Spiritual deep house tracks from Italy on HotMix.
001.Features
Black Merlin @ Strange Sounds From Beyond (Amsterdam) 25.06.2017
Charles Manier – Luxus Steroid Abamita [BOP007]
Tadd Mullinix’s Charles Manier project returns with a third double-LP, Luxus Steroid Abamita, an edict of nine new amorphous transmissions and clustered, clangorous, hemi-synthetic funk. This is experimental machine music: it’s inspired by the fringes of dance, but skirts petrified arpeggios and other stock Wave and Technopop emblems. Its spirit elicits Sheffield Post-Punk and Düsseldorfer NDW desiderata, but exploits are crisp, psychedelic, and expansive. Lyrics come as laconic Dada, sociopolitical impressions—in counterpoint to concrète tape smears, echoing guitar deluges, and entrenched in ever-shifting grime. A wide spectrum of density is proffered. Atmospheric zones are submerged, modulating knells. When tempos increase, sample & hold mutations make synthesizers sputter and writhe. The title track and opus,“Yopo (Calcium Tree)” carry this with heavy pulses—storming like locomotives.
Bill Converse – The Shape Of Things To Come [DE158]
Dark Entries present the sophomore album from Austin, Texas analogue hardware enthusiast Bill Converse. Immersed in the early days of the 90s midwest rave scene, Bill began DJing at a young age in Lansing, Michigan. Luminaries such as Claude Young, Traxx, and Derrick May were key early influences. Techno, noise, ambient and tape processing are all part of his uncanny sound palette. ‘The Shape Of Things To Come’ is a 70 minute journey spread across two pieces of vinyl. It’s comprised of seven tracks recorded directly to tape with no overdubs, made at Converse’s home studio. At the time of recording, Bill was sending this material to Josh Vance (Josua Dorje Ngodup) for feedback. Most of the time Josh would respond in the form of artwork, and then Bill would create another track inspired by this feedback chain. Converse has dedicated this series of tracks to him. The songs on this album reveal a sublime influence from Detroit techno, early Chicago house, and Acid. For this album Converse slightly bumped up the tempos geared for dancefloor energy. Built around vintage synthesizer lines and gritty drum machine percussion, the tracks evoke how things have changed and how they have come to be.
ADMX-71 – Melted Fuel [LIES097]
Techno veteran Adam-X dons his ADMX-71 moniker with three tracks of subterranean, cyborb, body music influenced slow grinding techno. Tense, textured, and ready to explode all three tracks explore the dark present and future we are heading towards, with track titles like Nuclear Hysterics and Dire Situation the music goes hand in hand with the modern day chaos unfolding daily. Properly heavy and dense there is still air letting the tracks breathe and develop as they slowly boil over scorching everything in their path.
Cardopusher – Nothing Left To Believe In EP [ZONE029]
Zone Records welcomes Cardopusher for their next EP, a five track affair that is arresting from the off. Venezuelan born Cardopusher is now based in Barcelona and co-founded the Classicworks label. His diverse and experimental sound takes him from techno to electro to acid to rave to house, all with his own singular perspective. Kicking things off is the raw and raucous ‘Nothing Left to Believe In.’ It is a macho tune with fractured vocals, wild synths and slap funk drums all sounding industrial and tortured. Then comes ‘Blast Cut’, a more dynamic and stripped back electro groove with a corrugated bassline and metallic synth stabs all sounding informed by the past but looking to a distant future.
Timothy J. Fairplay – Mindfighter EP [HNRUK004]
Timothy J. Fairplay is revisiting Hoga Nord Rekords to release the 12inch EP Mindfighter: photosensitive electronic music from one of the pillars of the modern meaningful dance music scene. Together with Scott Frasier, T.J.F. is running the record label ‘Crimes Of The Future’ and he is also known as one half of The Asphodells together with Andrew Weatherall. This is his second release on Hoga Nord Rekords and his first EP on the label.
Mor Elian – Cymatic Ring [FAM001]
Fever AM comes from a Berlin connection between a pair of artists with roots on either side of the Mediterranean Sea and on both sides of the Atlantic. Label founders Mor Elian and Rhyw (one half of Cassegrain) share many musical reference points reaching back to early childhood right up to the present including the deeper, darker reaches of electronic music. The label is the pair s rawest and truest realisation of these influences. The first EP will be from Elian, a sublime 4 tracker that has matured after a winter in the studio and is now ready for club play – from heating up peak time dance floors to trippier after hours moments. Sprinkling her trademark stripped back sound with electro and breakbeats the release sets out the label s stall to release vibrant, challenging dance floor music.
Annanan & Maroje T. – The Brooklyn Sessions [PNKMN020]
The Brooklyn Sessions bring together old and new Pinkman friends. Annanan returns, this time with Maroje T, for three pieces of NY darkness. Acid tainted torment opens the 12″, pain and rejection catalogued in the barren “Confrontations in Terms of Sexuality.” “I Saw You” maintains that cold edge. Militaristic percussion is dipped in industrial grease, lost samples circling in a haze of distortion. The pair explore reduction with tracks being boiled down to leave only distilled dread behind. The breathy vocals of “I Am” close, drum patterns looped into machine groan and the aching abyss.
