MUSIC

Ultimo Tango (Milan) & Glossy Mistakes (Madrid) are thrilled to announce the release of "Tribal Organic: Deep Dive into European Percussions 79-90", a compilation of otherworldly percussion-driven tracks, digging deep into this unknown realm of a past era.

Compiled by Luca Fiore and Glossy Mario, the album takes listeners on a rhythmic journey through the diverse sounds of Europe from 1979 to 1990. This collaboration between two like-minded labels highlights forgotten recordings from across Europe, including works by artists from France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands...

Opening with the ethereal “Rainforest” by British female duo Ova, this collection weaves together nine tracks from artists who were deeply influenced by global percussion traditions. With hints of jazz, new age, gamelan, and West African rhythms, these tracks feature instruments like congas, tablas, and shekeres, and reflect a shared fascination with the organic beat of the drum.

From the industrial-meets-African grooves of Jean-Michel Bertrand’s “Engines”, to the hypnotic accordion and tribal chants of Cuco Pérez’s “Calabó Bambú”, the compilation offers a cross-cultural listening experience that is both meditative and invigorating. Despite creating these works in isolation during the last years of the Cold War, each artist was inspired by a borderless world of sound. The compilation pays homage to these nomadic musicians who respected the traditions they drew from, while contributing their own experimental takes on percussion-led music.
In Tribal Organic, Glossy Mario and Luca Fiore have unearthed a treasure trove of rhythm-driven tracks that blur the lines between nations, genres, and cultures. This compilation offers more than just music; it’s a listening experience that is both spiritual and grounded—bold, exploratory, and deeply rooted in the beat of the Earth. <iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 472px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3608275395/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://glossymistakes.bandcamp.com/album/tribal-organic-deep-dive-into-european-percussions-79-90">Tribal Organic: Deep Dive into European Percussions 79-90 by GLOSSY MISTAKES</a></iframe>

Farming, often associated with toil and drudgery, can also be a surprisingly sensual and playful activity. The rhythm of the seasons, the tactile experience of working the land, and the shared sense of accomplishment can all contribute to a heightened sense of intimacy and pleasure. Consider the act of planting seeds. The gentle touch of fingers on delicate seedlings, the anticipation of growth, and the nurturing care required can create a deeply satisfying and sensual experience. Harvesting, too, can be a sensual affair, as one plucks ripe fruits and vegetables from the earth, feeling their warmth and succulence. Beyond the physical aspects, farming can also foster emotional intimacy. Couples can work together in the garden, sharing laughter, sweat, and a sense of shared purpose. The feeling of accomplishment that comes from growing one's own food can also strengthen bonds and create a sense of shared pride.

Across a remarkable run of releases in barely half a decade, London’s Loraine James has established her identity through a blend of refined composition, gritty experimentation, and unpredictable, intricate electronic programming. While titles released under her given name on the esteemed label Hyperdub tend toward IDM-influenced, vocal-heavy collaborations, James reserves her alias, Whatever The Weather, for a more impressionistic, inward gaze. On Whatever The Weather II, rich worlds of layered textures flow seamlessly from hypnotic ambience, to mottled rhythms, to cut-up collages of diaristic field recordings. The result is a uniquely fractured beauty, born from a compelling union of organic and human elements, processed through a variety of digital and analogue methods.

James titled Whatever The Weather pieces based on an innate sense of their “emotional temperature” at the time of recording, but she notes that often, upon revisiting them, they will feel somewhere else entirely on the thermometer; such are the whims of the environment. Compared to the album’s predecessor and its Antarctic imagery, though, Whatever The Weather II is a warmer outing, as signaled by the desert clime of its cover photo which is once again shot by Collin Hughes, and the package designed by Justin Hunt Sloane. Also common to both albums is the mastering work of friend and collaborator Josh Eustis (aka Telefon Tel Aviv), who lends his keen ear to James’ complexities, to craft a strikingly three-dimensional sonic experience.

“1°C” opens the album with James speaking through thick static, idly pining, “Bit chilly, innit… Can’t wait for it to be summer,” as a bed of granular tones and scattered vocal samples emerges. This ineffable mood carries through “3°C”, where high-frequency oscillations flutter across the stereo field, a vigorous, minimal kick rattles through a broken speaker cone, and spacious synth harmonies burst and fade into mist. “20°C”, the longest entry in the collection, daydreams through a din of conversation and minor-key chords, before blossoming into a series of glitchy, staccato percussion patterns. “8°C” rides a sole, wandering keyboard line adorned with minimal counterpoint. In these moments, James effortlessly draws order from a diffusion of ideas, and an air of playful spontaneity creates the common thread.

