CCO aka Florin Büchel with 4 tracks of pure analogue oldschool deepness. Another fantastic very limited outing from the Hot Jam camp.
CCO – Eliminiation By Illumination [HOTJAM003]
001.Features
Anthony Nicholson – Four LP [DAS006]
Anthony’s fourth album is simply called ‘Four’ and features 12 masterpieces of deephouse music. Every track is a masterful lesson in the art of this genre. They are beautiful and originally composed, including elements of jazz, garage, disco, RnB and classic house. Anthony Nicholson clearly shows that he is gifted with an amazing imagination and also a proper knowledge of musicality.
VA – Paris Club Music Vol.2 [CCBLP003]
Last year saw French label ClekClekBoom cement its burgeoning reputation with a compilation showcasing the local talent it had been championing since starting up in 2011, including such luminaries in wild-card bass music as French Fries and The Town. There has been a swarm of left-leaning club bangers issued out since the first volume of Paris Club Music, and so it doesn’t feel rushed to be welcoming the second volume with a stack of choice cuts from the past twelve months. There’s a strong unified vibe to ClekClekBoom, from the tight but slippery electro of Manare to the off-kilter techno of NSDOS, while 50Weapons staple Bambounou sounds right at home with his primal and utterly head-spinning “Idem”.
Brian Harden – Tour De Chi [SIS024]
Since the label’s inception, Sistrum has kept an ear to the future while always keeping its roots firmly planted in the rich musical heritage of early house and techno – raw, real & unfathomably deep. In keeping with this ethos, Sistrum proudly presents a true Chicago original, Mr. Brian Harden. Three classic, late ‘90s cuts are brought together for a new generation of music lovers to enjoy, never before available as a 12” release.
Maayan Nidam / Laverne Radix – Split EP [PERLON101]
Maayan Nidam teams up with her alter ego Laverne Radix and delivers a 4-track split 12”, including a remix by mister Boo Williams.
Die Roh & Okee Ru – Beam Boom Bum EP [MLE004]
3 craggy dancefloor cuts of disco infected technoid shuffled 808 beats and quirky samples. Lucretio (Restoration/Machines State) on remix duty has delivered a methane-fuelled remix of ”Non la Rai”, adding illicit 90s happiness to the original beats. A remix that could easily cross-refer to his hard-to-find tunes on Warm Sounds.
Ron Hardy – Muzic Box Classics #8 [MBC207]
Ron Hardy is the only man who can test Frankie Knuckles’ status as Godfather of Chicago House Music. Though he rarely recorded under his own name and left little evidence of his life, Hardy was the major name for Chicago’s dance music from the late 70s to the mid-80s. By 1974, he had already effected a continuous music mix with reel-to-reel machines plus a dual-turntable setup at the club Den One. Several years later, Hardy played with Knuckles at a club called the Warehouse and though he spent several years in Los Angeles, he later returned to Chicago to open his own club along with Robert Williams, the Muzic Box. While Knuckles was translating disco and the emerging house music to a straight, southside audience at the Power Plant, Hardy’s 72-hour mix sessions and flamboyant party lifestyle fit in well with the uptown, mostly gay audience at the Muzic Box. A roll-call of major Chicago producers including Marshall Jefferson, Larry Heard, Adonis, Phuture’s DJ Pierre and Chip E all debuted their compositions by pressing up acetates or reel-to-reel copies for Hardy to play during the mid-80s. This CD compilation brings together some of of the classic house and electro-dance tracks he played at the Muzic Box back in the day.
VA – RDY #16 (Ron Hardy Edits) [RDY016]
You should know the drill by know… Mr. K Alexi – Don’t You Know, Greg Perry – Come Fly With Me & Drum track 1.
Snuff Crew – Love Hurts EP [WEN005]
Snuff Crew are on board for the new What Ever Not 12” featuring also a stunning remix by Morning Factory.
John Heckle – Desolate Remixes [TABR027]
A new John Heckle release on the Liverpool-based Tabernacle Records. This time around it’s Heckle’s 2013 album Desolate Figures which gets remixed and first up is Greek producer Vercetti Technicolor, who supplies a vamp-heavy and empowering Italo remix of “Inhuman Nature”. Peoples Potential Unlimited artist Moon B goes tropical with a choir of synthesised vocals in his ‘re calc’ of “Power Of Two”, while Call Super proves to be this record’s wild card adding a gorgeous ‘Cyan Stain’ to the track “Love Lies”.
