of the “cyber-occult” movement in early-90s Japan, in which the new personal digital technologies allowed access to previously hidden worlds, opening new realms for exploration. In the words of Takahashi, quoted from the original leaflet for the “Ikebukuro Cyber Café” event: “In the flickering time of everyday life, the translucent coordinate axes of the dark cyber space appear and disappear like a shimmering shimmer.” This hints at the quirky yet evanescent beauty of a very intriguing historical document which also happens to sound great. It is available on CD and DL with Japanese and English notes written by Koji Kawasaki, a leading researcher of Japanese electronic music.

The last Henry Cow record made after the group had officially disbanded. I'm biased of course but I believe this was a milestone recording, and perhaps the closest we came to getting the music to sound the way we wanted on disc. Guest appearances by Irene Schweitzer and Anne-Marie Roeloffs.

A lounge in the Poconos located just inside a Holiday Inn, 1973. The smoky haze clears to reveal a middle-aged couple on a one-foot high stage, prattling on about the weather or Watergate before launching into a serviceable cover of Burt Bacharach’s “Do You Know The Way To San Jose?” Tens of thousands of such combos littered restaurants, cruise ships, casinos, lobbies, and cocktail bars throughout the ’60s and ’70s, but far fewer cut a record worth buying from the stage, much less listening to on the home hi-fi. Gathered here are 14 lounge originals from across the entire easy listening spectrum. A spent matchbook’s worth of crooners, bossa nobodies, seafood jazzers, and Donca-Matic enthusiasts all in search of their ticket out of a red leather booth hell.

RAW SPACE" is rooted in chaos and chance, sensuality and intensity - it's an album that's able to sound alarmingly freeform and tightly controlled simultaneously. Already established as a genre-disrupting DJ, and even dubbed "demon of the Nile" by Ugandan politicians after an exuberant performance at Nyege Nyege festival in September 2019, Kampala-based sonic hypnotist Authentically Plastic brings a digger's literacy, an activist's intent, and an artist's playfulness to their jagged debut album. As both a DJ and a producer, Authentically Plastic is drawn to the idea of chance as a creative tool - to push against the idea of the all-knowing genius, and approach artistry instead as a facilitator, unraveling parallel mismatched rhythmic events. Their musical process is to start with chaos, then attempt to mold those fleshy structures into polyrhythmic mutations, pulling influence from East Africa's innovative musical landscape and augmenting it with an exploratory sense of surrealism. On opening track 'Aesthetic Terrorism', rough-hewn industrial rhythms chug mechanically against course, dissonant synth blasts and acidic arpeggios. There's a faint sparkle of Detroit's chrome-plated Afro-futurism, but bathed in neon light, reflecting Africa's contemporary electronic revolution. Authentically Plastic's productions have a sense of thematic coherence, but their myriad influences are torched into cinders, leaving inverse impressions and ghost rhythms: the tuned overdriven clatter of 'Anti-Fun' echoes Ugandan kadodi modes, yet simultaneously mirrors the rugged out-zone grit of Container or Speaker Music; standout centerpiece 'Buul Okyelo' meanwhile is as rhythmically cross-eyed as Slikback or Nazar, but juxtaposes kinetic dancefloor thumps with chaotic microtonal ritual cycles. Writing "RAW SPACE", Authentically Plastic found themselves fascinated by sonic flatness. They realized that in Western art, there's an obsession with depth of field that carries into music, robbing it of intensity. The album is an example of the power that can be reclaimed when you let go of depth, letting sounds rub together carnally and spawn something fresh and unexpected