In discussing this project, James notes that the first Whatever The Weather LP (Ghostly, 2022) was created concurrently with Reflection (Hyperdub, 2021), and that there was some degree of stylistic cross-pollination between her two musical frames of mind. At the time, she shared her feelings on genre with Pitchfork’s Philip Sherburne, noting, “Yeah, I might look different from most people who make IDM, and I’m from a different time period, but I don’t really care about the term being negative or positive. I feel my music is IDM and I do my own spin on it, being inspired by other stuff and fusing it all together.” This go around, she dedicated several months of focused energy to the alias, and to the development of its distinctions: no collaborators, fewer beats, and a process based primarily on instinct and improvisation.

The album’s singular sound arises from James’ favoring of hardware over software, as her battery of synths is modulated, transformed, and reassembled through an array of pedals with few or no overdubs, effectively anchoring each arrangement to its precise moment of creation. The greatest effort in post-production was given to sequencing, on which the artist places the utmost importance; taken as a whole, the suite ebbs and flows with a fitting sense of seasonal flux and naturalistic grace.

The final act of Whatever The Weather II offers some of its most affecting moments, beginning with “9°C”, where the haunting echoes of children on a Tokyo playground break through intermittent bursts of static, steeped in a bath of off-kilter, bubbling tones. Here, James displays one of her many strengths: a fearless approach to sonic collage, elevated by ambitious experimentation and pacing that manages plenty of surprises. Never content to remain in the same sonic space for too long, “15°C” follows with soft pads and glistening countermelodies, abruptly joined by a jarring, cyclical rhythm that mimics a loose part inside a whirring machine. Like much of James’ work, it bears an internal logic that only makes sense in her hands.

Closing track, “12°C”, drifts from bustling human spaces into a concrete groove, weaving melody and texture into a truly unusual, soul-stirring fullness. In its final moments we hear, for the first time, a languid acoustic guitar and gentle, finger-tapped beat over her pitch-shifted voice, a callback that ends the album with wry ambiguity, and a hint of more to be found beyond the horizon. Whatever The Weather II is full of such passages, where formal composition appears like a film in negative, and conventions are upturned with wit, intelligence, and skill.

The single release from Jimi Tenor’s supcoming second thematic album titled “July Blue Skies” on Timmion Records offers two very different moods. “Summer of Synesthesia” takes us back to those dreamy summer days, a natural overpour of sensations mixing together, sounds becoming colors before turning into flavors. Synthesizers grow into delicate layers over Cold Diamond & Mink’s rhythm, and when your heart can hardly bear the beauty of it all, Tenor’s soft lyric places the cherry on top.

“Tsicroxe” on the flipside couldn’t be more different, kicking into gear with a demonic organ arpeggio that sounds like you’ve just been dropped into a Dario Argento scene. Even though the familiar funk from Cold Diamond & Mink eases the dread a bit, when Tenor busts in with the eerie flute solo, the ritual closes in on its conclusion.

The contents of the backwards vocal bits at the end shall be saved for your turntable so make sure to rewind that track, selector!

In the fall of 2022, celebrated UK chill-out institution Seahawks landed in Los Angeles for the first time in their 15-year history, with plans to record a sweeping new age downtempo “exploration of visionary California.” Instead, they immediately fell ill with flu (Fowler collapsed next to a taco truck; 911 was called), and were bedridden for the better part of a week. Upon recovering, they resituated at the synthesizer sanctuary of Brian Foote (Peak Oil, Kranky, Leech), channeling their post-sickness psychedelia into one of the band’s lushest and most elevated creations to date: Time Enough For Love. Inspired by the “groove and mood” of Harry Nilsson demos, as well as its wider 70’s wavelength – Rhodes, Wurlitzer, wood paneling – Seahawks transposed their classic post-rave ambient exotica onto a warm and woozy Golden State palette. Buoyed by the liquid touch of English maestro Kenny Dickenson on keys, the results rank high among the duo’s smoothest and most multi-sensory voyages. “Sail Across The Moon” delivers on its title, a simmering, phaser-smeared cruise through the beauty of the night. “Messengers” echoes the cosmic lounge of Air’s Moon Safari, shuffling, weightless, and ethereal, while “Falling Deep” reaches for the stars, pure cascading bliss, the ecstatic moment writ large. The album skews steadily more astral as it progresses, drifting towards jazzy, galactic outer reaches. “Like A Grain Of Sand” opens with a spoken sample by the celebrated late American poet Rachel Sherwood (“The children watch, breathless / with the birds / They feel an emanation / from this shuddering place”), before taking flight on a Balearic trip through island house, PM Dawn gold dust, upright bass meditation, and kaleidoscopic light. A remix of the title track by Chicago trio Purelink closes the record in a suitably subdued and skittery state of mind. Time Enough For Love radiates color, complexity, and positivity, infused by the “life enhancing” nature of the band's time in Los Angeles – sunsets, sound systems, and sativa, framed by coastlines and cloudbanks, the city’s mystic sprawl glittering beneath purple dusk.

