When Harold Boue aka Abstraxion invited Fantastic Man into his studio after playing together the night before he didn't knew he was planting the seed for a new project. As he recalls, it was "a day of intense sun in Marseille with not enough sleep", but the result was so great that it inspired Harold to work on new tracks around the idea of creating music to reflect his city: a bit rough, but luminous and influenced by elements of Mediterranean, African and Northern European cultures. This has translated into a heavily percussive sound, in which tribal disco grooves invoke the spirits of voodoo-techno. Three cuts driven by warmly distorted rhythms, bursts of primitive drums, rubbery synths and uplifting chants that overall feel like the first sunrays after an excursion through a dark cave: both blinding and blissful. The project's name is a tribute to the astrological sign of Harold's son, who was born at the same time as the music on the EP. It was the definitive signal he needed to convince himself it was the right time to start something new and different. And an event that for sure helps understanding the vibes that this music transmits: as pure, fresh and powerful as only a new beginning can be.
Following the exclusive heavy mix compilation that Jimi Jules knocked out for us recently, it’s time to deliver on those exclusives via two EP’s from the man himself and we kick things off with EP number one, ‘Midnight Juggernaut’ where Jules’ studio prowess is on full display with three stellar originals including a remix from the mighty Recondite. Jimi’s ‘Abandoned Soul’ original starts the EP and is equal parts moody as it is groovy as classic 303 acid fuses with Jules’ post modern drum programming resulting in a smooth, yet energetic ride into the shimmering corners of dance floor euphoria. Recondite steps up and delivers a beautiful rework of ‘Abandoned Soul’ in true Recondite fashion keeping all the original parts in tact while incorporating the lush melodic progressions he is so well known for.
Next up is the title track from the EP ‘Midnight Juggernaut’, where Jules shows his affinity for artfully crafted minimalism as remnants of early Perlon stylings merge with a more modern melodic approach where the seemingly empty spaces are filled lush, sonic textures. Rounding out the EP is ‘Othervision’ as Jules’ puts “four to the floor” to full use as one single lead line carries the tune to an incognito crescendo of emotion emanating in a well thought out and expertly crafted EP with something for everyone and every situation.
DJ Glow introduces his Populist alter ego with his first release on TRUST since his 2007 Pulsinger collab. Four fiery, dense electro cuts to feed your paranoia.
Deep space techno electro on TRUST celebrating the label's year XX. /DL/MS/ is the viennese duo behind recent Frustrated Funk outing, 'Omakuda', last year's TRUST29, 'Rogue Intent', as well as one of the most-played electro tracks of 2017 - their remix of Second Storey's 'Attack Of The Modlings'. 'Exit Ghosts' takes the /DL/MS/ sound far into haunted new orbits, trading some of its earthy rumble for more ethereal emanations. stark and sombre bass signals return, but find themselves enveloped in delicately threaded string anomalies, copious amounts of melodic ectoplasm, and spirit-like liquid funk dilutions. Vinyl 12" contains three locked grooves and ships in new TRUST XX color sleeves.
Salvador Breed and Stijn van Beek met while studying Sound Design and Music Technology in 2006. Ever since then the pair have been beavering away behind an arsenal of blinking banks in Amsterdam. The musical fruit of their friendship is Breek, a partnership that smears the boundaries of styles and sounds with festive flare and a rainbow steaked uniqueness. For their vinyl debut 'Yokai', a candy coloured cornucopia of elements are swirled and whirled. Braindance, electronica and neo-classical are festooned with dubby tones and underground grit in a unique sound of diverse textures and deep tones. Faster works, like the swooping joy of "Yokai", are countered by more contemplative "Ama." "Hang" is a whimsical dreamscape of squirming acid lines, crisp drums and angular notes that combine to produce a brilliantly bright piece. "Mu-Onna" and "Oiwa" are more abstract works that melt vocals with sweet strings before the final piano swells and ambient rains of "Burabura." A daring and dynamic vinyl debut from this eccentric duo with stunning artwork from Warren du Preez and Nick Thornton Jones.
Redshape stars in another deep tripping, sci-fi odyssey on his imprint for present 16. Opening The Gate reveals a slow but surely building burner that is classic Redshape, ripping the space-time continuum fabric apart at it's spoken word climax narrating of solar winds, cosmic ray particles and the speed of light. Heed the track's unmistakable call and take flight on an interplanetary elevator with parched, bone-dry percussion, twisting lines with propulsive bass and growls that rumble underneath, enveloping you in an air cabin of Jedi-level sound design prowess. The ride truly begins next with Voyager. It's all aboard a throbbing deep low end countered by floating, melancholic sustained chords with twinkling bleeps and fading bloops that light up like the star-studded Milky Way. Frantic hi hats and modulated percussion work keep riders on the edge of their seat through this fantasy space-age joyride at warp speed.
