Tel Aviv born, Berlin based duo TV.OUT make their Dark Entries debut with a 6-track EP titled ‘Dust Till Dawn’. Doron Mastey Charly & Ori Itshaki have made a name for themselves the past few years putting on impressive live sets, DJing around the world, and running Parallax Records releasing various strains of rugged, well informed electronic music.
The clouds pile up in the Dresden autumn sky, but Uncanny Valley still sees a little bit of blue on the horizon. And why not looking on the bright side of life for a change? It’s appropriate. At least if you have five killer tracks in your bag. Anyway, the collaboration with the Leipzig graphic designer Doppeldenk proved to be very fruitful and has now produced the fourth of seven children. So, after PINK, RED and ORANGE, here is BLUE. May life be good to you. The record opens with the aptly titled, Chicago-inspired ‘Mind Trip’ by Credit 00, the Aldous Huxley from your neighborhood. The Leipziger takes you on a journey on your own nerve pathway with occasional stops at the hottest spots in your body. Local buddy Gnista is piling up layer by layer for the UK meets Electro affair that is ‘Playtime Worktime’. It’s an atmospheric monster that needs to be climbed first. But as soon as this is done, a fresh breeze blows around your nose. In ‘Brecht Hat Er’, the mysterious Dresden underground formation AGB spreads wisdom in staccato mode, accompanied by Cold Wave-like music, which could also have been created in the shadows of the Berlin Wall. After a long time of hiatus, there is also a sign of life again from Uncanny Valley’s Break SL, who proves with ‘Bye Bye 627’ that he still masters the art of producing House music that is as edgy as it is catchy. In similar veines comes ‘In Treansit’ from Qnete who channels the ghosts in his machines into an emotional and powerful House track.
Jerome Hill, the man synonymous with the UK Underground for a couple of decades now arrives on DEXT with this 4 track EP and shows just why he is one of the country’s most underrated talents. The Super Rhythm Trax / Don’t Records boss really flexes his muscles on these heavyweight offerings – effortlessly blending super sharp drum programming with his signature “acidic bleeps and breaks” style, delivering 4 clever-yet-no-nonsense jams to make you move for a long time to come.
Undersound returns with a four tracker of restless acid sketches with one of our favourite contemporary Detroit producers, Jared Wilson. As the title “Roland Acid Again” suggests, the EP is a homage to the classic synthesizers that defined electronic music. The EP kicks off with “Always Something” and “Roland Acid Again”, where acidic lines are interlaced with signature Roland drums to convey different moods. Side B showcases a more reflective side of Wilson’s sound, with “Peanutbutter Halloween Saltmix” and the more direct “Nov 27” which closes the EP with its squelchy melodies.
Four sublime electronic cuts from Bokhari mainstay Stephen Lopkin and label newcomer Donarra spanning Techno, Electro and Ambient.
Form is Vision is a collection of music unified by the same vision but not by the same form. It’s the vision making the form, without being influenced by the form itself. Here, visionary electronic artists as Afrikan Sciences and Juju & Jordash meet cross over jazz bands like Hobby Horse and Where is Mr. R?!. The music was compiled by Autre & Two Thou, whose productions here form a bridge across different moods. The result is a synergistic leap away from genre-bound music.
‘Esoteric, modal and deep jazz from Prestige Records, 1961-73’. The tenth edition of Spiritual Jazz takes a closer look at the music Prestige was recording at the start of the 1960s. This was the period when the modal jazz sound pioneered by Miles and Coltrane was starting to percolate through the jazz underground. In its heyday, Prestige was the only jazz label that could hold a candle to Blue Note. Prestige was always quick off the mark to record new artists, and in the years after Kind of Blue the label was quick to release some of the most innovative early explorers of the new style. Founded as New Jazz in 1949 by 20-year old jazz fan and entrepreneur Bob Weinstock, Prestige was the only other imprint besides Blue Note to capture the iconic jazz sounds of the 1950s, and like its rival it grew to be an icon itself. If Blue Note documented the sound of hard bop in its most carefully crafted and beautifully presented form, the low-key, jam-session approach that Weinstock preferred meant that the music captured by Prestige has a tough, unfiltered energy that was a lot closer to the way it was being played live, night after night, by New York’s most prominent jazz musicians. Featuring Afro-Eastern visions from Yusef Lateef and Ahmed Abdul-Malik, deep modal excursions from Mal Waldron and Walt Dickerson, and essential spiritual jazz grooves from Gary Bartz and Idris Muhammed, Spiritual Jazz vol. 10 documents the sound of modal jazz in full flight, unabashed and authentic from the pioneers.
