Osiris label boss Simon Shreeve delves further down the rabbit hole in his quest for a fresh new take on Drum & Bass, spiralling deeper into the thick atmospherics that have inspired his Techno, post punk productions. Dropping two abrasive explorations into menace-laden nocturnal rhythms. 'Beyond The Bounds' lays down off-kilter, intricate breakbeats, by way of Aphex over a jazz infused ambience, while 'Parallels' crashes and throbs its mutated way through dark percussive chambers with stretched-out stabs and futuristic atmospheres.
To mark Osiris's 60th release, label head Simon Shreeve dons his Mønic guise for a richly saturated three-track EP that pays homage to the label's Drum & Bass origins and Shreeve's own past as Kryptic Minds. From the screaming call-to-action horns of 'Regeneration' on the A-side, to the creeping menace of 'Research Methods' and the Jazz in fuelled beats of 'Always for Tomorrow' on the B-side, a return to the rhythms and textures of D'n'B contrasts Shreeve's recent outings as CUB with Karl O'Connor, solidifies Mønic as his most experimental, genre-defying, and preconception breaking alias.
Leaving convention at the door with the industrial ambience of opening track ‘Belief System’, before delivering a collaboration with label boss Mønic in the shape of ‘Loyal to the Unsung’, Jason Luxton’s latest outing as Overlook is no way concerned with conformity — something that should come as no surprise to anyone following an artist who’s always been comfortable walking the fine lines between multiple genres. On the B side, ‘Séance’ brings high-frequency tension over distorted drums, before proceedings conclude with a half-time swagger of ‘Sleight of Hand’.
British-born, Berlin-based electronica producer Kamikaze Space Programme delivers his long-awaited debut album ‘Dead Skin Cells’ for Osiris Music. It’s the sound of eight years of the acclaimed project reaching its zenith, via releases on leading labels likes Mote-Evolver, WNCL Recordings and Mord, and through regular sets at the likes of Berghain and Tresor.
This bold new record mirrors decay of the physical world and the human form through its jarring sound palette and tense atmospheres. It’s a rebirth of sorts, with the title a reference to shedding skin — as KSP has done with his previous aliases. Combining his roots in jungle and dub (as Raiden and Dot Product) with the diverse textures of the contemporary techno diaspora and his skills as a found sound magpie and foley artist, it makes for a riveting, deeply nuanced listen.
‘Skin Cells’ begins with distorted synth buzzes trading places with haunted, heavily processed samples and thundering kicks. ‘Sparks’ channels taut jungle breakbeats, pitched down to a more chugging tempo, while menacing D&B screeches buzz through the track. ‘Dust’ teases DMZ style dubstep tension, while ‘Rain’ shows his mastery of sound design and field recording in a stunning ambient interlude. ‘Insomnia’ reaches for glitchy digi dub in the vein of The Bug with some cinematic undertones, leading to the brutalist sonic architecture of ‘Crumbs’ with its crunching breaks and rasping tones.
‘Derelict’ is the album’s most direct nod to his junglist past, the ghosts of hardcore imbued through blasts of chainsaw bass, dissected breaks and haunting pads. ‘Grey Clouds’ bathes you in thick swathes of ethereal pads and plucked, incessant bass before ‘EF5’ delivers a militant glitch-heavy onslaught. ‘An Empty Sky’ closes the album in apocalyptic fashion, with crunching bass pressure juxtaposed with graceful, filmic chord progressions.
The result of all of this is an album that feels at once uniquely London while perfectly contemporary to the Berlin scene, and perhaps a none-more-perfect sonic encapsulation of the continuing reciprocal dialogue between the two cities. Most of all, it’s the sound of a sonic excavator hurtling towards the top of his game, in perfect control of every granule of sound therein.
Pessimist has never been afraid to push the boundaries of what might loosely be referred to as drum ’n’ bass, but never has he been so willing to deviate as on this new EP for Osiris.
The record opens with ‘New Age’ — a hypnotic pulse that gradually layers up over crawling beats, before disintegrating into the glacial ambience of ‘Kabadaro’, with its inner-rainforest atmospherics and barely-there rhythms. Flipping sides, the eponymous ‘Austerity’ scurries along with nervous energy and hi-hats that offer the only glimpse into the artist’s junglist past, before JK Flesh steps in to serve up an utterly brutal reconstruction of ’New Age’. Finally, everything is brought to a close in the shape of ‘Progression’, a short-and-not-partiuclarly-sweet drone that feels like the whole tale collapsing in on itself, returning — almost — to the sepulchral tone the EP opened with.
If you had Pessimist pegged as an artist comfortable exploring the outer reaches of bass music, consider this release affirmation that he's well and truly crossed the frontier — and that the five cuts here represent the newest transmissions sent home from this unknown and beguiling territory.