Rod Malmok's (aka ROD) debut-album title track receives proper reworks from Stanislav Tolkachev and The Advent & Zein. 1 for the mind & 1 for the body, this is essential stuff!
Nous'klaer welcomes Rotterdam based DJ and producer Konduku to the label with his debut called Kiran. Altin and Mavi Saat (Golden and Blue Hour) form the framework of the trip, easing in and out with a 4x4 groove. In between the opening and closing act Kiran is less straightforward - A powerful polyrhythmic hybrid of Eastern Europe sounds mixed with UK resulting in contagious grooves that will surely spark many dancefloors.
After an excellent 12inch on Rosten label SSTROM drops his first full length Otider, which is by far the most diverse offering of the project encompassing elements of different genres and putting them in woolen and dense sonic textures. Otider could be loosely translated as un-times or non-times. It positions the tracks out of specific context and rather represents them as some rediscovered artifacts relating to personal experiences of the artist. Otider slightly distances SSTROM from techno label as the compositions elegantly drift between lush transparency and thick grooves of outsider/lo-fi house as in Kronofobi or Svvaren or sensitive, yet subtly monolith and mellow techno on Damm and I Huvudet. In Modernisten we can even trace echoes of coldwave/synth aesthetics with melancholic guitars sweeping over hypnotic rhythmic patterns, while closer Sov Nu introduces something which reminds a darker form of garage music with light synthpads constantly surfacing among raw mechanical beats. All the tracks were created over a relatively long period between 2010 and 2017 by employing the process where he let his hands work automatically without interference from his head. This freedom could be felt across the release, which juggles with different musical forms so lightly and organically, but at the same time maintains a coherent vision, which illustrates the vast scope and diversity of the artist.
After being in the reggae band the Heavymanners (parted in 2009) led by Takeshi “Heavy” Akimoto, and participating as a supporting member of DRY&HEAVY after which the band reunited with the original rhythm section, Sahara (keyboard/programming) and Ohkuma, who worked as the drummer of Soul Dimension, started the dub unit Undefined. It is no exaggeration to say they have pushed the variously formatted term of “dub” to the far shore experimentally and furthermore, liberated the definition of dub to “undefined.” Their debut 7inch vinyl released in March last year from their own label Newdubhall is being well received even overseas and in the spring of 2018, this 10inch vinyl “New Culture Days” will be out, which will be their second release.
“New Culture Days” was co-composed with Kazufumi Kodama. It goes without saying that he is the one who has been continuing to pursue dub, through Mute Beat, the originator band of this country and also under his own name.While citing sound texture like techno-infused minimal dub, Undefined’ s track dashes on a trackless road. And there is the trumpet of Kodama, who has also been giving sympathy to minimal dub since the late 90s. A trumpet that draws a vivid line on monochromatic aspect, flickering sounds of drum and bass, and the third lead that represents this work awaits at the far end of the echo. It is “mu,” in another words, nothingness.
Just as the stars are floating in the urban night sky, the sound is lonesome yet bold and bright and the jet-black darkness lingers. An aggressive bass and effective sounds: this track expresses the cream of dub music with its excessiveness and nothingness facing one another. This track did not come to reality without the deep understanding of these two dub seekers. Moreover, excluding covers, this is the first original track by Kodama in a long time.
Over the past several years, an electronic and experimental dub, which is diverse from so-called bass music and new roots, is being recognized again as one of the streams. It could be said that New Culture Days too, welcomes this sort of essence.
More than ten years since he first emerged on Skull Disco, Appleblim presents his debut album. The label he co-founded with Shackleton was the first the world heard of his productions, but Laurie Osborne’s innate relationship with electronic music culture reaches back much further than those groundbreaking early days of dubstep. Early days spent soaking up hardcore, jungle, techno and plenty more besides were fundamental foundations from which to spring into the then-unknown realms of sub-low half-step club music. At that time FWD>> and DMZ were the church for this ritualistic sound, and Appleblim was a regular fixture at both.
As dubstep matured, magnified, mutated and meandered, so Appleblim moved beyond Skull Disco to explore different avenues of expression in the new many- layered club music landscape. His own Apple Pips imprint was a natural vessel on which to explore the emergent fusions of hardcore-derived sounds and the US-born house, techno and electro, while labels such as Aus Music equally provided a home for his work (often alongside Komonazmuk). Meanwhile long-standing collaborations with Alec Storey (Al Tourettes / Second Storey) finally manifested in the hyper-modern mind-twist of ALSO, captured as an album on legendary rave label R&S.
