MUSIC

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.

One of the first artists from outside of Africa to sign to Hakuna Kulala, WULFFLUW XCIV brings his borderless productions to the label's ongoing Whitelabel series following a slew of dancefloor agitations from T5UMT5UMU, Menzi & Scratchclart, and others. "Toxica EP" builds on the mutant fusion of 2020's acclaimed "Ngoma Injection", stripping back the woozy psychedelia and chromium ambience and replacing it with pure soundsystem pressure. 'Take a Ride' bends acid techno machinery around rubbery East African rhythms, anchoring block party hedonism with a 4/4 bump that wouldn't be out of place in Kreuzberg and vocal shakes straight from São Paulo. But this isn't a mindless mashup of aesthetics, its a conversation with the world's fringe agitators, using stylistic and rhythmic strokes to highlight commonality, not exclusivity.Hakuna Kulala's own Chrisman appears on 'Tetemeka', and the two producers adapt the syrupy tarraxinha inversions the Congolese engineer perfected on last year's "Makila" full-length. Low, resonant gqom atmospheres underpin the entire track, but WULFFLUW XCIV's squeaky toy synths prevent it from slipping into darkness. Elsewhere 'Kluck' distorts the timeline completely, wedging flute-led Latin American tribal sounds into a riddim vs. trap superstructure, and 'Exp' sublimes speed dembow into delirious trance and minimal techno vapors. The boundaries between dance subgenres are slowly dissolving, and WULFFLUW XCIV's digital-era intermixture sounds like the cyberpunk carnival we're all desperately in need of.

As Young Druid, John T. Gast distills his most endearing Midi-eval energies into a suite of LED candle-lit fugues and funky Myrdas, making a sterling follow-up to his UVA_roots_and_destruction mixtape for Richard Sides’ Bus and the INNA BABALON tape in 2016, which was also self-issued on his 5 Gate Temple label. Concocted from a bank of recordings alchemised on one box and a two-track recorder, Young Druid follows 12 ley-lines of investigation with findings equally applicable to occult soirees and the downtime of amateur archaeologists and tyrannical trap lords alike; conjuring a haul of exquisitely ornate, glyphic hooks, gilded dub grooves and smoked-out chamber themes of a supremely rarified yet earthly air. They bear a striking resemblance to the bright, poised baroque MIDI orchestrations of Coil as much as King Tubby’s classic digi dubs, splitting the fine difference between K. Leimer’s new age experiments and Roland Young’s mystiphonic experiments or even Wiley and Geneeus’ early grime etudes; essentially divining an obscure, arcane and meditative sense of spirituality that transcends time and place with a broad appeal to armchair and headphone-dwelling mystics of all stripes. If you need any prompts, check the creamy luft of Young Druid for a start, then the cross-eyed invocation of Fugue and the Jammer-meets-kenji Kawai stepper, Myrda, and Blue’s exquisite trip hop pallor and you should have a good measure of the variety and consistency of mood and vibe therein. Strongly recommended.

Palestre is a study of higher-dimensional spaces and altered states of consciousness. It explores parallel dimensions and temporal anomalies from a perspective that blends mythology, modern physics, ADHD, transcendental music and club culture. Sciogli Assurdi was recorded between art galleries, clubs, squats, and folkloric festivities in 2018.

