The first in a series of vinyl and streaming platform-only white label releases on YUKU, featuring known artists releasing under different new names. We introduce "Imaginary Number" with four deadly 130-bpm clubtrax. Tracks from this release have enjoyed radio support from Madam X, Tom Ravenscroft, Mary Anne Hobbs, Surgeon, and Breaka!
"Since our debut release on YUKU, our perspective about the many creative possibilities open to us has evolved.
With "MAKTUB," meaning "It's written," we're clearly stating that it's time to dive deeper into our musical ethos and production. It represents a significant step in our self-discovery, and a big step forward from the debut EP.
On this sonic architect project, we managed to make a strong cross-Atlantic connection with the various features on this LP and make geographical boundaries evaporate. This genre-fusion release was formed in pure isolation and solitude from all sides, but the final outcome brings a feeling of even stronger unity within TRAKA, and also at same time preserves our personal individual creative identities."
"Drifter Dub & Perception draw from a deep inner feeling that connects the four elements - earth / water / air / fire. Everything is connected and surrounded by these four elements in varying ratios and levels of interaction. With these tracks, I wanted to elicit a mood that gives the feeling of being in nature with all these elements, dancing around a fire in the forest, getting lost in the kind of hypnotic rhythm and percussion that can put you in an ecstatic higher frequency state. The Forest Drive West remix of "Perception" captures that all and completes the release perfectly." - Es.tereo
A1 Es.tereo - Drifter Dub
B1 Es.tereo - Perception
B2 Es.tereo - Perception (Forest Drive West remix)
The second in the so far very popular series of vinyl-only white labels on YUKU that feature artists releasing under different aliases. This time, exploratory and impactful 160 with a slice of low-slung halftime from two artists - Ikawa & Kliptown.
"In this album I was trying to explore the idea of pop music on PCP. PCP has fantastic lore around it and I think the most fascinating thing about it is that it seems as if many people have had these experiences where they took PCP, it presented them with an alternative reality, and they accepted it without question. It's as if that umbilical cord of knowing that you're high is cut, and the person taking it is fully immersed in the trip. Not only that but from some of the accounts, the alternate reality seems quite twisted and perverse. There are reports of people disemboweling and eating each other, or deciding that the best course of action is self-mutilation or castration, and then emerging from the trip still convinced it was the right choice. Or even the accounts of people gaining superhuman strength and fighting off 5 or 6 cops at once. It seems like there's something quite dark on the other side of that door.
So for this album I tried to write what I imagine the pop music of that alternate reality might sound like. What would happen to the sugary sweet, wet dream, corporate sponsored top 40 hits, if we dipped 'em in angel dust and got "wet". What would happen if we slopped all of those fun summer hits into the meat grinder of the PCP reality tunnel, and just pushed them through. I like to imagine an intersection under an overpass in a cyberpunk dystopian future. It's midnight and you can see the neon's from the storefronts on the other side through the thick smog. A modded AE86 Corolla pulls a left turn and you can hear the music pounding from the sound system as the rubber peels underneath it. As it's drifting through the intersection, smoke pouring out of the tiny gap at the top of the tinted windows, the music pours out of the car like a thick syrup, engulfing us as we stand frozen for a moment as they pass. This is what they were playing." - Woulg
"How does it feel to reminisce? That was something I wanted to try to capture in soundwaves. I tend to reminisce a lot. About the good and bad parts in the past, and everything in between. I try to remember which specific parts in my life made me who I am today. Thinking about those events is going to make me feel a certain way, and i wanted to try to convert these feelings into songs.
Reminiscing to me, is also a very visual experience in my head. So I decided to take sounds that were close to me from the past and make something cinematic that still works as a full song. I've been using a lot of granulated sounds, which is almost like a shattered memory reconstructed into a new one, as your feelings can change recovering the same memory. So you can close your eyes and go on your own reminiscing journey, discovering loads of layers weaved through these soundwaves." - Sam A La Bamalot
Drifting on oceans of thunderous stillness, carried away by endless currents, whipped up by waves of darkness devouring you until you see the light. The first album from Platoo, a collaboration between Michelle Samba and Phil Mills, has an unrelenting cadence that grabs you and refuses to let go. A distinctive combination of calming soundscapes and highly-charged energy fitting any occasion, from dancing like lost souls in the empty halls of ancient barracks to ecstatically tripping on a distant desert planet.
To Phil and Michelle creating Platoo was about being given a sense of freedom and exploration, at once shaking off habits and rediscovering forgotten values. Phil's love of the mesh of ''real'' sounds and electronics, and quest to establish a balance where both would feed off each other saw him abandon convention and standard structures, deviate from the beaten path and let things come to life. Michelle's quest to create, to inspire and be inspired, to draw her conclusions from serendipitous events allowed her to break things open and be at ease with letting herself go to create the breathing space needed for this new sound.
