Techno / House

It's always a good day when a new Mr Fingers record lands!!!! A1. Around The Sun / A2. Drive / A3. Touch The Sky / B1. Coast Line Paradox / B2. Electrostatic Levitation / B3. Something's Going On / C1. Like The Dawn / C2. Pressureize / D1. Marrakesh / D2. Shimmer

Alleviated Records is proud to present a special re-issue of the Alien project. Larry Heard's productions always hinted at deepest outer space, but Alien was his first actual science-fiction record. It's almost as polished as the most mainstream dance production, but just as sublime as any Detroit producer. Heard's house roots often show themselves, while the chords and shimmering production make this an album almost on par with Heard's mid-'80s peak. The project was a recording & sound-development experiment that was mostly constructed around a Korg O1/W workstation keyboard.

We’re glad to be back with the second instalment of our new series of DJ and Artist curated 12” mini compilations: Melodies Record Club. Ben UFO is up next for volume two, following Four Tet’s selection a few months back. Available early October in loud 12” format and digitally. Here we have two tracks which have been staples in Ben’s DJ sets at different times, but neither were originally produced with a club setting in mind, which is why they’ve never been available in this format before. On one side, we have “Drums” from Laurie Spiegel’s 1980 experimental electronics album “The Expanding Universe”, a collection of tracks produced between 1974 and 1976 using a computer playing the actual sounds by controlling analog synthesis equipment under control of the GROOVE hybrid system developed by Max Matthews and F.R. Moore at Bell Labs. Drums is a percussive seven minute computer generated workout inspired by Laurie’s interest in African and Indian musics, and which brings to mind the most far out kosmiche music of the period to modern day techno. A connection Ben has tried to make explicit by including it in his first BBC essential mix back in 2013. On the flip we have a track by Olof Dreijer from the Swedish band the Knife who’s work you might also be familiar with under the moniker Oni Ayhun. Back in 2009 his artist friend Adnan Yildiz curated an exhibition called “THERE IS NO AUDIENCE” in Montethermoso, dedicated to public imagination. Adnan commissioned a single piece from Olof called “Echoes from Mamori”, that played on loop during the exhibition and was subsequently released only on CD. A contemporary piece more clearly indebted to house music, Olof built the track around arpeggios generated using sounds of frogs he recorded in the Amazon and birds around Berlin, fed into a sampler. Ben’s instalment is out early October in loud 12” format and digitally (stream & download), first press comes with a folded A2 insert with words from and about the Artists. Graphic design by Atelier ChoqueLeGoff, illustration and animation by Nevil Bernard and for the audiophiles out there, remastered and cut at half speed by Matt Colton at Metropolis Studios!

Sam Shepherd aka Floating Points has shared a new single, 'Birth4000', which is out now via Ninja Tune.

'Birth4000' couldn't be more different sonically to these pursuits in its crunchy, gnarled, all-out energy. Officially out now, the track has already had a lasting impact on the summer's dancefloors having been played out by Four Tet at his Finsbury Park headline show as well as gracing Arcadia’s industrial spider when played by Shepherd and Caribou b2b at this year’s Glastonbury, also appearing in festival sets from Peggy Gou, Ben UFO, Call Super, Palms Trax and more, as well as being the highlight of Shepherd's secret headline slot at this year's NTS summer party.

The track's artwork comes from Tokyo based artist Akiko Nakayama. Nakayama is a painter who depicts the beauty of conveying energy metamorphosis through media such as installation, videos, and performance. She brings painting to life by combining the energy of movement and the vibrance of colours, called "Alive Painting".

Tokyo based producer Keigo Okazaki, touches on a wide range of styles, from Trip Hop/Downtempo to Techno/Breaks/Minimal. His tracks are primarily composed of vintage synthesizers and drum machines, such as Electribe EM1, TB-303,606. Most inspired by moments of natural and synthetic beauty.