What comprises a dream? An astral plane of our own making where thoughts, love, and desires of the inner mind abound with irreverence - ripe with connection & perspective beyond constraints of time, set, and setting. Azu Tiwaline exists within the wonders of these interstitial worlds, diving deeper towards inner sanctums of mystic imagination, sublime intrigue, & profound understanding on her second full length LP “The Fifth Dream”. Released again through her beloved partnership with I.O.T Records, “The Fifth Dream” finds Azu painting an expansive vision towards unified multitudes, mercurial realities, & abundant inner sanctums. Where her first album “Draw Me a Silence” was a loving ode to her family & upbringing in the form of an elegant diptych, “The Fifth Dream" is the enactment of actualizing her roots into new routes, taking her multifaceted identity into new means of communication towards herself, the world, & the cosmic unknowns that surround her. Throughout The Fifth Dream’s 54-minute runtime, we hear all elements of the uniquely transcendental sound that Azu is beloved for worldwide. “Antennae Opening”, “Blowing Flow”, & “Amen Dub” embody her talents for tectonic, dubwise soundscapes that channel the innately maternal elements of bassweight into bold & abstracted pulsations, indebted to the most psychedelic & body activating ends of dubstep. Still attuned to the spatial awareness of dub sonics but giving way to the hypnotic syncopation & synaptic frequencies of techno, “Reptilian Waves”, “Long Hypnosis”, & “Mei Long” bring forth her spectacular expertise for entheogenic rave rhythms - guiding us warmly towards trance-inducing hyper states of dance & delight. Fluctuating between an adventurous velocity and enveloping stasis, the expansive abyssal planes of “Golden Dawn”, “Night in Palm Tree”, & “Canope Imaginaire” conjures a wondrously invigorating rhythmic enlightenment & celestial comprehension - simultaneously moving us forward, inwards, & outwards through Azu’s uniquely omnidirectional & kaleidoscopic musical visions. Adorned with sampled field recordings of her deeply inspiring home in the desert of El Djerid in South Tunisia, Azu opens a portal into the synergistic inner sanctums of being, self, and the world around us that’s essential to her work as an artist - from the macro levels of humanity’s naturally intimate connection to the Earth we share, down to each of our own micro levels of culture, ancestry, and belonging. All of this is alchemized through a combination of timeless Saharan knowledge & modern cybernetic tools, creating new dimensions of bewitching, euphonious sonic energy. This is music that gives back as much as the listener wants to give themselves unto it - detailed and layered, orbiting a steady core as ethereal swirls and intonations of the natural world embrace us warmly within a spellbinding journey. 8 of the album’s 9 tracks feature a deep level of collaboration from innovative Franco-Iranian percussionist Cinna Peyghamy. Cinna’s use of Tombak, the principle drum of Iranian music throughout time, is beautifully sonorous - channeling the passion of centuries of Southwest Asian rhythm & expression into his own personalized flourishes, with Azu adding her own electrifying frequencies & undiluted artistic freedom to their shared interplay. This profoundly communicative diasporic essence is transmuted between Azu & Cinna, their expression, & the listener. Both are music lovers, intimately connected to their respected Iranian and Tunisian cultures - concurrently acknowledging the wisdom of their resonant pasts, while proudly bringing the sounds of their heritage into the present & future. “The Fifth Dream” embodies a cosmic anodyne for those feeling caught in between life’s abyssal inbetweens, whilst aiming for a consonant awareness of where our home truly lies in the swells of life’s spiritual maelstrom. This dream belongs at once to none & to many, that of a common language unified in concentric depth - finding beauty in all aspects of our world, and ultimately, within oneself.

Gnarled outliers Scheich In China slam the hardcore panic button with five ruthless ramrods for acolytes of Nkisi, Gabber Modus Operandi, Service Animal, Hellfish & Producer, The Ephemeron Loop, Fifth Era… Dispatched beside a complementary album of death metal via their self-titled label, they unleash total hell via torrents of radical hardcore techno that absorbs aspects of doomcore, power noise, industrial and gabber musicks without any fucking about. Just as their Death Metal gear properly gnaws on its aesthetic bones, Scheich in China’s take on this sound is equally true to the ‘core, incendiary and primed to cause havoc at free parties or febrile clubs. ‘Fkk in Dänemark’ hews to a template of fast trot and down pitched doomcore dread next to a passage of inverted kick drum artillery, while ‘Bullenschweine (För Demos) + extra Track - Fick Die Oma - Mexican Mescal Mix’ churns up comparisons to vintage Hellish & Producer Deathchants. At its most radical, ‘Fickt Schafe (Russland is out Sodomie Mix)’ and the tracey death spiral of ‘Arschlöcher Überall’ recall the depth and intensity of The Ephemeron Loop or Fifth Era’s cold rushing doomcore arrangements. Be fucking daft not to.