Recording at Malcom Catto’s analogue studio has been an ambition of Greg’s for a long time, not only for the studio itself but for Malcolm’s skill using this vintage equipment, very few people can achieve such an incredibly big sound. Moving to a more rhythmic space, you could call it Jazz funk or Fusion, but labels suck so just listen and appreciate the pure sense of space Malcom achieves with this recording. Instruments float in space, aided by the Vintage EMI desk and a host of valve equipment which has taken Malcolm a lifetime to collect. In amongst the more rhythmic pieces we also have some classic Foat style compositions; ‘Lake Kussharo’ and ‘The Dreaming Jewels’ as emotive and personal as ever, a feeling that can only be expressed and articulated in music. These past few years will no doubt be looked back on with great favour in musical history, with prolific and high quality output in all his various projects this LP is his crowning achievement of 2019.
For his new album Existenz, Function marks a clear step away from the corporeal techno of his recent releases. Pivoting around themes of religion, sexuality, trauma and healing, it is a work expansive and celebratory, a clear liberation from a deeply internalized past. Formed from a collection of recordings made in a period from late 2016 to mid 2019, Existenz takes the form of a creative outburst in reaction to a number of traumas – recent, childhood and throughout Function’s life. Life partner Stefanie Parnow assisted the production process in its entirety, providing inspiration, spiritual healing and featuring vocal contributions.
In 2018 Konduku took everyone by surprise with his debut called Kiran. It doesn’t happen all too often a new artist emerges with such a developed and distinctive sound, delivering an album as debut. Now, a year and three EPs later, Nous’klaer Audio is thrilled to present his followup: White Heron. His singular sound of odd-groove based techno has aged into a sound that’s more mature yet still very playful. Konduku further refined his sound of snappy polyrhythmic blips by using a controlled sound palette focusing on the tensions in-between. Starting with the mesmerizing depth of Kenar to the stripped down halfstepper Hermitage, and from the synthetic beat patterns of Kobalt to the colorful dream fields of Belki – White Heron is an album designed to listen from start to finish, but more than anything else meant for the club.
Emotional Response presents a special project, a collection of music from Bartosz Kruczynski, recorded for “Selected Media” and presented here as a time-piece of his continuing works. Kruczynski returns to the ambient and ethereal – plus a touch of dub techno – to showcase his expansive collaborative work with Polish studio, TVP Culture. Given free artistic license, the 15 ‘short form’ recordings included here were for programming, in the main, on modern Polish Art including the likes of Magdalena Abakanowicz, Miroslaw Balka and Tadeusz Kantor, as well as some international aspects for Enrico Prampolini, Ai Weiwei and Monica Bonvicini.
Soulful vibes for emotional listeners. A collection of laidback tunes, combining field recordings with analog synths in a unique blend of ambient music and dub techno, with a psychedelic twist. Written during the spring of 2019, this 6 track LP reflects on the rebirth of nature and the need for spending time outdoors, with friends, lovers or one’s own self.
Electronic Emergencies celebrates its fifth anniversary with ‘After The Fall’, by Croatian dark electro queen and style icon Popsimonova. Cult classic ‘Drive’ was remastered especially for the clubs by Rude 66, who also made a DJ edit of ‘Dark Star Crashes’, the collaboration of La Popsimonova with Italian queer heroes Hard Ton. Bosnian producer Borgie remixed ‘Break and Enter’ and ‘Delete Yourself’ into energizing, pounding dance floor killers.
Cultivated Electronics continues it’s output from excellent Dutch producers right now. CE LTD 002 comes from heavy weight Boris Bunnik under his Versalife alias. Haunting melodies and crispy digital beats make this some of Versalife’s darkest work to date. Out on limited run, vinyl only, hand stamped wax.