Art by Solo Viola Tracks 3 & 6 feature Andrea Stella Mastered by Rashad Becker

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

Highly recommended! For all of ambient, balearic and new age fan. The previous work from <100% Silk>, which was also introduced by , just made a record-breaking hit in Bandcamp. Tokyo's notable DJ / producer, who had released a great cassette work from , has released the beautiful ambient / new age gems from . After the popular title from <100% Silk>, New cassette release from with enhanced new age / Balearic colors is very exquisite. Works recorded at home studio, focusing on hardware synths and samplers from the 80's and 90's. It is a work that pursues "images in photographs and movies of locations that have been lost with the passage of time" and "A nostalgia for a place we can never be" The best hidden work. It is as good as, and sometimes even surpasses, the works of modern revival / new age sanctuaries and reissues such as and . At the bottom is the light and quiet view of dance / deep house that is unique to this person. It's too great, it's incredible, and it's just a sigh of admiration.

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.

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.

Pacific Rhythm is elated to present a grounding offering from Oakland's Space Ghost entitled Private Paradise as our first release of 2022. The LP is an ode to Space Ghost's time spent at Sea Ranch on the Northern California coast, a place he and his partner visit to refresh their spirit and regain optimism and enthusiasm for the outside world. Private Paradise possesses a rare ability to restore, rejuvenate, and inspire through each listen and is something we've only grown more and more fond of during the unforeseen complications we encountered during its release over the past two years. It's a piece of music that feels like a perfect nod to where we've been musically for the past 8 years and where we see ourselves heading in the future. Deep, contemplative, and uplifting audio that compels its listeners to focus on the positive forces in the world and the power of being present in a moment.

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.

'Italian house music maestro Fabio Monesi delivers a smoking 8 tracks double LP of old school bombs for @L.I.E.S. Records You'd be forgiven for thinking these were produced in the '80s as all the classic and authentic elements are intact; catchy Yamaha DX basslines, crunchy TR-707 and Juno strings. Eight cuts all primed for the disco tech and nights of pure hedonism. These tracks go right back to the essence, hitting the full spectrum with stripped back classic New York and Chicago House cuts that wouldn't seem out of place in a BMX or WBLS mix from back in the day. Catchy dx basslines, slammin reverb drenched drum programming, and deep strings are on order for this one. All guaranteed to more the party all night long, drop the needle and let these do the talking....Huge huge party cuts, check the Moonriver vocal and you'll hear it immediately For fans of Delroy Edwards, Legowelt etc.'

The charismatic DJ Terre Thaemlitz (=DJ Sprinkles), who was active in New York's transsexual clubs in the 1990s and is currently based in Japan, travels the world and continues to develop his artistic musical style with a focus on house music, This is the project of glitch rave techno evangelist Mark Fell and Mat Steel, a cutting-edge duo from Sheffield, and SND, who have produced outstanding work for Mille Plateaux and Raster-Noton. This dead stock 12" of timeless deep house music is now in stock. Mastered by Terre Thaemlitz and cut by Matt Coltonm.

Immense tramplers and jigs by the whirling percussive dervish of Valentina Magaletti (Moin), João Pais Filipe (HHY & The Macumbas) & Leon Marks’ (Hey Colossus) aka CZN - huge RIYL Mark Ernestus' Ndagga Rhythm Force, Shackleton, Bernd Friedmann, Uwalmassa, Don't DJ, Photek. On their 2nd mission for TTT after 2021’s ‘Luxury Variations’, CZN come hungry for the ‘floor in all five parts of ‘Station to Station to Station’. While the title is a nod to Bowie, the EP has fuck all to do with him, and everything to do with untangling creaky limbs and showing nuff options for the aerobic mystics and polyrhythm-metered DJs. The battery of Magaletti, Filipe and Marks make a wickedly disciplined racket from drums, drums, and more drums, sealed in place with sparing dabs of triggered synth and FX. ‘Compliance Crew’ gathers their energies in a pendulous mid-tempo swirl, congas and wraithlike vocies dubbed to the rafters, before ‘Lawn Thug’ more explicitly references West African traditions, notably the tussle of Mbalax, in its pugilistic call and response, and ‘Year of the Rat’ ramps it on the slow/fast bent with rattling drums corkscrewing at angles over rudest South London subs and pads like a lost Horsepower x Hatcha fantasy. The cosmic whorl of ‘Born to Snap’ is perhaps best compared with the proggier urges of Shackleton and Bernd Friedmann, leading to a the EP’s straightest, hypnotic, 15 minute highlight of rolling linearity recalling Shackleton’s remix of Villalobos or Ron Trent deep house.

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.

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.