International man of dub techno mystery, Shinichi Atobe returns to DDS with a new double album of pensile steppers and lip-smacking, feathered swang, a good 10 years since first crossing paths with Demdike Stare’s label - a massive RIYL for any heads into DJ Sprinkles, Red Planet, Mike Huckaby, Sususmu Yokota, Convextion, NWAQ.

 

 

For years people were convinced that Atobe was a well known artist (probably German) working incognito. Thanks to a flowery twitter feed, plus some interviews, all that distraction has been finally laid to rest. Still offering little in the way of biographical factoids, though, Atobe lets the music do the talking in typically emotively nuanced and special style on his 7th album ‘Discipline’, offering further refinements of prevailing, salient ‘90s deep house, dub techno and ambient scenes cultivated and pruned to near perfection.

 

 

Hailing a sensuality and feel for spaced movement that’s been lost to club music’s EQ arms race over the decades, he comes poised with a near ineffable lightness of being, flush with a newfound effervescence that’s come to define his work in recent years. There’s a real electro-acousmagique in-the-mix that conveys beautifully at low or high volume, elegantly guiding bodies in motion like little else. 

 

 

Atobe’s grasp of deferred gratification and tempered gravitas is really the key thing, carrying from the fluttering 8-bit melodies and purring techno bass of ‘SA DUB 1’ to tender beatdown and blushing FM chords, then into flirtations with hair-kissing trance like Convextion and AGCG gone Goa in ‘SA DUB 2’, thru brisk Red Planet techno and a sort of shoegazing, acidic panorama in ‘SA DUB 5’, defining Terrence Dixon-esque levels of Motor City mechanical nous on ‘SA DUB 6’, and into the subaquatic, pearlescent dub house promise of ‘SA DUB 7’. 

 

 

Chef’s kisses, all the way.

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For AI-38 Italian duo LF58 (Giuseppe Tillieci and Filippo Scorcucchi) present ‘Radials’. A site-specific concept piece that was recorded live on location in Venice, Radials showcases the powerful and transportive sound world which LF58 have become known for. Radials takes its name from the homonymous exhibition created by the Roman artist group Sbagliato, for the 2023 Biennale Architettura of Venice. Following a landmark renovation of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi by renowned Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, Sbagliato proposed the spatial transformation of the historic sixteenth-century building that would blur the lines between fiction and the real. The concept, to create unexpected “voids” within the fixed order of architecture, prompts the observer to question the fleeting and subjective nature of the reality that surrounds us. The building’s main loggia – a series of five archways exposed to the Canal Grande – take on a theme of reproduction and multiplication, giving rise to infinite perspectives in a dizzying mise en abyme. Through the portal-like potentialities of the loggia, the visitor enters the gateway to a fluid realm of distorted time and space. LF58 arose to translate the visual concept of Radials into sound, delivered through a special quadraphonic concert performed at the Fondaco dei Tedeschi in October 2023. Quadraphonics, with its four distinct audio channels, were used in direct correlation with the visual elements of the installation to immerse the audience in a dreamlike, multisensory experience. The opening scene of running waters and the cacophony of the bustling city streets quickly dissolves under the chiming of nearby bells, as hidden liminal spaces become revealed. It’s not long before all remnants of the ordinary are left behind, as the listener is submerged into the shimmering frequencies of parallel dimensions. A spatial soundscape of ever-moving forms and colours, Radials descends into ever-deeper waters. As the facade of what was once known falls away, a transportive journey of mind-body alterations begins.

"Citadel" is the fourth album release on EXTREME by this enigmatic Manchester-based group. For over 10 years, Muslimgauze have defined their style as a Western re-contextualisation of traditional Middle Eastern music enhanced by technology to form a post-modern mix of music, politics and culture. Muslimgauze construct the music through ethnic instruments that are a frame for dark and sometimes foreboding aural tapestries that capture the essence and mood of the music of the Middle East and the plight of the Palestinian people.