Big or profound sensations from small gestures which are carefully arranged. Using a mixture of sacred and profane, or classical and prosaic sound sources, knitted into intricate, fleet-footed compositions that virtually spring into the ear. Profondo Rosa is composer Ailin Grad’s first vinyl album following years embedded and loved in the Argentinian experimental music scene, with past treats on labels Krut, Sun Ark, Orange Milk Records and her own label Abyss, devoted to ‘connecting Latin Juke with the world’. There’s a playfulness at the heart of Profondo Rosa that’s immediately charming, with a sense of scale and spatialisation in the sounds being toyed with, exploring the strange pleasures and satisfaction in her approach to delightful and fresh feeling sound design. Aylu is known to be as likely to deploy the sound of a finger click, a fizzy drink being cracked open, or a fly buzzing past the ear, as she is drawn to sampling gorgeous strings or instrumentation. Her debut album for Mana constantly builds territories that tug at your heartstrings and then have you grinning five seconds later. This versatility and acceleration has often resulted in her music being compared to footwork, alongside collaboration with other producers experimenting in that sphere; in 2017 she and Foodman put together a dizzying hour of sounds for NTS. Her miniaturisation of rhythm and ringtone-like sample size could also bring to mind SND circa their warmer softer glitch Tenderlove phase, or perhaps the approach that Teenage Engineering take to designing tools for music making. Each are deriving pleasure from small and satisfying shapes, as well as advocating an object-oriented philosophy and minimalisation in their work that sidesteps a draining of colour. Sound is fun, and in Profondo Rosa it sounds like Aylu has that at the forefront of her mind. Her hyperreal sound and its link to the languages of electroacoustic or computer music are clear, but she outmanoeuvres many of the overly-academic and formless examples of those genres. Profondo Rosa’s skeletal assembly of objects becomes tunes in an elegant, almost understated way; tactile elements quickly combine and roll into deeper and persuasively emotional places. These compositions give off an air of being very free, very experimental, despite being meticulously artful and studied arrangements on precise and nimble coordinates.

Since his Beat Diary debut (a 12xLP box set comprising 365 beats recorded daily over the course of a year), Julian Sartorius has immersed himself in unique and ambitious projects - trekking the path not travelled to arrive at rhythmic life forms through found objects and prepared instruments. Equally as mighty are his two other escapades, the most recent being Locked Grooves - 112 beats cut as endless loops on vinyl spanning 56 dense 1.8 second compositions per side. Preceding that is his auditory hike into the mountains (Hidden Tracks: Basel - Genève), wading through and playing the landscapes around him like a lithophone. While Julian’s previous releases focus on innovative and conceptual approaches to realizing an album, his new venture on Marionette (titled Mux) is a culmination of all his efforts thus far to mimic a synthesizer and drum machine. This impossible feat challenges Julian to experiment and develop a musical language that bridges the gap between organic timbres and electronic music. When listening to Mux, one might simply forget that the seemingly electronic sounds are only constructed organically via hand movements. The common thread in all his works is that the drums are treated as resonant bodies - free to flow and form rhythm and harmony in spacetime. This is Julian’s second outing for the label, the first being (the long out of print) Sulla Pelle with Valentina Magaletti in 2019. Other collaborations include prolific artists such as Matthew Herbert, Sylvie Courvoisier, Gyda Valtysdottir, Dimlite, Shahzad Ismaily and Dan Carey (Speedy Wunderground).

