MUSIC

Troweling brick walls with grief, the mortar won't ever fill all the holes. When the water drips in I pretend that I’m dry, and sing a song to remember loss by. NY Graffiti "Burden" 2021-2023.

Caligula is the third studio album by American musician Lingua Ignota, released July 19, 2019 through Profound Lore Records.[1] Recorded after the signing with the record label in 2018, the album features collaborations with several other musicians, a departure from the recording process of her previous album All Bitches Die (2017), which was done alone in a shed in the woods, and features more acoustic instrumentation than the aforementioned record. It thematically explores themes of abuse, misogyny, hate, vengeance and violence in its lyrics, inspired by Hayter's own experiences in Providence, and features influences from both classical and extreme music. The album received universal acclaim from music critics, and made appearances on several year-end lists.

Twin heavyweights Kevin Richard Martin (The Bug) and Joseph Kamaru (KMRU) unite for Disconnect, a powerful study of dread, hope, and profound sonics that marries depth-trawling dub with Kamaru’s voice, ambient sensibilities, and negative space. Kevin Martin first became aware of Kenyan ambient musician KMRU “watching the short 2020 documentary Under The Bridge,” he tells us. “Which, aside from immediately finding Joseph's approach to sound and music so instantly impressive, I also found his spoken voice possessed a captivating, lilting, tonal quality, with his soft-spoken accent.” Following this, Martin dug into Kamaru’s records, and found not only a kindred spirit in skillful exploration of sonic space, but also a fan of The Bug. So began a mutually respectful relationship, initially held in Instagram DMs and reciprocal admiration for each other’s work and eventually blossoming into an invitation sent by Kevin to Joseph to collaborate on a new album. The results - debut collaboration album Disconnect - collect a back-and-forth creative dialogue that started life in Martin’s studio. “I think I surprised Joseph by suggesting he contributes vocals,” Martin tells us. This ability to identify, isolate and exploit the nonstandard is a trait shared by both musicians and employed to devastating effect on Disconnect. Its vocals, sitting somewhere between intonation and spoken word, capture the ear and fizz with simmering power. They are indeed a surprise, coming from a musician specialising in instrumental, field recording-laced ambient musics, but tell intensely evocative stories, weaving poetry into the pair’s grandiose greyscale musical architecture. The record is just as deep, expressive, and arresting as we can expect from Kevin Richard Martin, following his acclaimed rescore of Solaris (released in 2021 on Phantom Limb) and a handful of self-released solo albums that explore a sound just as heavy as The Bug but at a menacingly slower pace. And it is just as evocative and unique as Kamaru’s KMRU canon, each object delicately and purposefully placed so the timbral mosaic builds with shimmering and hypnotic beauty.

フィンランド電子音楽界の生ける伝説であり、Mika Vainioらと共にPan Sonicでも活躍した実験的作家、Ilpo Väisänenによる2022年の12インチ作品をストック。今この時間も繰り広げられ続けている、無視できない殺戮と破壊に対する、鎮静と鎮魂が込められた、力強く瞑想的な、漆黒のポスト・インダストリアル作品。版元は、「自由と独立のために戦うすべての人々に捧げる」ウクライナの新しいレーベルであり、MuslimgauzeやMerzbow、Noémi Büchiの作品も発表している 〈I Shall Sing Until My Land Is Free〉。Noel Summervilleによるマスタリング＆カッティング仕様と盤質も万全。

「この侵略には依然として反対だ。夏は最高だが、一部の人にとってはそうではないのだ。ロシアはウクライナで残忍な戦争を続け、民間人を爆撃し、民間人を殺害し、都市や村を意図的に破壊している。

戦争は続いており、ロシアの戦略はそれを長引かせ、西側諸国がいつかすべてを忘れるようにすることである。プーチンは、エネルギーと食料を武器として使い、我々の団結を破壊しようとしている。

現在、ヨーロッパで大量虐殺が起きていることを指摘したい。ちくしょう、今ここにあると。忘れるな！」
- Ilpo Väisänen

Brooklyn's illbient cult Sensational meets Kyoto's composer unbuilt.