"Citadel" is an album of exotic Arabic textures where traditional instruments intermesh with technology, found sounds and voices meld with drones and synthesizers. The album uses both eastern and western rhythmic patterns embedded in layers of shifting soundscapes. The title track "Citadel" with incessant tablas piercing through swirling cymbals and a haunting melody. "Dharam Hinduja", where staccato percussion moves to fill the space between pulsing inverted samples, and "Opel" with drones building only to be overpowered by machine-gun rhythms. "Masawi Wife & Child" has a subdued rhythmic undercurrent while "Infidel" stands out with its strident percussion fusing with a myriad of sounds. "Shouf Balek" incorporates traditional strings that interplay with rhythm and voice, and "Beit Nuba" with mesmerizing chants weaving between a persistent drum beat. It all draws to a close with "Ferdowsi" where percussive improvisations rise and fall through a minimal soundscape.

Muslimgauze produce a raga music for the technological post-cyber age. Shifting cultures out of ancient history into the current day, transcending those traditional forms. "Citadel" has a voice of what is now and perhaps what is to come. In these troubled political times, peace through people being unified in harmony whilst maintaining their own strength and cultural identity is a vision to strive towards.

– from the original Extreme press-release

The original tracks were perfectly remastered for this first time ever vinyl release and the new masters received high praise from the Extreme Music owner Roger Richards.
New sleeve designs were created by Oleg Galay, who is famous for his artworks for many Muslimgauze reissues.
All 4 album covers are made from extra heavy cardboard with deluxe spot UV finish and inside print.

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.

Field Records proudly presents the first complete vinyl edition of Monolake’s seminal excursion into experimental dub techno, Hongkong. Originally released on the now-classic Chain Reaction label in 1997, this collection of early singles by Robert Henke and Gerhard Behles has gone on to become a vital listening experience in its own right - a genre classic alongside the other groundbreaking works from the likes of Porter Ricks and Vladislav Delay. The tracks which make up Hongkong were made while Henke and Behles studied computer science and immersed themselves in Berlin’s techno scene. Their early forays into computer-based music production were enabled by the use of the Max/MSP programming environment, forming a backdrop to the landmark work they would undertake in developing the Ableton Live DAW. Henke and Behles travelled to Hong Kong in 1996 to attend the annual International Computer Music Conference, and while there recorded extensive field recordings. These recordings became the glue that pieced together their collaborative tracks into a fluid listening experience for a CD-compilation at Chain Reaction’s request. While absolutely rooted in the embryonic sound of European dub techno, Monolake’s early work possesses a back room, headphone-ready demeanour which lends itself to the album listening experience. In the cascade of rhythms created by precision engineered delays and subliminal, expansive spatial world building occurring throughout Hongkong, the stage is set for a full and thorough immersion. Before the Monolake sound progressed into a more pointillist form of computer music as Henke’s solo project, Hongkong presented a gritty, grainy sonic still tied in some way to the traditional methods of techno production, even as the artists’ ideas were sending the sequencing and arranging in exciting new directions. Remastered and presented for the first time as a complete double 12” package, this is the definitive edition of an essential work in the evolution of experimental techno. As Henke himself explains, “twenty-five years later, this record still holds immense value to me in many ways.”

On her sophomore album "Germ in a Population of Buildings”, upsammy moves through her surroundings with the curiosity of a place-bending landscape architect. The album is rooted in her interest for ambiguous environments in constant shift, and the feeling of discovering strange patterns in different ecosystems. Often, the Amsterdam-based artist finds herself zooming in and out beyond a place's most recognizable surface features to inhabit the microscopic and gigantic. Gathering field recordings and evocative environmental sounds, she shapes this source material into vibrating electro-acoustic rhythms and unstable, psychedelic textures. upsammy's debut album, 2020's critically-acclaimed "Zoom", was praised for its careful reimagining of IDM, evolving vignettes that nodded towards the dancefloor without being shackled to its rigid set of rules. On "Germ in a Population of Buildings" her process has evolved considerably; the skeletal trace of IDM is still present but it's been trapped in amber, allowing her unique sonic landscape to develop organically. 'Being is a Stone' is a proof of concept in many ways, layering upsammy's contorted voice in rickety patterns beneath a lattice of fragile rhythms and faintly melancholy synths. It's never immediately obvious where the sounds are coming from - a hiccuping beat might be glass cracking underfoot, and larger pulses could be wet concrete, rusted iron or bent plastic. As the sounds develop they morph into each other, demolishing what came before and building on top of the ornamental wreckage. On the dynamic 'Constructing', upsammy's sound design fluxes through hyperactive bass music structures, abstracting expectations at every turn. Often her sounds are whisper quiet, rattling and vibrating until heavier masonry drops and disrupts the structure. And when discernible rhythms subside into the background, like on the album's eerie title track, they become almost illusory, morphing between the real world and the electronic. upsammy's processed voice works like a bridge between these realms, snaking between stark, whimsical melodies on 'Patterning', arching from AutoTuned detachment into cooing, dreamy intimacy. By considering the harmonies between each location she's visited, upsammy has been able to build a unique topology that's an uncanny digital amalgam of her lived experience. It's a thoughtful alternative in an era more concerned with flatting the landscape than crumpling it and examining its peaks and troughs.

