MindTrip introduce Dold, a young talent from the Swedish Techno scene. Known for his first releases on Float Records and his platform Arsenik, ‘Shutdown’ EP showcases a big range of his musical identity. Dold takes us into a hypnotic journey with his melodic interpretations, while he moves things faster on the darkest side of this EP, with his driven techno tracks fully inspired by 909 patterns and analog synth jams.
ASC are a perfect fit for Silent Season, favouring as they do greyscale melodic content and a cerebral approach to mutant techno. “Cerulean” is a fine opening gambit on this 12″, all crooked kick patterns and micro bleeps calling out into nothing, while “Dimension 1010” maintains the austere approach with a slow swell of melancholic ambience over a meditative rhythm. “Enchanted” is no less restrained, but there’s a subtle shard of light in the murmuring pad that lingers in the background. That’s well and truly dealt with on the bleak beatdown “Molniya”, which pings bleakest techno into a black hole of sound, which is of course a wonderful thing to behold.
Silent Season tap up Antenes for a rare 12″, building on the sizable impact her last and only release on L.I.E.S. had back in 2015. Here we get three trips into dark, evocative techno territory as you would expect to find on Silent Season, leading in with the doom-laden march of “Dream Uncreates The Land”. “Take Me To The Birds (For A)” ditches the drums and heads straight into the most delicate and stirring of ambient pieces, while “Metra Train Chicago 1000x” makes use of field recordings and processed static to make for an even more immersive listening experience. This is a daring release that eschews the need for functionality to take the listener somewhere else entirely.
Maciej Banasik has been releasing plenty of music as MB as well as Docetism since 2012, but this release on Silent Season marks the first time the prolific artist’s music has been committed to wax. In true Silent Season style the mood is consistently haunting, leading in with the foggy pulse of “Dentario Enneaphyllidis – Fagetum I” before the second part of the piece heads off into pure swelling drone. “Querco – Pinetum I” is a different kind of droning techno that comes loaded with cinematic poise, but it makes for a natural partner to the A side. The second part of that piece drifts into calming field recordings of birds and shapeless synth swells of a truly majestic nature.
OWL has previously been spotted on labels such as Anekoic, Circular Limited and Planet Rhythm, but he made quite an impression with the digital release of his Blackstone EP on Silent Season. Now the label have done the right thing and cut the release to vinyl, giving ambient belters such as “Fragment” the chance to sit beside none quieter gems like “Solar Wind” on wax. There are whispers of rhythm to be found tucked away in “Blowing The Light”, while “Innominate Horizon” imparts a little warmth with its tender chords, making this a record rich in variation as much as subtlety.
The Silent Season 10 Year Anniversary collection celebrates a decade of deeper electronic music. The vinyl series features artists whose music continues to inspire the Silent Season journey. Having only made spotted appearances in the past, icy ambient techno artist Winter In June makes a fine first outing on vinyl with a press of his formerly digi-only EP Eternal Lovers. It’s prime Silent Season material, using massive slabs of reverb and a foreboding sense of space as his main weapons while rolling out bleak machine matter that sounds as though it were blown across the tundra. “About Life & Death” is particularly moving with its heart monitor bleeps and forlorn strings, while “The Party Is Elsewhere” is a telling trip into the coldest of coldwave.
Seven years into its celebrated journey, Life and Death assembles its third and most adventurous compilation to date – Displaced Soundtracks. For the first instalment in a new series, DJ Tennis has given free rein to some of his most trusted contemporaries, enabling many of today’s most respected dance music producers to display their hidden talents as composers. Gathering music from a long-aborted film, the collection stands as another bastion of Life and Death’s perpetual evolution. Duncan Gray embraces dissonance, Black Merlin, Appleblim and Artefakt go interstellar and Fango channels post-punk squat music. Hades Rocket showcases the expertly-sequenced synth work that has graced Simian Mobile Disco’s illustrious career, while Redshape revisits all the right sides of 80’s Wave and Library music. Danny Daze and synth-savant KINK embrace non-standard tempi with great success, while Axel Boman delivers sitar-laced gospelhouse without a bass drum. Elsewhere, your favourite producer’s favourite producer, Stimming, team’s up with pianist Lambert and the pair learn to fly. Inspired and challenging, Life and Death ventures into their eighth year confidently, constantly evolving without compromise.
Samuel van Dijk is an electronic music producer, sound designer and media artist from the Netherlands releasing deep electronic music as VC-118A, Mohlao, and Multicast Dynamics. Drawing inspiration from technology, nature, film, and fiction, his productions and live sets embody a dynamic musical framework. Since the Dutchman surfaced as Mohlao for labels like Meanwhile, Field and Other Heights at the turn of the decade, van Dijks music has found a firm position; the ethereal electro VC-118A project, deep ambient techno as Mohlao, and subterranean ambient as Multicast Dynamics.
There is an intricate sorrow to Isorinne’s new album, ‘Speechless Malison.’ Though broadly melodic, it feels exhausted rather than restrained; though rippling with a pulse, the rhythmic passages are sparse, their measured source a great distance away. Building on last year’s cassette, ‘Echoic Memoir,’ ‘Speechless Malison’ takes greater and emotive strides, however brittle the path.