What makes their symbiosis fruitful is a common yearning for the unknown, a search for what works without exactly fathoming why it works. The result is something that indeed meets those needs, a strange and beautiful musical exploration.
a1. Michelle Samba & Phil Mills - Tap Into Jo
a2. Michelle Samba & Phil Mills - Changing Horses
a3. Michelle Samba & Phil Mills - Blauw
a4. Michelle Samba & Phil Mills - Human Beings Without Legs
b1. Michelle Samba & Phil Mills - Bete Noir
b2. Michelle Samba & Phil Mills - Department of the Environment
b3. Michelle Samba & Phil Mills - Victoria Edge
b4. Michelle Samba & Phil Mills - Watch Out Please
"To make this concept a cohesive whole, Hybrids took a couple of years to compile. It reflects a certain shift in my sound, where I've try to maintain a constant balance between experimentation and efficiency - surprise, technique and playability... It's a highly functional object crafted from a subversive standpoint, breaking the rules while following them all. Auto-referential musical artifacts blend into composite shapes, and ultimately manifests into five exercises in style, trespassing traditional boundaries of genre, tempo, and (good) taste. While this record probably expresses an inner conflict at the intersection of hypermodernity and conservatism, I hope it accomplishes, at least, its primitive function-to put the body in motion." - TENEBRE
"Just Valance being Valance, I'm no underground glitch legend or pioneer as I never cared for a title, just an individual who puts sounds together and embraces the outcome whether it's light or dark. Capturing emotions from complex patterns. I don't betray myself. Not for status. Not for power. Not for money. Not to fit into a stereotype. Not to look a certain way. Not for approval as patience and sacrifice is required to build anything.
Some aspects of the world are getting uglier every day and every ray of hope is vital to tilt the balance." - Valance Drakes
A1 Valance Drakes - Grown Weary Of Their Kindness
A2 Valance Drakes - Awaken Old Memories From Their Slumber
A3 Valance Drakes - Angels Can Still Feel Fear
A4 Valance Drakes - Those That Tell You Winning Lies
B1 Valance Drakes - The Man Who Trade Obediences For A Title
B2 Valance Drakes - Behaviour Never Stand Still
B3 Valance Drakes - In The Nest Of Complex Questions
"Artificial Intelligence has been a fascinating area for me since 2017, and Cypher is a body of my work, an album, that draws heavily on it for inspiration. I tried to combine classical elements and modern techniques as much as possible when creating it, so that it has both a sense of the familiar and the new. I created the artwork by programming a GAN algorithm using face-transfer concept in combination with a street-art dataset from Istanbul."
"Following on our first EP, 'Collisions', we wanted to explore the use of modular synths, and also hardware, in more depth. Exordium was crafted from countless modular jams, passed back and forth between London and Liege, and polished into a piece of work that captures our love for club music, with an experimental edge. We wanted to get out for a moment from the 170 which we are a bit more known for. Hopefully you will enjoy this exploration into our shared sound and influences as much as we enjoyed creating it." - Fearful & Mtwn
"Music to a point is directly associative and always carries stereotypic and archaic values. In opposition to real life physical sounds electronically created sounds and music throw you back to the beginning of sound - the sine wave. To go from there is a welcome challenge and a lot of fun which both expresses well in the album." - Current Value
a1. Current Value - Recovery File
a2. Current Value - AI
a3. Current Value - Bitter Sweet
b1. Current Value - Blessing
b2. Amon Tobin & Current Value - The All Attracting
ANMON was born from the collaboration of French producers DJ Saint Pierre and Tenebre. Through rearranged recorded live jams, their music is a series of fast-paced experiments at the fringe of the techno spectrum. Built for the stage and trance-induced listening experiences, Anmon summons a renewed tribal spirit - an unexpected resurgence of the sonic aesthetics of freeparties via their very own interpretation.
Multi-genre industrial bass that's equally at home in the underground of Berlin and the low-end-leaning dancefloors of the US and UK. With 'Warp Crawler' on the exciting YUKU imprint, Chrizpy Chriz finds a mature groove in the bass spectrum that deviates between restrained and tearing at its own seams. A must for open-minded purveyors of exploratory electronica with teeth.
"For us, the Start Taking Note is a marvelous Frankenstein of sonic fragments. Foley, samples, ethnic instruments and late night synth jam sessions put together over solid UK Grime Influenced beats, bring together a sound of multiple generations of music and musicians together, to create this unique adrenaline shot.
We always strived to distinguish ourselves from the generic sound of the club scene, and we consider EP to be the foundation of our audio/visual identity.
Belgrade's urban underground music scene and the urban graffiti art is something that brought us all together, and will always stay a purest form of inspiration.
We also very grateful for Killa P's guest appearance on the EP title track. His career, tunes and artist he worked with amongst the core influences of our sound."
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