Loraine James has processed the last two years of turbulence through her art. The North London producer started a monthly show on NTS radio, shared several projects on Bandcamp, and recorded two Hyperdub releases, the Nothing EP and Reflection, the proper LP follow-up to her 2019 breakthrough, For You and I (which landed James, then a teaching assistant by day, the top spot on year-end lists by Quietus and DJ Mag). She also returned to a distinct creative terrain uncharted since her teenage years. In contrast to her club music sensibilities, this mode embraces keyboard improvisations and vocal experimentation, foregoing percussive structure in favor of shaping atmosphere and tone. From this divergent headspace emerged new coordinates and climates, a new outlet: Whatever The Weather. A longtime fan of ambient-adjacent Ghostly International artists such as Telefon Tel Aviv (who she’d ask to master the album), HTRK (whose singer Jonnine Standish features on Nothing), and Lusine (whom she remixed at the start of 2021), James saw the label as the ideal home for this eponymous album of airy, transportive tracks as they began to formulate. The titling on Whatever The Weather works in degrees; simple parameters allowing James to focus on the nuances as a mood-builder. Her suspended universe fluctuates; freezing, thawing, swaying and blooming from track to track. James describes her jam-based approach for the sessions as “free-flowing, stopping when I felt like I was done,” allowing her subconscious to lead. The improvisations have an intrinsic fluidity to them, akin to sudden weather events passing over a single environment — the location feels fixed while the conditions vary. The album opens at “25°C,” a sunshower of soft hums and keys. As the longest piece, it serves to establish stability, the inflection point where any move above or below this temperate breeze breaks the bliss. Given James’ proclivity for organized chaos in her production, this scene is fleeting, naturally. From that utopia, we plummet to the most melancholic read on the meter, “0°C,” its isolated synth line traversing a hailstorm of steely beats and static. Next, the dial jumps for the propulsive standout “17°C.” Like a timelapse of springtime in the city, the single accelerates across a frenzy of frames; car horns, screeching brakes, and crosswalk chatter fill the pauses between rapid jolts of multi-shaped percussion. For portions of the work, James leans neo-classical, rendering pensive vignettes of cascading piano keys and warm delay. “2°C (Intermittent Rain)” ends the A-Side on a short and stormy loop; a resulting sense of reset permeates the B-Side’s opener, “10°C.” The producer mingles intuitively on echoed organ, locking into and abandoning atypical rhythms that suggest her jazz-oriented interests. “4°C” and “30°C” display the range of James’ vocal experiments. The former chops and pitches her voice to a rhythmic, otherworldly effect, the latter reveals James at her most straightforward (she cites Deftones’ Chino Moreno and American Football’s Mike Kinsella as inspirations), singing tenderly and unobstructed for nearly the duration before beats collide in the climax. Whatever The Weather closes at “36°C,” while a sweltering heat by any standards the track eases along comfortably on a chorus of synth waves, acting as an apt bookend for this evocative, sky-tracing collection that started in a similar state. Cyclical, seasonal, and unpredictable, true to its namesake.