Since forming in 2006 post-punk experimentalists Sebastian Melmoth have been on a thoughtful and adventurous musical journey. In a constant state of aural evolution, the London-based four-piece has a delivered a string of albums and EPs that variously touch on everything from garage-rock, grunge and lo-fi pop, to electro, new wave, dark ambient and music concrete, all the while drawing on a myriad of literary and artistic influences. The band’s first release for Artificial Dance digs deep into their admirable and eye-opening catalogue and draws together some of the Amsterdam-based label’s favorites from the more electronic end of the band’s output. Entitled “The Dynamics of Vanity” – a comment on Western culture’s obsession with rehashing the past and the band’s own in-built distrust of artistic naval-gazing – the set is not a ‘best of’ retrospective but rather a ‘sort of’ selection of stylistically interconnected cuts that gives a very specific snapshot of the band’s work.
Exploring the balances between pop song writing structures, 80s cold wave bedroom style electronic production, and dreary gloom rock, Paris based Mathilde Mallen aka Dissemblance presents her debut lp “Over the Sand” for Mannequin Records. Over the ten tracks Dissemblance treads the fringes of a blurred dream world, using her bass guitar, voice, and drum machine as the backbone to create haunting yet soothing pop atmospheres in her songs.
Aborted At Line 6 was a project that emerged from the inside of a Swiss company which sold electronic equipment and batteries. Carlos Perón (founder of Yello) sat on the same desk as the later publisher Urs Steiger. The other members Martin Sturzenegger, Moritz Faccin and Andrea Fürer sat separately through a glass pane in their own office and sold TEAK products. Chris Lunch was the only not employed in this company. He was working on some stuff at the Slatt Studio owned by Carlos Perón. They all had a ritual to drink a bottle of Mumm champagne early in the mornings. Since it was not allowed to drink in the workplace, the glasses were disguised as a coffee mug and used the winged word “Mümmli”. It’s in this situation that Aborted At Line 6 developed into a “crazy idea”. They did some recordings in the studio of Andrea Fürer and mixed everything in just one go. The equipment used included one 808 Roland Drumcomputer, a Roland Drumatix, a Roland Bassline, one EMS Synthi A1, a Duke guitar and a Roland SH 3A operated and programmed by Carlos Perón and Chris Lunch. All this took place in 1982 and a 12″ single was released by Off Course Records (home of Grauzone and Stephan Eicher). This iconic and very hard-to-find single is re-issued included the original tracks.
Adam X’s highly respected, deep, science fiction laden, Traversable Wormhole project celebrates its 10-year journey with a first full-length studio album titled Regions Of Time. Lying mostly dormant since 2012, with a cameo appearance on Hospital Record back in 2016 with two tracks, TW is now fully awoken from the long travel through the space-time continuum with eight new songs of thought-provoking, psychedelic, bass-heavy, galaxian techno. Adam X’s back catalog is, of course, vast, spanning over a period three decades under several aliases. The New York native recently released his devious escapade through rumbling EBM and industrial techno in the form of his full-length album Recon Mission, released under his Sonic Groove Imprint. With this project being under the Traversable Wormhole alias, be sure to expect a completely different facet to X’s repertoire of pounding excursions. Step through the wormhole portal and take a deep cerebral mind trip into “Regions Of Time “
DJ Nobu returns to his own Bitta label, his personal playground for new musical projects with a focus on artists coming out of Japan. The label functions as a space for experimentation with the intention of instigating multiple styles by unexpected artists or pairing them with stimulating remixers. The unique chemistry created by these cross-genre connections results in an exciting catalogue carefully curated and directed by DJ Nobu himself. After recent outings on Rush Hour, Token and BleeD, the Japanese producer dives even deeper into a pure and adventurous techno journey with his most simplistic output to date. A DJ tool EP designed for the club, with four tracks of stripped down yet powerful dance floor workouts. All cuts have been tested and proven in Nobu’s own DJ sets before now, so he decided to make them available for fellow DJs to play and experiment with.
The Hipodrome Of Music 