Prime Cuts from the legendary Scratch Perverts crew with an upful six-tracker, full of life and intelligence, and teeming with fidgety, DIY, turntablist energy. For us it’s a bit like a raid on the racks at Honest Jons, over the decades… but fresh and bright. It kicks off with a headlong garbling of eighties jazz-funk, complete with synths, a vocoder, and some incipient Herbie, all sagging woozily into some nuts pitch control, before a mean beat-down. Some dubwise Channel One follows up, with almightily anthemic snatches of melody and unmistakable chords, almost breaking down under a barrage of skittering effects, scratching, laser-fire, strangulated melodica, and cowbell. Then three excursions in classic Detroit techno: moody electro funk, with a sprinkling of Harold Faltermeyer; hard-grooving minimalism, with a dash of It Takes Two; then a more industrial outing, with clattering percussion and gobbling synth. Finally an ambient interlude — overcast but twinklingly ambivalent — to close. Ace. A lot of fun. Check it out. Honest Jon's

Since 2018 João Pais Filipe (on drums) and Burnt Friedman (electronics/synth) investigate into automatic pattern–composition rooted in doubling and halving; the unimpeachable laws of motion. The offer of freedom can be seen as a way to get in touch with necessity. On „Mechanics Of Waving“ the attempt is made to succumb to such a mode of action, the drilling of a method, not through individual cunning or displayed musicianship. Through constant practise Friedman & Pais discover the principles of rhythmic phenomena while dis–associating the music from cultural idioms. Inspired by rare infrasound–ratios ranging from 11 to 23, Nonplace releases the results of a 4 years long operation.

First vinyl pressing of Baroque by Japanese composer and multi-instrumentalist Susumu Yokota, originally released on CD in 2004. The full-length album was originally released by United Sounds Of Blue in 2014, a subdivision of Frogman Records in CD format. Now it is being re-released by Barcelona-based record label Modern Obscure Music as a double-LP. Baroque is one of the most significant albums of Susumu signed under his original name. Yokota was an eclectic, highly prolific electronic musician and composer from Japan who died in 2015 at 54. "There is always fear, rage, and ugliness existing behind beauty. I have been trying to express ki-do-ai-raku (the four emotions: joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness) through music. I would like to express even one's hidden emotion with reality. It's my eternal goal." Baroque is a clear example of this, through the deep listening of the album you can experience all of those feelings in just one record and feel how his music influenced the next generation of producers during the two next decades till today. The Tokyo-based artist devoted his time and creative energy to achieving this goal, and the result is a vast discography that begins with banging early acid house tracks in the 1990s, moves across the next two decades to include deep house and Detroit-influenced techno, a stunning run of ambient electronic albums and, in his last decade, a glorious confluence that wove his various skills into a series of borderless electronic records. Susumu Yokota also known used pseudonyms Stevia and Ebi, among other.

We love it when family return to ZamZam and #92 welcomes back Blind Prophet & Ishan Sound in their first cross-pond collab. Begun in 2019 when Joe & Cris met in Portland for the first time, “The Labyrinth” is a phantasmagoric dream of intertwining melodic figures, buoyant mid-range synth work, bright percussion and piping flutes over a driving steppers riddim. Playful, even spritely, but belying a menacing core. Flipping the key and darkening the vibe substantially, “Minotaur Dub” strips out the lighter tones, pulsing and pushing through dark tunnels of reverb and echo, deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of refracting drums and relentless bass, the sound of pursuit, predator and prey. Fusing the spectral with the functional, the mythic with the technological, this release is for deep forest dances and subterranean sessions alike. This one is ruff… and tuff!! Strictly limited to 700 copies for the world. No digital, no repress. Art, design, & screen print by Polygon Press. Mastered by Sam at Precise, pressed at Third Man. Releasing end of July, 2023.