Ach, komm, ein Mensch kann nicht immer gut sein... This sentiment rings amusingly true for us. How did we find ourselves in this post-truth era, and why does such a term actually exist? In a world where distinctions between right and wrong blur, does the clarity of a black-and-white delineation persist? Are we progressing, or are we regressing to a state reminiscent of the past? Weaving together the complex tapestry of gore, politics, emotions, and, of course, the human experience in this work is done intricately and reflectively by the hands of Christoph de Babalon.

LP (red vinyl) & 7" (one-sided blue vinyl). Limited vinyl edition of 300 copies.

Brooklyn's illbient cult Sensational meets Kyoto's composer unbuilt.

Smalltown Supersound’s immaculate Le Jazz-Non Series returns with this special edition set of recordings from acclaimed film director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s longtime sound designer and composer Koichi Shimizu, including first time vinyl appearances of music from ‘Memoria’ and the Palme d'Or winning ‘Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives’. Sprawling, atmospheric, sometimes unexpectedly caustic gear at the intersection of Japanese Environmental music and Autechre’s iced fascinations. Best known for his work for legendary Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (he even designed the enigmatic "bang" in 2021's labyrinthine 'Memoria'), Japan’s Koichi Shimizu has been honing a unique musical language since the early '90s, where some of his earliest material can be found on a split LP with Yoshiteru Himuro via once-iconic imprint Worm Interface (itself home to music from Autechre side-line Gescom). 'Imprint', was initially released quietly back in 2021 and has been remastered for this new edition, removing one track and bumping it up with four more, making it all available on vinyl for the first time. The album offers a perfect overview of Shimizu’s broad palette, ranging from fine-wrought keys to electronic brutalism and guttural rhythmic pulses, plotted with an underlying narrative cadence that evinces his ability to heighten the impact of moving image, whilst also colouring the imagination with ephemeral sound imagery. His tekkerz are in bracing, anticipatory effect on a retooled, expanded version of his music from ‘Memoria’ within the convulsive, swarming silhouette of ‘Imprint’, and ‘The Path’ finds his aural accompaniment to ‘Uncle Boonmee…’ given room to breathe and develop into an unexpected, OOBE-like experience. In ‘Moth’ he magnifies and anthropomorphises a winged insect with finely chiselled technical nous, and his exquisite arrangement to ‘Faded Sign’ is somehow comparable to the ephemeral emotional register of cinematic collaborations between Ryuichi Sakamoto and Carsten Nicolai.

'Absurd Matter' is a labyrinthine sonic conundrum that spirals around the two poles of extreme noise and hip-hop. It’s Berlin-based Italian producer Shapednoise’s first album in four years, and confidently advances his narrative into the next chapter, building on the groundwork of his prior abstractions to emerge with a coherent genre-warped fusion of urgent rap, crushing bass weight, and idiosyncratic sound design. After spending years scrupulously deconstructing club music, Nino Pedone has rebuilt it brick by brick in his image. The album arrives after a period of severe anxiety for the producer when he unexpectedly lost his hearing. For a professional sound designer, it’s a nightmare made flesh, and Pedone was suddenly left unable to produce music, DJ, or even attend events. Now in recovery, he was forced to reconsider his output, struck by the stress of mortality and his body’s precarious materiality. It's the first release on Pedone’s brand new imprint WEIGHT LOOMING, a multidisciplinary label platform that’s set to explore the depths of bass music, textured noise, and abrasive transcendence. It taps into kinetic energy from a hand-picked selection of collaborators, of the likes of New York rap duo Armand Hammer, French DJ/producer Brodinski, David Lynch’s longtime collaborator Dean Hurley, Bruiser Brigade’s ZelooperZ, and vanguard Philly poet, musician, and activist Moor Mother. 'Absurd Matter' is a defining personal development for Pedone that not only appraises his career so far but diverts its logic into frighteningly new sonic territory. From great loss, the producer has determined his work's cardinal themes and sounds more strident and far heavier than ever before.