Rainbow Disco Club and Rush Hour, a long-standing friendship that transcends continents! House, disco, new wave, Caribbean, rare groove, leftfield.. Antal compiles the second release on "Beyond Space And Time", loaded with personal choice cuts. Internationally recognised and much-loved festival from Japan, Rainbow Disco Club’s offshoot project "Beyond Space And Time" record label presents their sophomore release! Following the work by DJ Nobu, their second compilation has been compiled by none other than Antal. Also known as the festival's headliner and the man behind Amsterdam record shop/label Rush Hour, all 8 tracks are selected by Antal in a 2 x 12-inch format. From newcomers to '80s Japanese cult music, rare grooves to danceable house music, and rare Caribbean soul, this compilation is a portrait of music enthusiast Antal Heitlager’s enormous collection and 30-year DJ career, a work of art that can be enjoyed by all music fans! An afro electronics track recommended by South African collector DJ Okapi, who co-produced the masterpiece compilation "Pantsula!: Rise Of Electronic Dance Music In South Africa: 1988-90" released in 2017, which brought Kwaito back onto the map. A-1 Improvisation Organic Deep House track by New Zealand’s newcomer. A-2 A rare breezin' boogie by Larry Heard’s alias Trio Zero from 1989. Highly sought after by all collectors as a cult Balearic track. Previously unreleased version. B-1 From the 2015 album by L.A. funk maker DAM-FUNK on the prestigious Stones Throw label. LO-FI beats and synthetic breakdowns that are reminiscent of early Rush Hour works and ‘90s house. B-2 The debut single of Japanese idol unit, Shohjo-Tai. Haruomi Hosono also produced some of their tracks later on in their career. Japanese new wave disco from 1984. C-1 The soundtrack from the Japanese manga "Touring Express". RDC fans will recognize this track from the final hours of the festival. A nostalgic oriental disco from 1985. C-2 80s Silky Mellow Soul by Connecticut jazz vocalist Dianne Mower who also contributed to the re-press of the prestigious Numero Group. D-1 The original version is a masterpiece from 1983 by Zouk singer Jocelyn Mocka of French Guadeloupe. This edit still very much emphasizes an emotional mid-tempo Caribbean soul, nicely reconstructed by Rush Hour's Bonnefooi. D-2 A total of 8 tracks from all types of genres and generations, a true masterpiece and representation of Rainbow Disco Club’s vision “Beyond Space And Time”. Bringing you the love from Amsterdam to the world!

"may vast blessings of peace seek you. x many thanks to wildflower, santi, and villi" all music production and vocals - victoria m. 'what a joy' mastered by brandenburg mastering <3

Andy Stott’s radical 2011 bonecrusher returns on its first new pressing for almost a decade, still screwing the dance and heads like nothing else with its lo-sprung suspended takes on boogie dub and claggiest rhythmic thumpers.
The sludgy, slow-motion slug of ‘Passed Me By’ marked a pivotal point when Stott swam against the grain of prevailing currents of the post-dubstep era’s turn toward garage-techno and UKF- inspired percussive house. Working loosely adjacent to a then emergent witch-house sound, Andy screwed templates associated to Salem and Holy Other into a more muscular, thrumming style
of drug chug more in key with early Actress, arriving at his own distinctive sound that sent us reeling.
Between the intoxicating, syrupy gnarrr of ‘New Ground’ with its Proustian vocal motifs, and the head-wobbling Pennine weather system compressions of its titular curtain closer, it’s a stone cold classique; eliciting heads-down, wall-banging reactions in the side-chained thrum of ‘North To South’ and a lip-biting MDMA-buzz come up with the Thriller funk of ‘Intermittent’, while sore thumb ‘Dark Details’ gives shivering flashbacks to warehouse brukouts and ‘Execution’ curbs the high with a K-holing drag.
Delivering a narcotic, keeling dose of nostalgia that slings us back to late hours in the office
and blunted afters with the goodest kru, ‘Passed Me By’ was one of those records that made us reassess pretty much everything else around at the time, practically forcing us to play other stuff on the wrong speed if we wanted to DJ with it, or more simply letting it run and and slowly shift temporal perceptions and paradigms in the process. Ye ye we’re biased and all, but it’s the fucking GOAT.