Yetsuby lands on Third Place with her 'Water Flash' EP this July with four bubbly tracks :) Seoul-based artist Yetsuby is best known as one half of electronic super-duo Salamanda, who have won hearts and minds with their light and floaty new-age electronica via releases on Good Morning Tapes, Human Pitch, and Métron Records. As a solo act, she has released her own music on the Taipei-based 禁 JIN, Extra Noir, as well as through the Seoul store The Internatiiional amongst self-released delights on her Bandcamp. On the A-side, the title cut 'Water Flash' leads with airy synths and textured percussion, while 'Electro Union' ups the energy with choppy vocal samples, punchy drums, and twinkling arps. On the flip, subtle synths wriggle alongside low-key percussion on 'Commercial Noisy Day', making for a heads-down affair, before the gorgeous finalé '물먹는하마' rounds out the B-side with delicate keys and detailed yet muted drums.

Vladislav Delay presents the third 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.

Ricardo Villalobos lands on Dana Ruh’s BQD TRAX for the label’s second ever release with two fresh sides of marathon-length minimal and broken beat entitled I’m Broken. Offering two different looks at a similar palette of sounds, Villalobos favours a mid-tempo break-y chug here, drawing deep emotion and ennui out of a vocal chop uttering the title and some stormy, high frequency synth lines. The B side’s Mix 2 clears away a bit of the clattering noise, but stutters the vocal line to give it an alien or computer malfunctioning feel. It’s a neat trick from a master at work.

Objekt #5 is the latest instalment in Objekt's eponymous whitelabel series and his first release since his 2018 album Cocoon Crush. Tackling "the slow banger" with a signature flair, he delivers two of his most raucous club tracks to date.

If HiTech were wrapped into one person, you would get FULLBODYDURAG, an awesome producer and DJ spinning everything from Ghetto Tech to House to Hip-Hop and Jazz. This LP features all his friends including FXHE label head Omar S on "Trillionaire" and "Juice." HELLO :) proves there's tons of young talent in Detroit that deserve to be heard — Omar S heard their passion and desire to keep Detroit on the map for at least another 100 years and this LP is the epitome of their talent.

Mioclono started at the end of 2016 when Oriol Riverola and Arnau Obiols did their first recording session at Angel Sound Studios in Barcelona, assisted by engineer Miquel Mestres. This became a tradition and they kept doing these recording sessions every end of the year. The present album is the result of the first recording session in 2016 and during the following months, the duo met up several times and over-dubbed those early recordings. Later it was mixed and mastered later on by Gordon Pohl in Düsseldorf, Germany. The project is named Mioclono because both Arnau and Oriol had been diagnosed with epilsepsy, a neurological disorder that affects the electrical activity in the brain. Given this coincidence, their moniker takes the name in Spanish of myoclonus. Ilustration of the front and back covers by Helga Juárez Inner sleeves and labels design by Guillermo Lucenas

Top drawer mini LP of nostalgic essentialness from a shadiest of corners.. very very killer. L.A. Club coming with it. New heat on LA Club Resource beat out by Duke & Cliff! Unearthed Essentials pays honourable homage to classics over six tracks....names like Boyd Jarvis, Marcus Mixx, Gherkin, and Nick Nonstop all popping up on this one. Continuing to move forward bringing essential, formative dance music back to the forefront over these six tracks.