Eaux proudly announces the second full length solo LP from Rrose, Please Touch, released on vinyl, CD, and digital download in June 2023. The LP follows 2019’s Hymn to Moisture in ways that are both subtle and striking: Please Touch further hones the artist’s tensile sound while exploring new aesthetic vistas and basking in an undeniably erotic sense of play. Moving with undulating power, the album’s nine tracks drift across tempos from a weightless 0 bpm to a crawling 100 to a lunging 140 and back, with a rich palette of sculpted noise and cross-talking microtones. Rrose’s compositional process, rooted in their studies with West Coast avant garde trailblazers at Mills College, centers on “seed” sounds being fed through elaborate webs of interrelated audio processing. The result is a world where changes in any one element have downstream implications for some or all the others. It’s a rich interdependence that lets the tracks breathe, grow and mutate with uncanny organicism. Please Touch addresses in equal measure the perceptual and the corporeal: these are sounds that sink into the body, exhibiting a tactility that pushes, pulls, bends and yields with fearsome vibrancy. The album splits its time between radical techno iterations and pieces which pare back the percussion, letting the synth textures uncurl in their own time and space. The quivering drone and rolling sub-bass of “Joy of the Worm’’ set the tone for the record, while “Rib Cage,” Spore" and “Spines ” swing with stepping rhythmic underpinnings. Building with finely calibrated tension, they use their few elements to startling, snarling effect. “Pleasure Vessels” is a rare moment of becalmed introspection in Rrose’s oeuvre, hinting at a melodic ambiance that is practically unseen in previous works. It glows with a soft, dawn-like light before dissolving into a tidal fizz. “The Illuminating Glass’’ brings the tempo down to a languorous chug, nodding its way through a field of glistening chirps and leaden gasps. “Feeding Time,” “Disappear” and album closer “Turning Blue’’ meanwhile nod to the cerebral psychedelia of Rrose’s forebears, with mesmeric, looping textures and long, magisterial tones not dissimilar to the spectral works of James Tenney (whose work Rrose regularly performs) and the deep listening pieces of Pauline Oliveros. The title of the album refers playfully to the tactile quality of the music while hinting at a forbidden sensuality that is only permitted within the confines of this microcosm. The phrase is also another nod to Marcel Duchamp, who gave this title to a 1947 exhibition of Surrealist art.

Revanchist (2023) is the long-awaited debut album by Evian Christ, scheduled for release by WARP on 20th October 2023. The eight-track record explores the latent potential in Trance to evoke, beyond Euphoria, the fullest feeling of the Sublime. Revanchist draws from an unlikely and expansive pool of influences; compositing, at once, the suffocating throttle of Demiurge-era Emptyset (2011); the worldliness of Madonna and William Orbit’s Ray Of Light LP (1998); the acute uncanniness of Laibach’s Across The Universe (1988); and a highly stylized approach to mixing and sound design primarily inspired by Sasha’s seminal Xpander EP (1999) 

On Embers, Revanchist’s opening track and lead single, perhaps best encapsulates Christ’s inclination towards the total annihilation of Trance’s default affects; rapturous supersaws meet a tempest of indecipherable noise, mangled 808s and broken shards of Defected Records gospel house acapellas. Nobody Else shows reverence to classic Balearic Trance and its associated imagery — a widescreen view of a supermassive Iberian sunset; Apocalypse Now meets Café Del Mar. Its spacious breakdown, featuring an impressionistic treatment of vocals lifted from Clairo’s North, provides one of Revanchist's most strikingly fragile moments. Yxguden, the record's final single, is accompanied by a music video directed by early computer graphics pioneer and Tiesto-collaborator Micha Klein, who choreographs a meeting between Drain Gang’s Bladee and a Nordic Bronze Age cave drawing of an axe-wielding Moundperson. Utilising a vocal hook most widely recognised for its use in DJ Hixxy’s “More and More” (2007), Yxguden’s chaotic arrangement jump-cuts between moments of gauzy ambiance and frenzied exhilaration. Run Boys Run, Revanchist’s concluding track, sees Christ summon an enraptured chorus of bending strings and soaring choral threnoi, eventually resting on a single sub-bass note, held to exhaustion 

Revanchist’s album artwork, designed by David Rudnick, features a hand-drawn depiction of a crystal-forged newborn, emerging against a backdrop compositing Lars Hertervig’s Gamle Furutrær (1865) and a still from Chris Bucklow’s Jerusalem (1994). The album was mixed and mastered by Chris Pawlusek and Christ in Goa, India 