If Osiris’ recent releases have represented a rope that bridges the chasm that exists between various bass-heavy electronic sub-genres, this compilation of brand new material might just be the bricks-and-mortar upgrade to that bridge that marries them all into one cohesive vision. Proceedings kick off with Overlook’s menacing take on Jungle — almost eight minutes of sustained preternatural tension in the shape of ‘Former Self ’.
Pessimist continues the journey with the sprawling ‘Indigo’, and moves away from his trademark pace to set the scene with repetitive, delayed stabs in the dark. Three tracks in, label boss Simon Shreeve steps into the ring, in his first outing as Mønic this year, to unveil the appropriately titled ‘Stampede’ — a marching, ferocious melding of industrial beats and distorted growl, pushed along by frenetic hi-hats before spiralling off the edge into a feedback-laden pit.
To close, Mønic teams up with Grebenstein. Picture the former’s take on sepulchral atmospherics, married with the latter’s mangled electronics, and you’ll have a good indication of what to expect from this meeting of minds. ‘Cutting The Ties That Bind’ sees those hats return in the distance, but slows the pace for a largely ambient conclusion to this unique blends of musical ideas.
a1. Overlook - Former Self
a2. Pessimist - Indigo
b1. Mønic - Stampede
b2. Mønic & Grebenstein - Cutting The Ties That Bind
Blurring the line between drum ’n’ bass and techno often tested by friend and occasional labelmate Pessimist, Overlook delivers four of his most atmospheric, genre-busting tracks on Osiris Music uk.
Opener ‘Down The Rabbit Hole’ leads with frantic tribal rhythms, before the eponymous second track slows the pace a little to lock the listener in a claustrophobic club full of slo-mo swaying bodies, distant vocal samples reverberating around even-more-distant hits.
On the B side, the pace continues to slow: ‘Residual’ drives forward with a sustained tension and breathy hints at something lurking in the shadows, before ‘Crisis’ eschews beats altogether to explore a more sombre mood: an ambient piece that feels like it’s just been unearthed from a forgotten time.
Following the intense sonic exploration of his work with Christopher Jarman as Dot Product, Adam Winchester steps out on his own with a bold new body of work, his first under his own name, that further expands on his ideas about non-conformist sound generation.
Winchester had previously been immersed in the early days of the Bristol dubstep scene as Wedge, but in more recent times has applied his knowledge of sound processing and technology to more scientific means, using an array of tools to harness resonant frequencies and interference generated in the space around him.
The image that adorns the cover of this release was taken by Winchester and used in Daniela de Pauli’s Optiks installation, which is based around the work of a globally connected group of amateur astronomers who collaborated to beam images into space and bounce them off the moon. Only a small fraction of the radio signals carrying the images are reflected back onto Earth, where they are picked up by radio telescopes before being converted back into the original image.
The interference picked up in the process is the result of the vast distances the information travels, and the poor reflective qualities of the moon’s surface.
In the grainy textures, crunching rhythms and steely tones that inhabit this EP, Winchester captures the same spirit of invisible interference by eschewing traditional production methods, drawing his sounds solely from a range of noise, feedback and resonance found in objects and physical spaces.
If Osiris’ recent releases have signalled a change of pace, new artist The Things They Left Behind represents the logical conclusion with this 12-inch comprised of two half-time, dubby tracks. The first, Life Through Sepia, floats along to the ethereal backdrop of spoken word samples and distinctively melodic synths; the second, 68, sets a hazier and more abstract tone amidst on top of a sensual, rolling groove — distant guitars ring as huge snares echo into the mist.
For the second part of Osiris’ 50th release celebrations, we get another new track, ‘Regret Was Never So Sure’, from head honcho Simon Shreeve in his Mønic guise: a piece that nods to his past but looks firmly to the future of bass-driven music.
The track then gets some very special treatment on the B side from Regis, who blends its core textures with his own unmistakable percussion, before Mønic returns to close things out with ‘Forbidden Memories’: an ambient piece with high-hats that seem to dance delicately on ice, and claps layered with reverb in true Mønic style.
Celebrating Osiris’ 50th release in two parts, label head Simon Shreeve unveils ‘Deep Summer’ as the first: a downtempo, vocal-led track with a pace and laid-back vibe not usually associated with his Mønic alias. On the B side, a remix from none other than Burial offers a distinctly smokier take on the track, full of percussive melodies that weave into surprisingly major-chord territory towards the end of the song’s ten minutes. This is a release that sees both artists pushing their respective music’s preconceptions.
Emerging through storm-like waves of distortion, opener ‘Alpha’ sets the scene for this beguiling cassette release, with melodies rising out of — and then descending back into — the chaos. ‘3000 Years’ takes vocal samples as a starting point, before melting into layer upon layer of delay, after which ‘Confounded’ picks up the pace with its heavily distorted beats and the side then closes to the sound of a distant choir burning in acidic ambience in the shape of ‘Fruitless Clicking’. The nightmarish, malfunctioning machinery vibes continue onto the second side, with the more dance oor-friendly ‘Strange Conversations’ and ‘The Brink’ bookended by the two-part ambient epic ‘Pale Blue Dot’. Dark, glitchy, and at times outright uncomfortable — perfectly suited to the cassette format.