VA – Selectors 003 [DKMNTLSLCTRS003]
Dekmantel’s Selectors series now continues with an edition curated by Marcel Dettmann. Although he’s now known as one of the world’s most celebrated techno artists, even Marcel Dettmann had to start somewhere. Long before he ever held court at Berghain (or its predecessor, Ostgut), he was just another young boy in Eastern Germany, one whose earliest encounters with capitalism involved spending every penny he could scrape together down at the local record shop. In those days, it wasn’t techno that got him excited, but new wave, post-punk, industrial and EBM acts like Front 242 and Depeche Mode. Get back to his roots right here.
DJ Bert & Eagle – I Am Your Master [STR12007]
The Hands – The Hands EP [ESPHB001]
Freaked out crunchy psychedelic trips on ESP. label promo text:”Whilst on a Balinese surf safari searching for a secret spot where pink dolphins populate the line-up, The Hands would be my guide. I’d been warned he had recently been busted trying to purchase human flesh on the black market. Bombing through the jungle, The Hands hit play and the truck was bathed in Gothic Berlin toilet techno. ”Holy shit,” said I,“what is this?” The Hands said, “The Hands.” But what else was I to expect from an Austrian/Balinese techno cannibal? —DJ Harvey”
Sterac Electronics – Things To Think About [VDLP001]
Some things are just too good to be hidden from view. That’s certainly the case with Things To Think About, the first album from Dutch electronic music legend Steve Rachmad’s lesser-known Sterac Electronics project. It’s a while, though, since the public has been treated to a heavy dose of Sterac Electronics material. He first established the alias at the turn of the millennium, primarily as an outlet for hardware-driven electro music shot through with funk and soul. Recently, Rachmad and Tom Trago decided to revisit the Sterac Electronics archive, discovering a killer collection of cuts created at different points over the course of the last 15 years. Now 9 of those spellbinding hardware jams have been gathered together for the first time on Things To Think About, a warm, rich and evocative collection of electro-fuelled workouts that giddily pay tribute to the music of Rachmad’s youth.
Nachtzug – Unspoken [VTX005]
Dj Overdose – Feeding The Fad [UTTU074]
Label-hopping Dutchman DJ Overdose can usually be relied upon to bring the goods. Happily, he’s in fine form on this first solo Unknown to the Unknown appearance since 2015’s fantastic Housejam Freaker. Wisely, he’s decided to steer clear of well-worn retro-futurist cliches (jungle breaks, hardcore revivalism and so on), instead delivering a trio of raw cuts that blend elements of electro, 1990 style European techno and blistering acid house. Flipside “Probably Too Commercial”, a rough-and-ready dose of distorted, high octane electro smothered in alien electronics, is probably the pick of the bunch, though sweaty, stab-tastic opener “Feeding The Fad” – all razor-sharp electronic riffs, wayward drum machine beats and old school vocal samples – also impresses.
VA – Dollydeluxe2 [DOLLYDELUXE002]
Number 2 of this 4 piece exclusive 12-inch series! All tracks are specially produced for Steffi’s Fabric 94 mix CD!
Nadia Struiwigh – Lenticular [CPU00101111]
Nadia Struiwigh is an electronic music DJ & producer from Rotterdam, Netherlands. Sitting somewhere between Biosphere and Boards of Canada, Struiwigh’s refined downtempo electronica takes you on a journey full of synthesized soundscapes that flirt with ambient techno. Awash with melody and warm electronics, Lenticular is an expertly crafted piece from an artist who has found her sound and is now effortlessly outputting inspiring compositions. Reminiscent of Warp’s Artificial Intelligence series, this is electronic listening music for quiet nights and club drowsy dawns. Both tracks are taken from her forthcoming album of the same name.
Porn Sword Tobacco – 2017 [ACIDO026]
Audiophile presentation of dreamy, dubby pulsating ambient beauties from Porn Sword Tobacco on Acido Records.
Lewis Fautzi – The Ascension Of Mind [POLEGROUP046LP]
It s time for Lewis Fautzi to introduce his first album on Pole Group, a collection of ten tracks of cosmic techno, carefully crafted making a soundtrack of the future, deep, intense and scientific. A coherent and complete collection of precise, surgical and futuristic music to be enjoyed as a whole adventure.
Ritchie Inkle / Stasis – Traffic Attic Vol.1 [PNDTA001]
Didier Allyne embodies a certain kind of underground already in the mid 90’s : A record store clerk, distributor, artist and DJ, he cross-cuttingly approched the scene even back then, when ‘French Touch’ was massive. Embracing the new trends from a sideways perspective, he emerged with his own blend of broken beat, soul jazz and Warp style electro, always keeping the groove in sight, basicaly what techno is all about, as deep and singular as it gets He began the Parisian Shop Traffic Records in 1998. This compilation will be in several volumes that have been flagship pieces of this shop influenced by Fat Cat Records, Wally’s Groove World in others …This first Techno volume highlights the influence that Didier received at Fat Cat by the introspective piece Stasis “So-Lar” on Time in Right in 1993 & Ritchie Inkle, one of the designers of Nu Loop & whose piece ” Happy Face “represents the Techno sound represented by Traffic Records.
The Hipodrome Of Music 