Jako Maron was born and raised on Réunion, a small island in the Indian Ocean not far from Madagascar that's governed by the French Republic. The primary musical form to emerge from Réunion is maloya, a percussion-forward call-and-response style that differs from séga, another popular local genre, due to its lack of harmonic elements. Maloya was developed in the 19th century, when enslaved peoples from Madagascar and West Africa were taken to the island by French colonists who wanted to exploit the country's sugar cane and cotton fields; indentured laborers from South India also traveled to Réunion, bringing with them their own musical traditions. The sound then represented Réunion's own Créole musical language, using the keyamb, a sugar cane rattle, the Indian tabla, a barrel drum known as the roulér, a bamboo percussion instrument called the pikér, and other tools. Because maloya was such an emotionally charged expression from a suppressed underclass, it inevitably became associated with political revolution. This was a sound that was developed for and by the workers, and when France made the island an "overseas département" in 1946, maloya became synonymous with independence and freedom. As its popularity increased, so did its perceived danger, and the French government banned the music in the 1960s, only lifting the restriction years later in the 1970s. Once the ban was over, musicians began experimenting wholeheartedly with the form, splintering it into radically different sub-genres. Maron, who was born during the prohibition in 1968, was fascinated by the genre's open endedness and has been working to integrate it with electronic music since the 1990s, when techno and house sounds reverberated across the island from the USA, through Europe, Africa and beyond. Using modular synthesizers and drum machines, Maron offers a completely unique take on maloya. Like Charanjit Singh's disco-cum-acid raga fusions in the early 1980s, or more recently Equiknoxx's innovative and deeply personal fragmentation of Jamaican dancehall, Maron's electro maloya experiments take an initial idea and shuttle it across unfamiliar sonic landscapes. The all-important 6/8 beat is at the core of his music, with electronic thuds, zips and pings standing in for hand drums and congas, while the usually vocal call-and-response elements are handed off to wheezing synthesizers. 'Batbaté Maloya' is an appropriate introduction, with familiar electronic sounds used in surprising patterns - the maloya beat is the most striking element, but Maron adds effects, processes and swing that can't help but inspire comparisons to db reggae and dembow formulations. But he never stays in the same place for long. When Maron edges into minimalism, like on the cybernetic 'Maloya Valsé chok 1', his unsettling mood and noisy, percussive framework harmonizes with similarly prismatic grooves from Pan Sonic, or the Raster Noton catalog. And when he approaches long-form on 'Fanali dann bwa', it sounds as if he's integrating dubstep pressure with psychedelic kosmische sounds, submerging the beat beneath hypnotic synth wobbles and squeals. Maron's relentless examination of maloya and its application within electronic music is endlessly invigorating, and across 15 tracks (four are exclusive to this new vinyl edition) he makes a convincing case for the genre's continuing relevance as unshakable protest music.