Emerging from what sounds like the unknown depths of outer space, new artist Icore drops a debut EP on Osiris Music uk lled with ve exercises in hypnotic, polyrhythmic tension. The A-side’s two tracks ’Sigil’ and ‘Status Field’ feel like two parts of a whole, each establishing a minimal, kick-heavy march in 6/8 that would perfectly ll the cavernous hull of an abandoned mining vessel, lurching through empty parts of the galaxy to the sound of ominous drones and malfunctioning, high-end bleeps. The B-side is more cinematic in its scope, with opener ‘Substance From Shadow’ summoning a distinctly b-movie vibe in its melody, before both ‘Claimed By Night’ and ‘Axiom’ retreat into darker, more ambient territory; the former thick in sub- bass kicks; the latter ramping up the dread with unnerving repetition.
Pressed on white coloured vinyl in a custom shrink-wrapped sleeve and containing a download code to redeem mp3's. A year on from their self-titled debut, Bristol-based sound sculptors Dot Product are back with a follow-up that stays true to their experimental principles while offering up new textures and arrangements for their hard-won sonic content. It’s been a busy year for Adam Winchester and Christopher Jarman, the pair behind the project. Following the release of Dot Product on Osiris Music in March 2016, they appeared at prestigious festivals such as Atonal and Simple Things. This spate of shows has fed back into 2080, a new body of work that feels distinct from its predecessor while retaining the unnerving, distorted finish that has come to define the Dot Product sound. It was largely created through studio-based improvisation as a natural response to the performance set up the duo had developed. Rhythm plays a significant role in the early strains of 2080, whether triggering static blasts or stirring up low frequency tones into a seductive waltz, but as the album progresses these rhythms give way to anchor-less drones, refined metallic shimmers and red-lining noise blasts. Even if such ingredients were present on the previous album, here they feel thrillingly out of reach. When occasional field recordings swoop into earshot as on Electric Flesh, it’s hard to tell whether they might be a real-world mechanical manifestation or a visceral shard of sound design. Between the tonal lines lurks a narrative. Previously Dot Product concerned itself with a scientific approach, and such experimentation gave Winchester and Jarman the tools to define their venture. Now 2080 sees them applying these tools to a specific creative vision. That vision may be more implied than specified, but it’s provided this intriguing pair with their next logical step on a journey into uncharted sonic waters.
Following his recent outing as one half of Dot Product and a number of well-received EPs on Luke Slater’s Mote Evolver label, Chris Jarman returns in his Kamikaze Space Programme guise for a new EP on Osiris Music uk. Opener Clickers introduces a loop that permeates the entire track — an exercise in meditative repetition, KSP-style — followed by the sci-fi bleeps and sub-bass thuds of Pax. On the other side, Thalamic Transplant heads straight for the floor with more repetition: this time the alarm-like glitches ofw a malfunctioning spaceship. The EP closes with a version of ‘Clickers’ reworked by label boss Mønic, complete with half-time cavernous kicks and cosmos-sized reverbs.
a1. Kamikaze Space Programme - Clickers
a2. Kamikaze Space Programme - Pax
b1. Kamikaze Space Programme - Thalmic
b2. Kamikaze Space Programme - Clickers (Mønic Version)
Comprised of Bristol based sound artists Adam Winchester and Christopher Jarman, Dot Product comes to light in a swathe of noise, tone and texture.
Through years of research and experimentation the duo have sought to explore the creative potential from the inaudible fog of electromagnetic radiation, the internal resonance found in the negative space of an object, the circuitry of discarded electronics, and other such less-travelled paths of sound generation. In harnessing these clandestine sonics and bringing them within a listenable range, the resulting collages of sound have been shaped into a form that nods to the legacy of uncompromising British experimental electronic music, from early industrial savagery to bass-heavy soundsystem pressure. Such reference points are abstract though, for within the truly unique array of sources at their disposal, Winchester and Jarman have a new dialect in which to communicate.
Crucially, while there may be a scientific approach at the heart of the Dot Product methodology, the results are far from clinical. There are subversive rhythms aplenty throughout the album, from the jagged ripples of “Skafander” to the slow, dread-fuelled march of “Springs”. There is also space for touches of melody; “Atmosphere Processor” swoons with blue-hued melancholy, while “Ice Patches” stalks on an ominous bass mantra.
After sharing the initial results of their research, the pair performed select live shows in Bristol and London, as well as being commissioned to create a sonic interpretation of Swedish horror film Let The Right One In. This debut album on Osiris is the culmination of these initial steps, these 9 tracks representing the most complete document of the Dot Product sound to date.
Osiris Music UK present 'émigré', the debut LP from label stalwart Killawatt. It signifies three years of stylistic evolution in his sound, from the earlier spaced out percussive dubstep into a sub-bass centred amalgamation of electronica, techno and UK aesthetics.
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