Fortuna Records return with an exceptional reissue of a mid-80s early electronica LP by keyboardist Raviv Gazit. The album was composed entirely on the Synclavier synthesizer in the basement of the Tel-Aviv University in 1985. Gazit was ahead of his time composing cold yet blissful electronic music for film and theatre which he later released as an album. An unexpected yet extremely welcome addition to Fortuna’s killer catalog.
Following the death of his one-time Chi Factory partner J. Derwort in February 2019, Hanyo van Oosterom went back to Patmos, the magical island where they once recorded their most famous works, armed with some of the artefacts and hand-built instruments they’d collected together. While there, he made the field recordings and musical sketches that form the backbone of “Travel In Peace”, Oosterorm’s emotional final album as Chi Factory. Poignant, atmospheric, melancholic, dreamy and otherworldly with a genuine sense of time and place (you can almost smell the surrounding flora and fauna), the album’s two lengthy tracks – collages of interlinked sketches and recurring musical motifs – are fittingly fantastic. As curtain calls go, we can think of few better.
Pre Kraftwerk, Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter formed Organisation in 1968. Their music was a mixture of sounds, feedback and rhythm, with the line up being Fred Monicks on drums, Butch Hauf on bass, Basil Hammoudi on percussion, Florian Schneider on flute and violin and Ralf Hütter on organ. The original sales were poor but nowadays it is highly sought after, also because Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider later continued as Kraftwerk, and became one of the most important electronic music formations ever.
‘Radar’ by Parisian DJ and producer NiKiT is Electronic Emergencies’ first release in 2020. Two years after his debut, NiKiT has once again delivered a stunning mini-album. His idiosyncratic and particular style within the realm of techno flirts with electro, and sometimes even has a dubby touch. Compared to his debut ‘Arcanes’, NiKiT’s sound has expanded and is more spacey, while staying powerful and very danceable.
The 37th installment on brokntoys sees the return after a long hiatus of audiofugitive Annechoic. Having carved her sound over the years, rw nw prt m hrw sees the DJ and producer inhabiting a crossover land between electro and electronica. Taking inspiration from The Egyptian Book of the Dead, the EP alternates dreamlike atmospheres with adroit club numbers. Through 5 tracks Annechoic deftly manoeuvres between the introspective and stargazing, offering a glimpse into the tapestry of a unique player
Starting from the assumption that polyrhythmic music is a political statement, Wang inc. developed this 12” focusing on the stories of the past years taking place in the central Mediterranean Sea. Stories of hope and despair, often tragic by the will of powerful and egoistic people. Each track describes a fase of the crossing of the Sicilian channel: Fuga is the escape from the Libyan prisons, Gommone is the crossing on an inflatable raft that often finds a tragic epilogue, Approdo is the battle between humanitarian aids and governments to find a place of safe, Abbraccio is the tragic history of mother and son found at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea still hugging each other. It’s harsh techno, slow, with vivid images, lot’s of tension and bleak atmospheres. All titles are in Italian because this story is part of the history of Italy.
June Records presents the debut release of Lithuanian artist Caroil who has been active in the local scene with his involvement with DOS Club and STRCAMP. Recorded between 2015 and 2018 in Vilnius, Lithuania using hardware digital and analog synthesizers. Sound sources include: Boss DR-660, Formanta Polivoks, Kawai SX-210, Kawai K1, KORG MS-20, KORG KR-55B, Roland SH-101, Roland JX3P, SIEL Cruise, YAMAHA TG-33.
“Mirror Glaze Lavish” is Marc’s latest effort in trying to depict his cynical and disillusioned view of the present-day music scene, seen through a sonic magnifier that emphasizes its greatest controversies, by juxtaposing different electronic languages as a challenge to the current levelling artistic trends. The artist personality is nullified, standardized to a state of placid non-critical thinking. Everyday’s emptiness emerges as the structure of reality and only the cracks in it still lead to life. “Great souls suffer in silence”, once said Friedrich Schiller, but what if silence becomes an audible, danceable image? As if all these electro cuts, differently permeated with a balanced mix of playful darkness, were populated by eerie animals that cannot find peace with their habitat and keep dancing relentlessly until the very end of their miserable existence. Seen in this context, each of Marc’s tracks must be interpreted as an irreverent and poignant act of self-assertion vis-à-vis his contemporaries. Morah’s reinterpretation of “Celexxa” adds value to the original track, taking us for a dirty ride on a psycho-electro-charged rollercoaster.