Seattle-based producer Jeff McIlwain, aka Lusine, returns with his 9th full-length record, Long Light, marking twenty years since he first joined the Ghostly International roster. A cited influence for myriad electronic artists including London’s Loraine James and others, Lusine is known for visceral, kinetically-curious music that fuses techno, pop, and experimental composition. In recent years, McIlwain has pushed his craft skyward with more collaborative, song-forward work. Long Light shines the throughline; his signature looping patterns and textures are dynamic yet minimalist as ever. Structurally straightforward, tight, and bright, the material radiates as the most direct in his catalog, featuring vocal contributions from Asy Saavedra, Sarah Jaffe, and Sensorimotor collaborators Vilja Larjosto and Benoît Pioulard. Lusine found his sound early on, but he’s never stopped pushing and pulling at its potential, patiently deconstructing the distractions and solving the puzzles. With Long Light, a laser-focused, process-driven artist reaches an exceptionally satisfying level of clarity and immediacy. McIlwain sees the title, taken from the lyrical phrase "long light signaling the fall again,” written by Benoît Pioulard for what became the title track, as a guiding device that reflects several meanings. “There’s this sort of paranoia where you don't know what is real, it's an age of high anxiety and there are all these distractions,” McIlwain explains. “It's like a fun house mirror situation.” Following the long light is the only true way through, and he holds that metaphor to the album’s recording, which also carried a cyclical nature akin to seasons. Like the start of fall, the album completes a period of cultivation; “Music making is a struggle and you have to have a ton of patience.” Long Light is proof that what lies beyond the noise, at the end of the figurative tunnel, is worth all the work it’s taken to get there. Across the collection, McIlwain identifies the core sonic element, a vocal cut or a simple beat sequence, from which to build everything else off. On the opener “Come And Go,” he multiplies a vocal take from longtime collaborator Vilja Larjosto into a celestial choir, evoking their Sensorimotor standout “Just A Cloud.” It’s the bass hook on the single “Zero to Sixty,” curving around the voice of Sarah Jaffe, whose pliable range and cool delivery provide the source for Lusine’s unmistakable mapping. The chorus is Jaffe’s (“cold-blooded”) line repeated in step with melodic synth pulses and the buzzing deep bass. For the verse, McIlwain unlocks the loop and she completes the thought, giving the track a sense of tension and relief. “I feel like I am dreaming / You make me feel like I am walking on a cloud / I don’t ever want to feel the ground,” sings Asy Saavedra (of Chaos Chaos) on “Dreaming.” This time McIlwain keeps the phrase intact, making subtle tweaks to the timbre and texture as chimes, clinks, and snaps oscillate. The album balances vocal pop motifs with some of Lusine’s strongest instrumental expressions, from ambient-minded foreshadowing (“Faceless,” “Plateau,” “Rafters”) to hypnotic head-nodders like “Cut and Cover” and “Transonic.” The latter jumps out as the rhythmic centerpiece; first McIlwain outlines the track’s silhouette before filling in its details one layer at a time. Stuttering synth hums join the kick, then proliferate a step higher, harmonizing at the peak with sparkled bell sounds and a burst of feedback. “Long Light” has it all: Lusine’s percussive mood-building, rendered with samples from drummer Trent Moorman, and a contortion of tender poetry, courtesy of friend Thomas Meluch, aka Benoît Pioulard (Morr Music, Kranky). “This track has a sort of melody that I haven’t really messed with before,” says McIlwain. “It’s this very droney, mysterious thing, that I really liked, and focused on, and kind of counter balanced with a nasty wavetable patch. Tom just absolutely nailed the feel of the song.” It is rare to arrive at a landmark work two decades into one’s craft, but through repetition, refinement, and patience, Lusine extends a defining moment, an essential piece to his discography.

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.

As an avid believer that some songs shine only under the right circumstances Balduin doesn't shy away from weaving repetitive loops with patterns of ambience just to let some hands-up moments unfold every now and then. He doesn't like to think in categories. This approach is also reflected in his diverse musical productions. By reinterpreting genre-specific elements, discovering unheard soundscapes and with a good portion of nostalgia, he sculpts little stories that vibe on dancefloors and in living rooms alike. Following multiple appearances on labels like QC Records, Kompakt or his own GLYK imprint – DJ Balduin lands on KANN with a full lengths worth of downtempo, ambient and extasy inspired house cuts. Concrete Mimosa rolls out with 11 tracks to shine in full effect.

The 30th anniversary reissue of "Bytes," originally released in 1993.
The multi-layered floating synths and natural fusion of breakbeats, hip-hop, and jazz were considered a masterpiece of intelligent techno.

Rod Modell presents "Lanterns" - an epic journey through an evolving sonic landscape propelled by the churning momentum of reverb-soaked percussion. Red Lantern is an ode to the eerie red glow that once beckoned sailors to the port of Amsterdam - on one side, the gentle thud of a bass drum rolls beneath haunting yet uplifting pads whilst on the reverse, bubbling bass underpins echoes of a shoreline that shifts in and out of focus. Blue Lantern merges dub techno and ambient experimentation, showcasing Modell's impressive talents in sound design and the diverse influences that span his 25-year career as a musician. Warm, thunderous kicks rumble beneath restrained hints of percussion, creating an immersive soundscape allowing for music and space to envelop the listener, with the result both enticing and unsettling in equal measures. Words by Martin Gould.