More recently it’s been possible to hear Appleblim delve into electro-acoustic and ambient production alongside bassweight sounds on Tempa, one of the original bastions of dubstep culture. As the existing boundaries between genres, cultures, eras and scenes continue to dissolve, on his debut album Appleblim offers up a fresh approach that brings some of the foundational sound ethics of rave culture into a modern framework.
Hardcore breaks are still a regular sound source in contemporary club tracks, but on Life In A Laser it’s instantly apparent that Appleblim has moved beyond choosing popular drum samples to truly tap into the elusive feeling engendered by the music of the era. It’s a tricky feat to manage, but in the pie-eyed chords of “Ignite”, the subby 808 tom basslines on “NCI” or the Mr. Fingers synth flex on “Manta Key” the sonic finish sports the same understated grit and grime that made those early records so timeless. There’s still space for modernism, not least on snaking 2-step killer “I Think We'll Let The Gas Sort This One Out”, but it’s offset by a layer of dust, not to mention an inherent moodiness that can’t be faked.
This fine balance of rave romanticism and future-minded approaches binds together in a cohesive conceptual statement. First and foremost it’s Appleblim’s personal reflection on the music that has moved him on countless dancefloors since his first flirtations with soundsystem culture. At the same time the canny influx of modern ideas into the soundworld of the 90s genuinely results in a new proposition, making for a perfect fit on the modern-day ‘ardcore fetishists label of choice, Sneaker Social Club. Many may claim to draw on old-skool influences in their modern trax, but take one listen to “Flows From Within” and you’ll feel the same time-slipping surge of future-shock as the ravers at Lost, Dreamscape, The Dungeons, Clink Street, Blue Note and all those other iconic spots.
ESHU, the production collective and record label from Nijmegen are back with their next offering. Their 12th release is a various artists release that features BLM, J?burg and Steven Siwalette alongside label members Ivano Tetelepta and Jocelyn Abell. It comes on the heels of Tetelepta's absorbing dub techno album, Senang, and is another high class offering. Nijmegen based Siwalette is first, previously contributed to the label as part of SYS. His Stragglers is a sparse but atmospheric track with industrial drones and slowly turning drums taking you through a desolate factory late at night. His second offering is Alien Encounter which is just as it sounds - a spooky, unsettling bit of cinematic sound design with menacing bass and icy pads all growing in loudness until they eventually consume your mind. Lastly on the A-side, UK producer and Fear of Flying label boss BLM lays down a skeletal groove that's embellished with beautiful, yawning synths. Scattered little details and fx making this a cavernous piece that encourages your mind to wander and get lost. On the flip, Jocelyn Abell and Ivano Tetelepta cook up a heavyweight, mid tempo bit of dub techno with sharp hits and rolling kicks lulling you into a trance. Last of all, the emerging J?burg picks up the pace with a perfectly chiselled bit of rock solid dub with looping drums and icy hi hats sinking you deep into its midst. This is an excellent EP that packs in a range of fascinating sounds for both the home and the club.
- VORONOI new release explores how sounds behave in aseptic experimental environment to discover a new present of digital fantasy.
- A work of precise and complex sound design that looks over the techno-scientific contemporary from a positive angle.
- Includes extended re-work track by Jesse Osborne-Lanthier who reassembles Vis-Viva’s sonic materials into his unique style.
- RIYL: Mark Fell, Lee Gamble, Gabor Lazar, MESH, Yves De Mey...
Vis-Viva is the surprise of movement, the wonder that leads to imagine new possible configurations of the present, objects created with materials not yet invented move in aseptic and virtual spaces without respecting the normal laws of physics. Used for the first description of kinetic energy in elastic collisions the historical term Vis-Viva titles second OOH-sounds release from VORONOI, a work inspired by post humanism literature, experimental observation and speculative evolutionism where sounds and motion seem to face over the contemporary techno-scientific corpus from a positive angle.
Can sounds behave like particles do? How sound reacts and transforms if treated like organic matter? VORONOI tries to answer back by sculpting a precise and complex sound design in an anti-climax approach to composition. Rhythms are free, unpredictable, tracks always seem to respect some grammars of club-music but abstracting from its normal timbres and denying its conclusions to face a digital fantasy.
Vis-Viva’s experiment is completed by an extended 6 minutes re-work track by electronic music producer and multidisciplinary artist Jesse Osborne-Lanthier (Halcyon Veil, Raster-Norton, WTN?) who reassembles VORONOI’s sonic palette into his unique style. The result is as if everything has traveled outside the lab to be exposed to the outside world.
T-1000’s suspended atmospheres set the Vis-Viva experiment with pulverized granular sound debris, occasional rhythmic pulses and reverberant movements. Built over two distinct parts, in which the second seems to deny the first, SPHERO 2.0 forces a dynamic dialogue between raw and ultra processed sonic material. Elements orbit around a fast and joyous drum pattern that builds up in Marbles, a more complex experiment in which particles slow down and accelerate in chaotic, though controlled, collisions to generate micro melodic bursts.