'Skinned' is the debut album from Danish composer, producer and singer ML Buch. After releasing her debut EP Fleshy in 2017 ML Buch is ready with her first full-length album Skinned that takes her expansive guitar work and catchy melodies to another territory. With her unique experimental pop and vocals that seem to slide into your ears as fluorescent liquid, ML Buch portrays the reality of intimacy in a digital era. Working primarily with synthetic midi sounds, the general love of songwriting and guitar music is ever present. The album comes with an extensive visual side in the form of five music videos acting as tableaus that echo the encounter between screens and skin and how the senses wriggle, flutter and weave in and out of our online presence and intimate lives. As if in search for something real, ML Buch takes the listener on the other side of the skin. Led by tender love songs like I’m A Girl You Can Hold IRL and Can’t Get Over You With You we journey through her throat and into her intestines, discovering a fascinating realm of shiny mucus and bile in flesh and yellowish colors. Panoramic images were captured by a small pill camera travelling through the body of ML Buch and act as extentions of the architecture of the music. This literal way of internalizing modern technology is symbolic of Skinned where eclectic instrumental compositions share the space with strong hooks and ML Buch’s spherical voice.

Producer Pieter Kock, active also as a DJ under his DJ Peacock guise, is known for being one of the people behind the legendary O Tannenbaum bar and club, a haven of sorts in Berlin nightlife for years, and the newly opened second O Tannenbaum called Schankwirtschafft O Tannenbaum. He has released some of his own music on labels such as Musikii, RIO, Full Body Massage, Fantasy Fiction Records, Moonwalk X, and Invisible Inc, and has extensively collaborated with people and projects such as Meeuw and De Fabriek. His new Bright Bars From The Stars album on Meakusma is a dizzying amalgam of moods and influences. From ghostly and contemplative tracks to spaced-out and dubbed-out dark dancefloor psychedelia infused with melodics, phrasing, and percussive patterns reminiscent of pop and avant-garde alike, Bright Bars From The Stars features a full album on vinyl, with an extra CD included. Kock is a versatile chronicler of the night, capturing the beauty, loneliness, and endless possibilities of wide avenues pining for neon lights, futuristic descents into past moods and modes, and all. 14 tracks in total, Bright Bars From The Stars is a cosmic, at times gentle, at times confrontational affair that brims with ideas and influences. Combining sounds, rhythms, melodies, and textures from a wide variety of sources and meanings, Pieter Kock brings all of his influences together, intent on finding new paths of thinking and feeling. His pictures printed in the CD booklet give some kind of indication of his artistic process, without ever wanting to push things in any kind of direction. Cocktail bars of a dystopian future, unite! Bright Bars From The Stars is the soundtrack to a very encompassing and transformative night out. All compositions by Pieter Kock except Bright Bars From The Stars by Pieter Kock and Dominik Peacho Noé Mastering & Cut by Rashad Becker Art by Pieter Kock and Meeuw

Nearly 15 years have passed since the original was release in 2010 with all tracks lovingly remastered for this new remastered edition; which also includes STL's first ever remix and sounds just as beautiful as the day we first heard it! Deep, reduced dub-techno with ethereal production nuances from Stephen Hitchell and Rod Modell. Both original tracks here reveal the duo's obsession with the likes of Maurizio, Basic Channel and Chain Reaction.

It's been nearly 15 years since this originally hit the shelves, which literally took the immersive atmospheric sound of Echospace and brought it right to the floor. With cv313's ''Sailingstars'' the spirit continues as they go on to preach the gospel of deep with a rippling exercise in space and bass. A sort of slow motion movement in tone and 38 hz sub frequency which nearly verges on the disturbing, a sonic threshold quite hard to achieve in a vinyl cut. The power of repetition and subtle atmosphere are clearly demonstrated here by bringing the listener to an almost hypnotic state within its melodic spatial grooves. The B side offers two immense reductions, equally effective providing a low end throb, analog spirit and organic textures captured in zero gravity, it's like truly sailing among the stars. Lovingly remastered and mixed down from the original analog 1/4'' reel to reel tape, strictly limited to 300 copies for the world.

Abstract, Downtempo,Trip-Hop …Gi Gi returns to Quiet Time with a new album, Dreamliner. The Texas producer’s latest, Dreamliner, is comparably immediate and propulsive exploring spacey, kosmische-laced trip-hop, beneath slow motion arpeggiations and lullaby melodies, dubby percussion and sound effects gnash and quiver.

Oro Azul is a new collaborative project from Michael Red and Ultima Esuna. Water Seeds takes us through 4 shades of an aquatic garden. Dembow floats underneath the waves while woodblock melodies bubble up through the weeds. Sub bass shifts the tide. Some sounds are mosslike, a protective balm. Other tones come through as minerals and metals, shining in the refracted light from above.

