Four slow-burning bombs that perfectly encapsulate how far that Slow Motion, slo-mo sound can be stretched. Featuring artists old as Alien Alien (Rodion & Hugo Sanchez) and Lerosa and new as Stoned Immaculate (Leo Mas & Fabrice) and Kassiel, Slow Motion drop the energy down a notch or two but not the emotion. Just as suitable for an early morning run as they are for a Balearic sunset, this four tracker has got essential written all over it.
First part in a brace of new chapter of Italian Dance Wave Compilation Serie. Ma Spaventi, Sauvage World, 2000 and the hardest working man in disco, Slow Motion label head Franz Scala. A trippy selection of proper after hours jams, to keep feet moving and heads spinning till the sun comes up.
J.C aka Jose Cabrera and Kastil collaborate and come with the exciting results. A fresh blend of fierce techno, ambience, industrial, noise and found sounds recordings. A full length captivating album that pushes and pulls you through an edgy and engaging world of sound. Part 1 mixes up trance-inducing deep techno with punishing drum programming. Synths have a life of their own as they whip and snap about and bring a post apocalyptic sense of foreboding. Some tracks are abstract modular gurgles and others are lo-fi, heavily textured affairs that are beguiling beautiful. The use of modular synths lends the whole thing an unpredictable and analogue feel that makes is bristle and brim with life throughout. Part 2 focuses on more suspensory ambient sounds. It means tracks zone you out and get you thinking, with distant melodies drifting next to warm solar winds. When drums do appear they are deep down below and dubbed out affairs that unfold slowly.
Autumns is the solo project of Christian Donaghey, from Derry, Northern Ireland. 2017 sees the eagerly anticipated release of his debut full length record “Suffocating Brothers”. On “Suffocating Brothers” Autumns presents a resolute nine track culmination of the fierce audacity that has come to define and distinguish the project since an assured first emergence in 2013. Written and produced over the course of six months, between July and December 2016, it’s an album that comes as a momentous and devastating fulfilment of what the Autumns project has outlined with increasingly ruthless intent over the last few years.
French electronic music stalwart ”Umwelt” has produced some modern day classics throughout his career. The Lyon based musician joins P.E.A.R.L.’s Falling Ethics imprint and comes up with the thirteenth installment in the series. ”Strange Attractor EP” is a well balanced EP that showcases several sides of Umwelt’s signature style that sits somewhere on the edges of Techno, Electro, Adventurous Electronics and anything in between.
Austere factory techno with a distinct Gallic swagger on Helena Hauff’s Return To Disorder label.
Delsin Records’ Inertia series is back with a powerful four tracker from Yan Cook. The producer from Ukraine has also released Delsin’s main label and associated Ann Aimee. He makes straight up techno that arrests your attention and does just that again here. ‘Toucan’ is first and is a spangled, underwater techno track with gurgling lines wrapping round shuffling percussion and insistent drums. It’s one to get into your head, while ‘Puffin’ is more physical, with more warped synths and paddy drums woven together into a fluid, rippling groove that never lets up. The drums on ‘Dialogue’ are deep and land with real resonance while dubby chords rattling out to the horizon. Last of all ‘Flamingo’ is the most manic of the lot, with hi speed synths and booming drums all coming together to make for powerful, sub shaking and room filling techno madness.
Emotional Rescue delves deep in to the past with the release of the first ever recordings by UK post-industrial, ambient pioneers O Yuki Conjugate (OYC). Recorded in Nottingham in 1983, the EP’s four tracks showcase OYC’s early sound: a beat-driven, lo-fi that places them alongside the early British electronic pioneers.
Lauréne Exposito is back with a follow up to her well received debut album from last year on Knekelhuis. This new record turned out to be very personal. Life changes and love’s stranges are central themes in all its shapes, sizes and colors. Still, hope takes centerstage. All tracks have been recorded at Lauréne’s home in the French Alps, using analog gear. Take a Cocktail Mexico and immerse yourself into her liberating new trip.
Dark Entries Editions reissue ”Perfect High” the 1983 debut 12” by Peppermint Lounge from Germany. The group consisted of Matthias Elvers (synthesizers, bass), Regina Petersen (vocals) and Jorg Burckhardt (drums, strings). They took their name from a popular 1960s discotheque in New York City. Treading the lines between Italo Disco, Electro, and New Wave, the trio crafted a unique sound difficult to classify. Melancholic arpeggiators, a throbbing baseline, stuttering samples, vocoder and the classic Roland TR-808 drum machine run throughout the track, which builds to a majestic crescendo. This reissue includes the original vocal version, backed with a shorter instrumental version.