B-side opens with innovative artist Jesse Osborne-Lanthier who re-works Vis-Viva's raw recordings in an apparent disassembled hierarchy, layering the original sonic elements over an amazingly sounding, erratic texture made out of what sounds like iper-processed field recordings. Gumbody Flash closes with the slower, uncanny precision of an out-of-battery mechanism, whose degree of freedom decreases as its elastic repetitions get looser and contradictory.
This is Om Unit's legendary Philip D Kick alias brought back after 7 years in retirement with it's first original material! 5 incredible Jungle Footwork fireworks from Om Unit’s legendary 'Philip D Kick' alias. Adding Acid, 4/4 UK Hardcore and sound killing Amens to the sound he spawned in 2011, when he created 3 x Philip D Kick ‘Footwork Jungle’ EPs, and took classic Jungle anthems and footworked them. It could be argued that Om Unit’s 'Philip D Kick' alias spawned an entire movement despite being immediately retired. As label boss Fracture says "At the time, this was mind-blowing." So 7 years later it is with great pleasure and genuine excitement Astrophonica present Philip D Kick’s first original material - 'Pathways' - which also features Teklife/Chicago Footwork originator DJ Spinn for the guest feat. on "Vibe Off".
Killer stuff on Klasse Wrecks Sub label Zodiac! Frozen Russian plains rich with moondust and cybo-fog lie still, a faint rumble is heard from behind the horizon and Buttechno checks his Pulsemeter 5000, deciding to head on whilst he still can. Sonic lighting strikes the dead earth, leaving echoes that reverberate for miles around as digital feedback waves sore through the airless landscape. Buttechno steadies his exxo-bike, firing the back up atomic engine before taking a deep breath and heading into the lost and forgotten city. ZCAPRI is the seventh of 12 releases from Z O D I A C 4 4. One for each sign of the stars and then Z O D I A C 4 4 is forever dead and gone. Forever gone and dead.
Privacy returns to Klasse Wrecks after a 3 year hiatus and the wait has most certainly been worth the while. Four original tracks make up the 'New Product' EP, with the artist exploring new styles and tempos. Ranging from electro-speed to stomp-wave, each track is a masterclass in the style of Privacy's ever expanding body of work.
Approaching the release of a new ASC LP, we are always lucky to have an excess amount of tunes for the project. Together with ASC, we strive to create a cohesive sonic narrative with each LP. Astral Perception contains four immense tunes that were produced for the Astral Projection project, but ultimately were unable to fit amongst the Astral Projection story. These pieces are of the same high quality as the LP tracks, so we wanted to ensure they were put out into the world to compliment the LP. Arced is a contorted re imagining of Arc from The Farthest Reaches, while Inner Space is a peak time Grey Area infused Techno floor tune, Ring System is a rhythmic workout that acts as a perfect linking tool for adventurous DJ’s, and Event Horizon recalls ASC’s past work in a gliding depth charge style.
Wahever Records presents “Morning Cartoon”, a new venture combining drum machines and wind instrument harmonies, interspersed with percussion in wood and metal - humans breathing with an electronic heart.Recorded in London dreaming of faraway continents, sunny islands and banana trees.Paying respect to the Joy of Sound, a charity promoting social inclusion through music - a luminous organisation that provided the space for the artists on this record to meet. Their work reminds us that music is a way of sharing feelings and elevating ourselves.Morning Cartoon is a series of collaborations by London-based artist Matteo Boyero. The first track “Homerton Air” features Robert Goldsmith on tenor sax. Tim Wall is on clarinet for “Oool” and “Simple Analog Pleasures”. “Sampling the Joy Of Sound Redmond Files” is co-produced with Rodolphe d’Audiffret, with Nick Onley on tenor sax and flute; this track was previously released for the Joy of Sound and has been remastered for this release. As the title suggests, it contains samples from a concert by the Joy Of Sound. The artwork was created by Basile Carel and the special edition prints by Anonym Zelig.
a1. Homerton Air (ft Robert Goldsmith on tenor sax)
a2. Oool (ft Tim Wall on clarinet)
a3. Bathroom Jungle
b1. Sampling “The Joy of Sound Redmond Files” (ft Nick Onley on tenor sax/flute and coproduced with Rodolphe d’Audiffret)
b2. Simple Analog Pleasures (ft Tim Wall on clarinet)
Luge is an enchanting poet out of Moscow, reconciling rough western lo-fi patterns with light eastern zen harmonies. Lovely lush techno tracks that remind a bit of the early 90's Detroit techno releases. Another lovely release on the reliable The Healing Company label. Recommended!
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