Helena Hauff’s label is back, this time presenting a various artists 12″ that heralds the start of the No Return series. The release starts on a mystical bent with the Eastern-tinged death electro of “El Carmel”, sounding ripe for a Hague-friendly warm-up session. Neud Photo then take over with a dystopian trip through rich synth tones coloured in dark hues for the bleakest of robotic fantasies. Antoni Maiovvi fills the B-side with the slow grinding bombast of “The Dig”, bleeding out a noirish take on coldwave for the darkest hearts to swoon to.
Sam de la Rosa, best known under the alias Samuel Kklovenhoof of the band Led Er Est and with Karen Sharkey of The Coombe, is back on Mannequin Records for a stunning 4-tracks electro-wave-experimental release. Texas born but strongly connected with the New York cold wave and disco scene from mid 2000, and the Wierd Records family, Sam’s music is a clever mix of post punk, electronic hybrids, experimental pop and catchy melodies.
Legendary Los Hermanos member Santiago Salazar’s album ‘Aspirations For Young Xol’ is given a vinyl release courtesy of Rekids. A heartfelt dedication to his son Isaias, ‘Aspirations for Young Xol’ takes us through the life of a pillar in the electronic music community – Santiago Salazar. From his formative years spent in California to his connection with Detroit and the passing of a childhood friend, the long-player’s tracks signpost the musician’s significant experiences, both positive and negative. This meaningful body of work now gets a full release on wax.
Jaunt celebrates a decade in the game this year, with the British clubbing institution marking the milestone in typically esteemed fashion. 10 Years of Jaunt – Sea, Land, Air is a 12 track V/A compilation spread across three distinct vinyl discs, each of which is based around some of the world’s core elements; themselves a mode of transport or a manner to embark on a ‘jaunt’. Each featured artist is somebody who the label has forged a connection with at some stage during their ten year journey – and each track has been titled to the artist’s own interpretation of a ‘jaunt’. The tracklisting itself has been tailor made to build and develop like their a Jaunt event, with deep, hypnotic, up tempo strands included alongside numerous surprises along the way.
The visionary from Detroit, Terrence Dixon, is back to 30D Records with an exquisite pack of vanguard tastefully built on Techno. This fifth chapter of the ExoPlanets series is powered with two original cuts and a pair of remixes.
Houndstooth presents 4 remixes for Second Story by Marcel Dettmann, Radioactive Man and The Exaltics.
The free will of Struments has led them to concentrate in one 12inch the encyclopedic knowledge of Marc Pinol, a duo of kids that present themselves as T.A.L., and the responsible for all that, Spastor, that appears in a remix signed by Florian Kupfer. Lliure Albir sounds as if Pinol was dazzled by the light of a lantern in a chill out while Paranoid London resound in the next room. In his remix, Palms Trax bet on tom toms and certain tribal groove, adding soft eighties keyboards, deep atmosphere, speeches and dub deliriums that perfectly fit in the freak universe of Pinol. Florian Kupfer remix made of Spastor’s Death In La Paz: a hit made in the German musician style whose groove is created by a fold in the sound and the apparent imbalance it has with the bass drum. If after this dawn breaks, it will not be small thing. T.A.L. are guided by a retro-spatial pulse to open a fan of sounds that expands and contracts threateningly, and delicately form what looks like an EBM hit stripped of the hammers.
Four acid-filtered, metal disco killers from the enigmatic Michael Ferragosto, gear to keep that Chicago Muzique shit alive and well. Hear from the horse’s mouth: ‘Man…this is the pure shit… pure house experiments are the only motherfucking thing that sounds real these days on the floor – know what I mean’.
The last Klasse Wrecks release of 2017 comes from Alphonse. The four tracks on the ‘Tribes of Atlantis’ EP display an acute and developed knowledge of all things House and Techno, fizzing with bonafide analog production the EP goes on a journey of warm deepness, clunky baselines and loose grooves.
Acid Fourniture is a journey into the darker recesses of Ceephax’s acidic mind. Simple 303 lines pulsate alongside sinister chords and detuned synths. Berlin Trip is a classic acid 4 to the floor track along the lines of Flow Coma by 808 State. Alligatored is a tight 808/303 groove made for the dancefloor. The Zone is a slower more introspective Acid, conjuring up lost warehouses and derelict minds. Alien Beacon takes a more electro acid slant, inspired by sinister lights in the sky and paranoia.
Man Power returned to his Northern home for one Last Waltz. This is their joint offering for the ESP Institute. On side A, Man Power welcomes us with Tistish, stepping slightly out of his comfort zone and employing a boxy breakbeat to create a dose movement. This contrasts his signature fatty bassline and together they establish a ground on which to stack layers of atonal square and sawtooth waves. About halfway through he introduces a massively seductive string lead and for the remainder of the ride this palette of sounds coalesce in dark orchestral beauty. On side B, Man Power’s cohorts Last Waltz deliver Nee Shitteru, a true stomper of a track complete with in-your-face toms and off-time percussion patterns, an intense driving acid line, and aggressive shamanic chanting. Throw in some crash cymbals, sci-fi sound effects and a smattering of gamelan and it amounts to an overwhelmingly chaotic and psychedelic trip. These two songs will have you speaking in tongues.
The Hipodrome Of Music 