Bisola Olungbenga was just nine years old when she started writing music. Encouraged by her piano playing mom, she would come home from school and compete with her sister, dreaming up verses and choruses for rewards of candy. Since then, Olungbenga has evolved into Aunty Razyor, one of Nigeria's most vibrant emerging artists - a cross-genre innovator who blends hip-hop, Afrobeat, R&B and experimental sounds into an energetic portrait of contemporary Lagos. "Viral Wreckage" is Olungbenga's debut album, and follows the breakout success of her viral 2021 street anthem 'Kuku Corona'. This time she's assembled a lineup of some of the world's most exciting producers to help realize her vision: Congolese singer, guitarist and producer Titi Bakorta, young Ugandan producer Ill Gee, veteran Japanese innovator Scotch Rolex, São Paulo-based baile funk producer DJ Cris Fontedofunk, French beatmaker Debmaster, Nigerian singer and producer Slimcase, and Kenyan avant pop futurist Kabeaushé. 'Stuttrap' is the first blast of sound we hear, and Olungbenga quickly pilots us into her sonic universe, rapping assertively in Yoruba and English over Scotch Rolex's chrome-plated trap backdrop. It's not far removed from the producer's work with Kenyan/Ugandan underground star MC Yallah, but Aunty Rayzor's incendiary, tongue-twisting raps coax listeners into a musical expression that's hard to define and only gets more expansive when we hit 'Doko'. Featuring Slimcase, who's collaborated with Nigerian superstars like Wizkid and Mr Eazi, this track melts together swinging West African rhythms with complex poetics from both Slimcase and Rayzor. Olungbenga slips into a different mode again on 'Bounce' - one of the album's most dancefloor-ready cuts - almost whispering over a corrosive neo-baile shuffle from DJ Cris Fontedofunk. São Paulo is responsible for some of the world's most effervescent dance music right now, and with Rayzor on vocals the result is predictably explosive, making connections between vital street music from two separate continents. Recent Nyege Nyege signing Titi Bakorta brings Olungbenga into another different zone on 'Fall Back', linking to vintage Afrobeat with low-slung guitar riffs that perfectly compliment Rayzor's soaring vocals. Bakorta's voice is the perfect foil, centering the track in traditions that stretch back through Nigerian history without sounding nostalgic. Kabeaushé hits a similarly complimentary note on 'You not worthy of my love', twisting Rayzor's AutoTune-mangled rhymes into fresh-faced avant R&B that sits a few paces from the mainstream without losing its infectious sing-along quality. And that's the key to unravelling "Viral Wreckage" - Olungbenga is able to be eclectic but sharply focused, bringing in sounds from across a wide world of musical innovation without sacrificing her Nigerian identity. It's an album that's almost effortlessly creative, and one that comes straight from the heart of an artist who's deserves a way larger platform.

Donato Dozzy and Stefano Di Trapani plumb the kosmische void on 'The Black Sphere', an hour long session using turntables, electronics and brainwave generators for a deep dive into psychedelic, Cluster-inspired drone workouts and tripped-out Techno ballistics. Dozzy and Di Trapani are both experienced improvisors, and Mantenna was conceived as a sort of laboratory for impromptu studio and live electronic performance, using the location and its limitations to inspire and guide their work. 'The Black Sphere' was recorded at Klang in Rome, where Dozzy and Di Trapani not only had to perform with no pre-recorded or practiced elements, but also do so with gear they had never used before - always a chance for failure, always an opportunity for opening up creative wormholes. The side-long title track finds Dozzy and Di Trapani deep in the kosmische vortex, drawing on early Cluster by layering noisy oscillator drones into tripped-out textures, eschewing drums but not ignoring rhythm entirely. Playing off each other, the duo work like jazz players, allowing the sound to expand and then dip to near silence when necessary. Tones undulate like waves, slowly building into rough, ragged noise before dispersing into pulsing abstraction. It's not just a love letter to the '70s Berlin school, but a celebration of analog synthesis, toying with the physical sound of oscillators and cavernous echoes. On the flip, 'Hiranyagarbha' finds the duo programming rhythms using an arsenal of drum machines, opening with a pounding, bass-heavy kickdrum that cuts through a fog of analog screams before taking centre stage, morphing into a distorted, electroid throb that's not a million miles from Mika Vainio or Emptyset. The duo eventually pull back into a corrosive, circuit-bent acid session that peaks with a womping, stepped kick like some classic Plastikman fed through a broken pedal board, or just classic Dozzy, if you like.

