Having featured on the Riviera Disco compilation series it’s time that Donald Dust returns to Bordello. This time the Scottish artist is back with a five track EP in the form of Nausea. Bending ideas and styles, the Edinburgh producer serves up a sample strewn, italo-infected grenade. Clean chords and percussion are sullied by hoarse vocals as arpeggiators grind and growl.
Foundation is set in the future when the world is barely remembered and humans have colonized the galaxy. The record introduces Donnie Ozone, a brilliant visionary rapper and psychohistorian whose job is to use lyrics and rhymes to predict the future. It is divided into six chapters, each showing a part of the bigger picture portrayed on the outstanding cover by Infidel. Teslasonic gathers together the galaxy’s top scientists and artists on a bleak outer planet and sets out to preserve the accumulated knowledge of humankind and begin a new human galactic empire based on Art, Science and Technology. He calls his sanctuary the Foundation and designs it to withstand a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that he predicts will last for a long time.
We’ll never tire of Gerard Hanson’s individual take on electro, where vast swathes of pads and finely balanced melodies ensure a smooth trajectory into the outer realms of what machine funk can be. This latest EP appears on Spanish label Apnea, and it leads in with the bubbling bass and celestial vistas of ‘Lake Bachman’ before swerving to the lightly Italo-tinted melancholia of ‘Summer Springs’ – a fast but delicate trip to unknown regions. ‘Myrtle’ is a knottier transmission from Hanson’s tangled studio circuitry, while ‘Station Wagon’ completes the picture with some consummate Moog-esque basslines and star-gazing chords that speak volumes without saying words.
Raw Takes offers up exactly that – perfectly imperfect electro jams direct from his machines. He takes charge of all six cuts on this new Zement EP. ‘901 Area’ opens with wobbly sheet metal synths and zippy pads that eventually coalesce around a nice snappy electro breakbeat. ‘Sxx’ pairs ambient pads with machine gun laser fire and ‘JMS’ then brings a more deep and reverential viber. The rich variation continues on the flip so that there is everything from tripped-out acid to hard-hitting and ear-drum-shattering electro-tech.
Rude 66 dusted off some of his vintage digital samplers and came up with this release on Pinkman. In these tracks you can hear influences of early 90s Meat Beat Manifesto and Coil weaving with the typical West-coast vocoder and synths, making “Fragmented Living” sound like it could have been produced anytime from the early days of industrial music to a few decades ahead from now. Special edition on red vinyl + bonus 7″ with two vinyl only tracks.
British veteran of beat tracks, Si Begg make his debut on Central Processing Unit. Begg’s casual mastery of his sound is shown off by the fact that he doesn’t over-egg the pudding of the Energie Electrique EP. Rather than doing sonic cartwheels to get people’s attention, Energie Electrique is characterised by the way Begg adds or subtracts elements to sturdy grooves. It’s an approach which makes for a collection of tunes that manage to bring the boogie from the off while they also hide all sorts of aural Easter eggs amidst the mix.
French label Nocta Numerica clocks up a quarter of a century of releases with a suitably stylish electro trip from Martin Matiske. “Eternal Reality” is an electronic listening experience to the inner self while it was created in a state of deep consciousness. Unforgettable moments of beauty and peace.
Stepback Records next release sees the Moot Tapes and Made Magnetic boss Polytunnel making his debut for the Edinburgh based label. Polytunnel goes deep into electro made for dance floors, with his style of melodic electro mixed with breakbeat influenced acid.
Already in the second quarter of the year, the time it’s well passed to have a look back at what happened in terms of music production by Romanian artist in last year and what to expect in 2023.
2022 was pretty dry and chill year for the Romanian producers, with not many impressing achievements. We are still revolving around the same few figures, with very little coming forward besides the rominimal scene, but 2023 is looking more promising.
Milano’s Uabos and Slow Motion Records member Andrea Tempo join forces for a thunderous EP combining their powerful signature sounds. Includes remixes from Altieri and Armonics.
Pu.ca Sounds join forces with Telephones and Audrey Danza for a hot package of remixes of PUCA001.
Over the years veteran producer Mark Ambrose wrote some of the most unique, energetic house / techno tracks. The Journey is an essential and timeless compilation that collect his most rare and hard to find classics. Volume 2.
Bad Manners welcomes none other than Mr Vertigo himself, K’ Alexi Shelby to the label. One of the founding fathers of Chicago House blesses the label with a four track EP ranging from far-out twisted-ness to puristic deep house class with a stop in uplifting piano-land in between.
Snuff Trax is back on wax, after a loooooong forced break full of exhausting twists and turns. Snuff Trax 20, the „Twilight E.P.“ by Moralez, including dope remixes by the great Etcher.
Keith Farrugia under his acid alter ego Acid Synthesis with some proper 90’s acid with a trance feel.
‘2023’ is the rather unexpected new project of the Dutch cult hero Wladimir Manshanden. 32 years ago, in 1991, Wladimir M founded together with techno icon Stefan Robbers, one of the first Dutch techno labels: Eevo Lute Muzique. While Robbers (as Terrace and Acid Junkies) pursued an international techno career in the years that followed, Manshanden preferred to remain in the shadows. His discography is as small as it is peculiar. But his track ‘Evil’ is an undisputed classic. On ‘2023’ he disassembles the eighties pop hits of his youth into sober, futuristic spoken-word techno. On the one hand, he does not shy away from some cringe (Dire Straits, Simple Minds, Tina Turner). On the other, he pays tribute to some genuine electronic heroes like Kraftwerk, New Order or Master C&J. The path to the bare essentials leads through a futuristic labyrinth. Along the way, you get hints of monotone voices, cipher codes and wondrous Dutch titles like ‘Privé Onderzoek.’ The outcome is alienating and magical at the same time.
As a part of Soil Records’ 5th anniversary we have a special 7 inch edition of Sololust “Too much Days on a Row”, originally released in 2020, with an additional rework of this emotive song by the master Rude 66.
Soil’s 5th anniversary is just around the corner and they chose some tracks that were released in the past years on tape and now gave them a spin on a 7 inches edition. This is the case of Magnum Opus & Revetop track “Fear in our Veins”, Colombian artist collaboration released in 2021 and now it comes with an authentic destroyer remix by Autumns.
This is the follow up the 2021 Alchemulator – “Larping At Fairsnake Hamlet” album that was released on Hunger! records. The sound goes in a bit of a different direction, the cheap digital FM homekeyboard is replaced with simple FM synths, old “obsolete’ samplers and some other stuff. There are a lot of vocals and experiments with them. I would describe them as synthesizer ballads…or hauntological hypnogogic synthesizer folk songs….a bit of a devotional psychedelic spacejazz influence. Instruments used: AKAI X7000, S900, Yamaha DX100, Yamaha DX21, Arturia Microfreak, Korg Microstation, Yamaha PSR373, Alesis Quadraverb, Alesis Midiverb II ZOOM mS70CdR, zILog Vocoder, Soundcraft Mixing desk, computer running Ableton Live.
The Hipodrome Of Music 