Mark Fell & Gábor Lázár’s masterclass in shearing computer hyperfunk is one of its decade’s best; a peerless exploration of displaced dancefloor meter and warped chromatic tone, with mind and body-bending results. Finally re-issued in new artwork to sate demand. Still in a zone of its own, ‘The Neurobiology of Moral Decision Making’ is the result of Mark Fell’s trip to Budapest in 2014, where he and his acolyte, Gábor Lázár practically unravelled the vernacular of contemporary computer and club musics and re-stitched them into brilliantly new & devious designs. Decimating elements familiar to 2-step, footwork, electro, flashcore and f*ck knows, they arrived at a mutual conclusion of sleekly turbulent minimalism in 10 jaw-dropping permutations that dance in the integers of rave music. In the process they effectively re-programmed limbic and motor systems in-the-moment with a wickedly diffractive sense of rhythmic anticipation and shockingly crisp sound for a pinnacle of modern experimental dance music. With benefit of hindsight, we can now hear this album as a watershed moment for both artists, and this style of production. Since its release, Mark has notably moved away from the sound to work with acoustic instrumentalists, while Gábor has firmly picked up the baton and run with it on the likes of 2018’s ‘Unfold’ album, and more recently ‘Boundary Object’ with Planet Mu. It’s not hard to hear it as a logical peak of Mark’s practice in this mode, solo and with SND, as much as a springboard for Gábor’s future work, while also catalysing a new wave of operators ranging from Rian Treanor to Kindohm, Kirk Barley’s Church Andrews, and Rhyw, who’ve all harnessed these sort of energies to their respective wills. No doubt the tunes still scare the shit out of DJs with their spasmodic flux, but brave cnuts will recognise the genius on show and let instinct kick in, finding proper club shockers in the slippery 2.1 step whorl of ‘Track 2’ and the scudding dancehall accelerationism of ‘Track 6’, while advanced adventurers will get theirs in the greased straightjacket laser-intensity of ‘Track 7’ or the devilish dexterities of its closing 12 minute zinger. It’s all just blindingly strong stuff for insatiable ravers and computer music neeks alike, properly future-proofed by its makers’ unyielding tenacity and visionary ingenuity.

Following releases for The Tapeworm and 12th Isle, Christos Chondropoulos lands on The Death Of Rave with this incredible album of "Athenian Primitive” riffs on ancient Greek music and proto-techno prisms, highly recommended if yr into Paul DeMarinis, Rashad Becker, Jonathan Bepler’s soundtracks for Matthew Barney, Black Sabbath or Aphex Twin. Continuing Christos’ singular fascination with, and reappraisal of, Ancient Greek modes, ’Relics’ further excavates the deeptime topography of Greek music prior to the ban of “oriental” or 1/4 tone microtonal modes nearly 100 years ago. Clandestine, euphoric, hyperreal and otherworldly; it takes shape as faintly familiar forms of new age folk, avant-techno and metal musicks, but with an alien appeal that treats the past almost like another planet, never mind a foreign land. Christos studiously raids the past for lost treasure, navigating his tuned instincts as an improvising percussionist, and lover of non-Western composition, to create a uniquely absorbing soundworld that resembles an AI’s dreams after ingesting encyclopaedia entries on thousands of years of Greece prior to 1936. In the process, the album acutely questions his and our relationship to the past, and what has become lost in translation with reliance on prelaid templates and the “wisdom” of elders. Bursting to life with the iridescent arps and new age AI chorale of ‘First Love Fereter’, and concluding with bone-clacking raverie of ‘Jungle X’, the album offers a stunning advance of the themes and aesthetics in Christos previous records, from the self-released free jazz of ‘Fingerpainting’ (2013) to 2021’s 12th Isle released ‘Athenian Primitivism.’ Thanks to meticulous detailing, ‘Relics’ allows a finer play of textured light and almost tangible - yet entirely generated - voices into his music: most strikingly on the sublime songcraft of ‘Regret’ and ‘I Dream Of You’, while the likes of ‘Asham’ are bathed in deeply uncanny atmosphere, and his percussive proprioceptions are most heightened in the delirious battery of ‘War Horns’ and ‘Sacrifice’, with ‘Cyber Crust’ calling up demonic, cthonic pagan spirits resembling Black Sabbath undergoing regression therapy.