Six years after the release of the “A Parade, In The Place I Sit, The Floating World (& All Its Pleasures)” EP on anno Records, Brian Leeds, aka Huerco S., returns to the Loidis project with his debut album “One Day” on Incienso.

Mutant steppers techno maverick Carrier caps 2024 with a doublepack of the sought-after first two 12”s issued on his own label - both now trading for twice the price 2nd hand - comprising some of the deadliest, most stripped down twists on club music fundamentals of the decade so far - big one if yr into T++, Photek, Chain Reaction, Burial.

 

 

As Carrier, Guy Brewer has rigorously consolidated his fascinations with technoid dance music physics to proper, cult acclaim. Distilling the rolling pressure of his D&B work as half of Commix with the granite hewn heft of his techno streak as Shifted, and the finely spaced pressure of his sound design that defined his Alexander Lewis and Covered In Sand bits, the project has come to represent the bleeding edge of club music in a way mistakenly thought lost to a previous era. 

 

 

The bloody-minded focus on his thing has resulted in a frankly jaw-dropping new sound that still conveys the increasingly rarer rush of the new that we once felt hearing Photek and Source Direct in the late ‘90s, or in the refined rolige of Autechre and T++/Monolake 12”s in the ‘00s, thru the mutations of 2562 and A Made Up Sound, or Raime’s writhing shapeshifting into the 2010s. Fair to say those lineages were fractured by Covid-enforced dancefloor downtime, but Carrier still holds their principles of obsessively tight, syncopated percussion and subbass rhythm programming and proprioceptive sound design close to heart with diehard, visionary effect.

 

 

From the squashed woodblock drums and dry concrète tone of ‘Into the Habit’ and rugged techno dub  of ’Shading’, thru the tendon-tweak lean of ’Still So’ on the ‘Neither Curve Nor Edge’ 12”, and over to the pressure of his subaquatic shimmy in ‘Coastal’, or lip-bitingly taut 2-step swivel of ’Wood Over Plastic’ on the ‘In Spectra’ 12”; his skeletal rhythm trax dare to dance in lesser heard but wholly vital niches of club music in a way that plays to club needs, not wants. 

 

 

No hyperbole, it’s just 100% deadly if you ask we, and makes the other 99% of dance music producers right now sound like line-dancing copycats in relief of his sound: a painstakingly chiselled pursuit of the dragon that drove UK dance music - particular the ‘hardcore ‘nuum - to thrilling, inspirational degrees from the late ‘80s thru the ‘90s and into the present. After wriggling our socks off to his new live set on The White Hotel’s faithful rig a few weeks ago, we can only confirm he’s the best to do it right now, and this doublepack is fucking unmissable if you follow.

 

 

For the dancers, DJs!

</p><iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 274px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=246103884/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://0207carrier.bandcamp.com/album/neither-curve-nor-edge">Neither Curve Nor Edge by Carrier</a></iframe><iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 241px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3759117354/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://0207carrier.bandcamp.com/album/in-spectra">In Spectra by Carrier</a></iframe>

This essential reissue presents a rare collection of dub instrumental reggae tracks recorded by Tommy McCook (who you may know as the sax man from super ska outfit The Skatalites) and Bobby Ellis (who played the trumpet for dub legends The Upsetters) in 1977. Originally licensed to Grove Music, this still remarkable album features renowned musicians such as Sly and Robbie, Ansel Collins on organ, Clinton Fearon from The Gladiators on lead guitar, and Bernard Harvey of The Wailers on piano. The recordings took place at Channel One and were mixed at King Tubby Studio and every single tune cuts deep and with great authenticity.

De Leon returns to Mana, following their 2018 LP, offering a suite of new material that adds further waypoints to the map of their cryptic soundworld, deepening and expanding the direction of travel they began within the Aught collective. The dual legacies of Javanese gamelan and minimalist composition remain clear touchstones on this second, untitled album, which employs architectures of repetition and microtonality and evokes the musical heritage of the Bay Area whilst folding in the arid landscapes of Tucson, Arizona, where its compositions were conceived in part. Featuring a broad vocabulary of source material, notably Daniel Schmidt’s gamelan at Mills College and the spherical gongs on the album’s cover, combined with a homespun collection of prepared instruments and faint vapours of synthesis, De Leon crafts a distinct signature sound that evades alignment with conventions of academic composition and contemporary electronica but nods to both as it carves out its unique direction of travel. This album inscribes itself into a tradition of works that enable listeners to perceive deeper valences of time and psychedelic aesthetics of scale. Percussion and metallophones fluctuate within the virtual space of the recording and the sounds avoid stasis, rather undulating restlessly or flickering in and out of perception in a manner consistent with the mercurial sensibilities of their early De Leon recordings.