Bad Penny from NYC with her magnificent debut. Bright melody lines undercut by harsh and heavy bass analog synths and minimal rhythms. Low vocal timbre with punk-influenced growls. Lyrics fueled by the anxiety and harshness of American city life.
Number ten for X-Kalay is kicking off a series of Various Artist EPs. Whilst taking in 3 continents brings a certain geographical diversity, the aim of this record was to create a cohesive release bound by the common themes of electronic music they love at the label. On the A side Zurich based Douala lights it up with a perfectly crafted dubbed out house jam; awash with tape delays and spacey reverbs ‘The Mysteries of Life’ is an excellently understated piece of work. Next up Chilean Mucho Sueno utilisies some big drum workouts and tense atmospherics to turn in a tough 4×4 house track. Baked in the concrete streets of Santiago, the rough percussive interplay and strong bass grooves of ‘Yungelita’ quickly becoming a signature of this promising South American producer. On the flip it’s an all Australian affair with E.Davd contributing a deliciously lazy, boogied out electro number full of iced out pad work and a truly hypnotic groove. Finally, fellow Australian Escape Artist closes things off with a massive stripped back cut aimed squarely at the floor; the jagged electro bass and moody pad work of Archipelago upping the ante perfectly.
Two tracks from the late Andreas Gehm (more to come in later releases). Pressed on a one-sided, hand stamped and numbered standard weight black vinyl release. Accompanied by a printed info sheet insert.
Dark Entries returns to the New Jersey basement studio of Smersh to unearth an 18-minute jam session from 1989, backed with two contemporary remixes. “Sideways” was taken from a cassette titled ‘100’, which refers to a 100-minute jam session the band recorded to tape on June 12, 1989 in Piscataway. A frenetic hybrid of techno and acid with driving EBM style beats, “Sideways” weaves intricate industrial noises with synth melodies that drift in and out of phase. On the flip are two fresh remixes by different aliases of prolific Ann Arbor producer Tadd Mullinix. As JTC, he expands the sound palette, adding organ stabs and lush pads, drawing on Detroit deep house and UK garage. The Charles Manier remix features chanted vocals on top of an array of pulsating synths, stark percussion, and post-punky guitar effects.
Adalbert C. Kupietz (aka Adalberto, Fatjack, Crime Scene) is a rising name in the wonkier, more cerebral techno scene. The German is up on Acidicted, Adalbert’s own imprint which focusses on the all things 303, and this is only his third outing under the Hieroglyphica alias. “Biorhythm” is the perfect name for the sizzling banger residing on the A-side, a loose-cut techno killer with all sorts of electrifying acid sounds from the heart of the machines, while “Extinction” bounces more gently to and fro, offering mischievous basslines at the core of its rusty, analogue circuitry.
Deep cerebral electro from Mor Elian. Challenging and advanced forward thinking tracks topped with some little acid flavour on the always reliable Delft label.
Undersound Recordings is back with a new electro infused EP called ‘Backyard Alchemy’, this time courtesy of the trio Eoism. The side showcases two classic fast tempo electro dancefloor killers, ‘Xontics’ and ‘Transmutation Scheme’, plus a special bonus IDM track on A3, ‘Volatile Conjunction’. The B side is dedicated to dreamy and melodic synth driven tracks like ‘Cold Fire Equation’ and ‘Anima Dissolution’.
1997. ‘Drexciya don’t have no phone. They’re too busy to do your remix’. Mad Mike’s response was short and to the point, enough to put off some; but not Vincent Koreman. Addicted from an early age, the dutch producer dug deeper and deeper into the mythology and mystery of James Stinson and Gerald Donald. The sounds, images and ideas conjured up by the Detroit electro duo pulled Koreman in, his “fascination” growing ever more “intense” as the underwater dwellers sonically prospered. Fast forward twenty years and that fascination has not diluted one drop, in fact the aquatic dream of the wavejumpers is the inspiration for “Recolonization”. These tracks “would have never had existed,” says Koreman, “if it wasn’t for Stinson and Donald creating that great, energetic, abstract electronic music and coupled it with an original vision on the African diaspora, art and culture.” This music is an homage to the enigma of Drexciya, a tribute to the machine marine men who pioneered electro and a vision. Drvg Cvltvre continues that vision, one of “an underwater race” that has reconquered Earth, overcoming “big business, corporate greed and water pollution” to reclaim the surface from man. Forget mankind. Our time is over, ‘Recolonization’ is here.
Garçon Taupe has been around for quite some time but released only a few tracks. This 4 track EP is all about acid.
The Hipodrome Of Music 