Rekids offshoot Stranger in The Night welcomes underground mainstay Fred P for a release complete with his signature depth. ‘Turn Up’ is built on immovable kick drums that roll and roll beneath a dark nebula of synths and pads. There is the atmospheric feel of factory floor automation in the groove and it never lets up. The lush ‘Alphabet City’ is less heavy, with more bright and cosmic pads lighting up a track that is airy and filled with a subtle sense of funk. ‘Construction’ takes things late into the night once more, with an edgy lead that is unsettling and paranoid as it pans about over a rooted kick drum that will lock the floor into a state of hypnosis. ‘For The Dome’ closes this fantastically compelling release with jittery, percussive drums that are softened by celestial synth work. In harmony, they make for perfectly escapist listening.
Five years on since their last joint outing in Stroboscopic Artefacts Monad series, Speedy J and Lucy team up again as Zeitgeber on ‘Seventeen Zero Four’, a new three-tracker descending deep into the filthy, tenebrous outskirts of club music.
Since launching in 2011, James Healy’s Air Texture label and compilation series has become something of an institution within the ambient scene. As with its predecessors, the seventh volume in the series has been jointly compiled by two artists with an existing musical relationship, in this case Rrose and Silent Servant. Their selections are on point, drowsily drifting between academic ambient compositions (see Rrose and James Fei’s “For Bass Clarinet 8.97 (Rrose Version)”, uncomfortable electronic explorations (Ron Morelli, Anthony Child), modular movements (Not Waving), jazz-flecked deep space soundscapes (Luke Slater), horror-influenced throb-jobs (Phase Fatale, June & An-i) and 1990s style ambient electronica (Octa Octa, Function).
Poland, early 80’s. Lieutenant Miosz Szwajcer is assigned to the young student’s murder case. Struggling with his personal life and unclear releationship with recently murdered young woman, he tirelessly chases the psychopathic killer. Things are darker than they seem. Strange things soon begin to occur. He must decipher the reality from his delusions, phantoms and supernatural phenomenons. Pieces of the puzzle indicate that the new violent crime is being planned. The race against time is on. Original score from obscure Polish movie ‘Kontury’ (1984), directed by Lucjan Kut. Remastered from the original tapes.
Carl Finlow returns with a double vinyl 8 track album on 20/20 Vision. ‘Apparatus’ is a forward thinking album that reflects Finlow’s return to live touring with many tracks hitting harder and darker, pushing his electro sound into new directions and soundscapes. The album means business from the start, kicking off with the title track, ‘Apparatus’, a no-nonsense assault on the system with fast tight drum programming, heavily vocoded vocals and powerful synths. The pace continues on the record with ‘Bind’ and ‘Carbon Deposits’, Structure’ but there are also pure electro cuts like ‘Differential’ and moody grooves in ‘Ampere’ and ‘Viroids’.
214 back on Cultivated Electronics with his first full release for the label. 4 tracks of heavy hitting electro delivered with the style on finesse this bastion of the scene is known for.
TRUST returns with four cutting-edge transmissions by Versalife (aka Delsin’s Conforce). Classic and experimental electro meet high-impact techno for a hefty dose of panglossian optimism.
From ”Tomorrow” and back to plus thirty years, more precisely in 1987, a teenager named Thomas Barnett released the track ”I Can Feel It” mixed by Juan Atkins, one of the first mix by who became the main DJ and producer from Thomas’s hometown, Detroit. Today ”I Can Feel It” is a very hard to find record that finally will be available for an official reissue via Omaggio.
The Hipodrome Of Music 