Next up in Veyl's ever-evolving and diverse catalog comes of an experimental sonic experience from Llimbs. The project of Hagen Ebejer, he began making music in the early 2000's and started Llimbs in 2016, which allowed him to officially release music and perform live, making his debut at Berlin's legendary Tresor. Now he arrives on Veyl with Midnight Amber, an 8-track album which fully realizes the Llimbs sound and vision. Inspired by dark and experimental sounds, Midnight Amber is a tour de force of genre-bending compositions, conjured using downtempo and dreamlike sounds which explore both the organic and digital. The result is an undefinable affair which is both haunting and infectious at once. 'Unfold' commences the album with a soft yet powerful piece of melodic melancholy, inviting the listener through the gates and into the world of Llimbs. 'Divergent' picks things up with a ritual work of stirring chants which leads us to the evocative chords on 'Origin'. Finishing off side A is 'Absent', a slow burning rhythmic piece which encapsulates the listener, creating an almost nostalgic atmosphere for a time unknown. 'Phase' begins the B side with cinematic flair, creating a palpable tension which then evaporates into the ether. 'Eclipse' returns to a familiar dreamworld, traversing the skies which feel both familiar yet mysterious before 'Fragment' dives deeper into a hidden universe of emotion, fusing ancient works with modern technology. Concluding the album is 'Midnight', a perfect end to a journey which exists at the intersection of the natural and mechanical, reality and surreality, marking a tremendous finale which can only lead to a new beginning.

Elle Andrews & Jon K’s MAL imprint racks up a heavy cross-section of dancehall and downbeat-adjacent styles and patterns by friends and fam, clad in artwork by Yoshi Yubai of the legendary Re Search publications and featuring exclusive cuts from Equiknoxx’ Bobby Blackbird, Joe Cotch, Herron, DJ Ojo, Malvern Brume and more. First of two parts! ’Pressure’ is MAL’s rude resistance to an increasingly tense socio-political climate. Finding strength in collaboration, it organises a phalanx of contemporary club pioneers, programmers, dynamos and disruptors under a clarion call to dance away our worries. Shoulder-to-shoulder, Equiknoxx’s Bobby Blackbird does aerobic mystic dancehall beside the dread tang of London ringleader Joe Cotch, and Manchester g Herron squashes beatdown into acid dub squirm next to Malvern Brume’s haunted warehouse steppers, each intersecting a mutual, autonomous zone of interest oblivious to borders. Bobby Blackbird’s ‘Shanique is 5 Mins Away’ firmly roots the session in naturally mutant Jamaican disciplines key to the label, which delineates most explicitly between the darkside 2-step echo chamber ricochet of DJ Ojo’s ‘Grape Storming’ and Grischerr & Jules’ cranky heave in ‘Jettison’, and the more abstract dubwise suspension of ‘Night Ascent’ by Zaheer Gulamhusein (Xvarr/Waswaas) as The Sigil Oblique. Crudely distorted echoes of nyabinghi and talking drum rituals feature in Malvern Brume’s ‘Ebb’, a brilliantly unexpected follow-up to the supine grog of his ‘Body Traffic’ LP, while closer to the label’s spiritual home in Manchester, Herron keeps it strictly stripped on the brittle, dread acid dub of ‘Reducer’, and Greek/Manc hero Duster Valentine supplies the dadaist antidote to an intensifying hypernormality of logic with the sardonic vignette ‘Cloonies’ that keeps the session open-ended and all of us on tenterhooks for Vol.2.