Japan’s KAKUHAN deliver a futureshock jolt on their incred debut album ‘Metal Zone’ - deploying drum machine syncopations around bowed cello and angular electronics that sound like the square root of Photek’s ‘Ni Ten Ichi Ryu’, Arthur Russell’s ‘World of Echo’, Beatrice Dillon’s ‘Workaround’ and Mica Levi’s ‘Under The Skin’ - or something like T++ and Errorsmith dissecting Laurie Anderson’s ‘Home Of The Brave’, her electric violin panned and bounced relentlessly around the stereo field. It really is that good - basically all the things we love, in multiples. While "Metal Zone" might be their debut, KAKUHAN are hardly newcomers. Koshiri Hino is a member of goat (jp), releasing a run of records under the YPY moniker, and heading up the NAKID label, while Yuki Nakagawa is a well known cellist and sound artist who has worked with Eli Keszler and Joe Talia among many others. Together, they make a sound that’s considerably more than the sum of its parts - as obsessively tweaked, cybernetic and jerky as Mark Fell, frothing with the same gritted, algorithmic intensity as Autechre's total-darkness sets, stripped to the bone and carved with ritualistic symbolism. The album’s most startling and unexpected moments come when KAKUHAN follow their 'nuum inclinations, snatching grimey bursts and staccato South London shakes and matching them with dissonant excoriations that shuttle the mind into a completely different place. It's not a collision we expected, but it's one that's completely melted us - welding obsessive rhythmic futurism onto bloodcurdling horror orchestration - the most appropriate soundtrack we can imagine for the contemporary era. By the album's final track, we're presented with South Asian microtonal blasts that suddenly make sense of the rest of the album; Nakagawa erupts into Arthur Russell-style clouded psychedelia, while wavering flutes guide bio-mechanical ritual musick formations. It’s the perfect closer for the album’s series of taut, viscous, and relentless gelling of meter and tone in sinuous tangles, weaving across East/West perceptions in spirals toward a distinctive conception of rhythmic euphoria with a sense of precision, dexterity and purpose that nods to classical court or chamber music as much as contemporary experimental digressions. Easily one of the most startling and deadly debuts we’ve heard in 2022; the louder we’ve played it, the more it’s realigned our perception of where experimental and club modes converge - meditative, jerky, flailing genius from the outerzone. Basically - an AOTY level Tip.

990x has been blurring the line between rap and ambient for almost a decade, breaking up his subby, saturated 808 kicks and itchy percussive trills with effervescent pads, levitational loops and the kind of ghostly contrails you'd expect to hear on a Grouper record. He's never sounded quite as liminal as he does on 'Ruins', though, an album produced in recovery as he contemplated the healing process, shifting between one state and the next. As part of the recently formed label clique The Citadel, along with Sauron and IJI, he hones in on decentralised, defocussed sounds linked across continents by the internet’s rhizomatic networks, repping a certain slant on the sound that originated with Lil B and diffused via soundcloud to become a key node in the contemporary definition of what Brian Eno termed a “scenius”; a collective intelligence that transcends the sum of its parts. Throughout ‘Ruins’, 990x deploys all the hallmarks of the aesthetic - glyding 808 bass and sibilant trills, vaporous pads, and noctilucent melodies - with a melancholic grip all his own. According to classic cloud rap convention, the 8-part, 40 minute suite evinces a liminal, weightless state of mind with immersive structures that appear to float, buoyed by subs that plunge all the way down, whilst his ambient soul wraps the head in high tog puff stuffed with hopes and dreams. Shimmering echoes of Lil B and Clams Casino’s early works perfuse ‘Forest of Silence’ in his use of guzheng-like string motifs diffused to the rafters on diaphanous subs, and Yungwebster’s screwed diagonals come to mind in the vertiginous bliss-out ‘Fallen’. A tempered ecstasy thieves thru the saturated cinematic panorama ‘June Lovers’ and gives way to the ruder ballast of ‘Crates’ while the fractal hi-hats on ‘Sonar’ ultimately get subsumed by saturated waves of bass and screwed ambient dub on the album’s longest cut, the subtly optimistic 8 minute parting shot ‘Wisdom’, deploying a horizontal dembow rhythm that can't help but remind us of Kelman Duran's epochal '1804 Kids'.