Vladislav Delay presents the second EP in his "Hide Behind The Silence" series with five 10" releases coming throughout 2023. Intuitive and raw music, momentary and reflective, released on Ripatti's own label "Rajaton". Stillness is a myth. Consider concepts such as ”still water”, or ”still air” for that matter. Go to a restaurant, ask them for a glass of still water, hold it against the light and see where we’re at. Even though the water itself has been captured and imprisoned in the glass, it never stops breathing. It’s filled with tiny particles, dancing. Everything can be explained on a molecular level, but since we’re not scientists – and even if you happen to be – it’s the natural world of perception that moves me. Still air is very similar. A hot summer’s day with zero wind feels completely still. It’s the closest I have felt to complete stillness. Or for a more urban adaptation, imagine the same vibe inside a normal apartment. In those moments, revelations and mind- blowing experiences can be had with experiments in stillness. Try this: Just sit down for a minute on a sunny day, making sure there’s enough natural light. Do absolutely nothing. Try not to breathe for a bit. (If you need a mental anchor, you can play Cage’s 4’33” in your head but nothing else.) Watch the tiny dots of dust dancing :..’ ̈.:; ́ ́*°.,’:,. ̈ ̈ ̈ ̈:,.’ The movement is crazy, but the feeling of stillness comes from witnessing how subtle it is. In (perceived) complete stillness, every act of microscopic mobility seems to speak volumes. Yet, it feels both reassuring and oddly threatening that the stillness is never complete. What if we would need absolute stillness? Or is it just enough that we can perceive something as such? Extremes attract, so for both water and air, extraordinary movement is equally fascinating. That is also a luxury item of sorts. For us to enjoy a very ”loud” body of water or air, we need to be safe, in enough control of the situation. So when you are, it’s worthwhile to pay attention and take it all in. A rapid flowing free with extreme strength and just barely in control. Look at that water go! No still water on this one, only ”sparkling”. A windy day when birds seem surprised how hard it is to fly, but in the end they make it. Trees bend but don’t break. The wind shows you its movement but doesn’t hurt you. It feels friendly, like a big clumsy dog that doesn’t quite understand its size. It’s beautiful to be a guest of the elements, but not at the mercy of them. A new kind of dialogue forms. **Q&A with Sasu Ripatti:** *1) Tell us something about the EP series ”Hide Behind the Silence”, what’s the idea and what can we expect?* Exploration of inaction. Of many kinds. In arts and in personal life, or at bigger and more serious levels. Questioning myself as a human being as well as an artist. Acknowledging the growing activism all around, and the very clear need for it, and how it reflects my own inaction. Musically speaking, after Rakka, Isoviha and Speed Demon, I finally found some relief, but more importantly lost the need to go musically ever more outward and intensive. I felt quite strongly certain periods/moods from the past and they made me revisit some musical ideas or states of mind I was exploring early on. It’s about live moments being captured, not much premeditation or editing. More intuitive and raw, even though the end result (to me) feels and sounds quite introspective and calm. It’s not very ambitious. Momentary and reflective. *2) Your music doesn’t sound very silent. Does it come from somewhere behind the silence?* Oh, this time to me it sounds quite quiet and playing with space if not silence. I don’t know what’s actually behind silence, but I think silence is the source of everything. We just don’t understand it yet. *3) What kind of thoughts or experiences gave inspiration to this series?* Writing this in Nov ’22, it’s not a stretch to say the world has been really unwell. Sometimes, like Mika Vainio put it, the world eats you up. I feel a bit like that. And I try to hide in my studio and stay away from it all, but it’s getting harder by the day. I’ve been questioning myself and thinking if what us artists are doing is worth anything, and whether it’s just a selfish thing I’ve been doing for the past 25 years, running away from everything. I haven’t come to a conclusion yet. *4) Is it easy for you to be in silence, or around silence?* Absolutely. I not only hide behind silence but I also love silence. It’s only since I started going back to nature as a grown-up person that I sensed and was enveloped by silence, true silence. I have begun to appreciate it a lot. I think all the people should spend more time in silence.

Zero Kama was an experimental music project founded by Zoe DeWitt in 1983. The first release of Zero Kama was the title V.V.V.V.V., recorded for the Nekrophile Rekords cassette compilation The Beast 666. In 1984 followed the cassette release of the album The Secret Eye of L.A.Y.L.A.H., which is commonly regarded as one of the key albums of the industrial-subgenre 'ritual'. The fact that all instruments used for this recording were exclusively made from human bones and skulls, its elusive musical style, the implied occult symbolism as well as the short-time existence of Zero Kama, whose backgrounds remained unknown for a long time, have been contributing to the cult status of this project until now.

Following an invitation of the NL-Centrum Amsterdam, Zero Kama played two live concerts in the Netherlands in 1985, and - after two more releases on the Nekrophile compilation The Archangels of Sex Rule the Destruction of the Regime - completely withdrew from the public. While The Secret Eye of L.A.Y.L.A.H. was recorded solely by Zoe DeWitt, the later live performances were realized with befriended musicians such as Didi Neidhart and Muki Pakesch, whom Zoe DeWitt knew from the Austrian music underground of the 1980s.

Since that time there have been a couple of re-releases of Zero Kama recordings, amongst others the 1988 Vinyl version by the French label Permis de Construire, followed by the CD release in 1991. In 2001 the French label Athanor published The Goatherd and the Beast, a 10" vinyl containing tracks from various compilations that were recorded besides The Secret Eye of L.A.Y.L.A.H.. This collection was also included as a bonus CD in the Live in Armhem double CD release by Athanor in 2008. In 2014 Athanor finally published a remastered version of The Secret Eye of L.A.Y.L.A.H. as both vinyl and CD.

Infinite fog Productions presents an anthology release of Zero Kama. The first time ever, everything recorded by the project released as one set on limited CD, VINYL and CASSETE. Recordings transferred from original tapes, carefully mastered by Martin Bowes at the Cage Studios and Micro Majong at Micro Majong Studio. Designed by Cold Graves.

The second album of 2012's masterpiece has been repressed! From the opening vocals to the bass-heavy beat of the preceding track Numb, which leads into a dark world, all of these songs have a solemn worldview where ashes fall. This album features a female vocalist who sounds like a liquefied version of Sade, and the leaden industrial beat and jet-black ambience that accompanies the aesthetic sound is breathtaking. The artwork that perfectly matches the music is also excellent. Masterpiece!

Hailing from Łódź, Poland, Justyna Banaszczyk aka FOQL was raised in the post-industrial decay of the city beloved by David Lynch for its abundant, knackered architecture (think ‘Eraserhead’, or run go check his warehouse photo studies). ‘Wehikuł’ translating to ‘Vehicle’, echoes its provenance and dark surreality across eight cuts of intricate post-techno pulses webbed with brooding synths that lend a fine new stripe of influence to MAL’s unpredictable ‘Rebel Music’ agenda, perfectly in step with its off-road vectors.

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.”

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

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.

Andy Stott’s ultra-classic bout of screwed, knackered House is a shapeshifting, hardy perennial whose crushing traction and atmospheric grip has only deepened in the decade (+1) since it was first issued, as part of a now notorious one-two in 2011 beside ‘Passed Me By’. Out of print for almost a decade, it’s now finally available again in a new edition that’s still sounding unlike pretty much anything else we’ve heard in the intervening years. ’We Stay Together’ was a proper watershed moment for Andy Stott in the nascent phase of an inspirational stylistic arc. While he’d spent the previous six years constructing everything from warehouse-shuddering deep house and dub techno to bare-boned dubstep, the arrival of a new decade paid witness to Stott turning inward, collapsing what he’d learnt from late night sessions with the Modern Love crew into a radical new sound that was arguably without precedent in its field. The simple move of screwing the tempo to circa 100BPM would, in turn, open out his sound, prising room between the rhythms which he coloured with a palette of particularly bruised, processed outside-the-box textures gleaned from an array of guitar pedals and endlessly churned samples. There were, of course, parallels in DJ Screw’s codeine-infused treatments of classic rap and soul, and their influence on the contemporaneous “witch house” style, but few, if any, were doing it within a techno and club music context that hewed so close to the darker, gristlier underbelly and animus of Manchester’s warehouse heritage. This style of viscous, cranky chug proved fertile ground that would be explored in-depth over the next decade - you can hear traces of it on everything from Overmono’s sludge to Low’s acclaimed 'Double Negative’ - and trust when we say it’s the source of it all. But, still, nothing twats quite as smart or heavy as ‘We Stay Together’. From an opening that uncannily echoes the rinsed-out empty warehouse scenes in the closing stages of ‘Fioriucci Made Me Hardcore’, the serotonin-depleted ’Submission’ triggers a side-chained momentum that helplessly drags users thru the gnarly mire of ‘Posers’ to the zombied lurch of ‘Bad Wires’ and its title tune’s ket-legged strut. He pushes the aesthetics to asphyxiating degrees on ‘Cherry Eye’, but not without a glimmer of hope in its underwater choral motifs that always buoys his best bits from utter doom, before ‘Cracked’ stresses the metallic tang of his textures with a bloodlust and vital, systolic throb whose effect has only been galvanised with age. With the benefit of hindsight, ‘We Stay Together’ surely ranks among the best of its strange, pivotal decade. There’s really nothing else quite like it.