This Perfect Day – No Frills, Just Noise [SS015]
This Perfect Day was a band formed in Manchester, UK around 1981 by vocalist/blues harp player John Sama Snowden and synthesiser player Mik Hayes. John had the street-cred having previously been vocalist with The Limit and for a short time was the vocalist with The Passage during which time they played gigs alongside Joy Division. Mik, by contrast, had no street-cred, having been bass guitarist with a semi-pro cabaret/covers band, playing 2 hour sets of pop songs every Saturday night. The antagonism between the two, the fight between atmosphere and melody characterizes This Perfect Days sound… in fact the name This Perfect Day is an attempt to convey this. It comes from the novel by Ira Levin in which everything on the surface is perfect, but underneath this surface is an underbelly of pure scum! Their music was never intended to be synth music in the classic Kraftwerk / Human League / OMD / etc sense. It was music that just used synthesizers because they didnt have a drummer or a guitarist. They immediately started writing their own songs, bouncing music from track to track on a Revox B77 tape recorder, using a monophonic ARP Axxe and a Soundmaster SR-88 drum machine. Over the next 2 years, besides playing a number of gigs in the northwest of England, they were able to record a total of 13 songs on 8-track tape at Bootleg Studios, Stockport, UK, culminating in the final session with the recording of The Garden and The Time of Your Life, which utilized the polyphonic capabilities of their new Crumar Stratus synth. The Garden and The Time of Your Life were put together as a double A side single purely for promotional purposes. Copies were sent to record companies, radio stations, DJs, etc. but no-one was interested, so the music finally faded away. No decision was ever made to stop… life just took over… until now…
Xymox – Subsequent Pleasures [DE072]
Xymox was founded in Nijmegen, a city in the east of the Netherlands in 1983 by Ronny Moorings (Vocals, Guitars, Synthesizers) and Anka Wolbert (Vocals, Bass). In April of that year Moorings bought a TEAC 144 four-track tape recorder and the duo moved to Amsterdam. They began to record songs utilizing a Yamaha CS-15, Korg MS-10 and MS-20, a BOSS Dr. Rhythm DR-550, guitar and effects pedals. They layered the drone-like tones of monophonic synthesizers alongside tape loops and rhythm tracks, then played guitar and bass, without the use of computers. The 5-song EP Subsequent Pleasures was released in 1984 and limited to 500 vinyl copies, and served as a precursor to the dark wave sounds they would champion on their self-titled debut on 4AD the following year. Also of note, the track Muscoviet Musquito, was later re-recorded for the compilation album Lonely Is An Eyesore released by 4AD in 1987.
Executive Slacks – Executive Slacks EP [DE071]
Executive Slacks was spawned in the humidity of post-industrial Philadelphia by three restless art students – Matt Marello, John Young and Albert Ganss. Starting out with performance art in subways, they soon took their angst-ridden act to galleries and night clubs. They recorded four songs in the fall of 1982 that became their self-titled EP released by local independent label Red Records in 1983. On their debut EP Matt Marello roars and churns out white-hot shards of guitar while John Young’s short-circuited noise machines and Albert Ganss’s industrial metal drums create dramatic body rhythms. The Slacks drew their influences from contemporaries like Cabaret Voltaire and Tuxedomoon, but also from extremes like disco and dadaism. Songs were created using heavily modified synthesizers and various percussive instruments: industrial steel drums, a filing cabinet, metal rods, and an African drum covered in antelope skin. Executive Slacks’ unique brew of primitive electronics, harsh guitars and aggressive vocals inspired many bands like Ministry, Front 242, Skinny Puppy.
Severed Heads – Dead Eyes Opened [DE070]
Severed Heads are one of the longest standing bands to have emerged from the Australian post-punk and experimental scene. They began in Sydney in 1979, and were an early outfit to incorporate elements of ‘industrial’ noise-generation, tape cutting & looping and electronic sound synthesis. As the project developed, song-structures and vocals were employed in a more-or-less recognizable mutant electro pop style. Dead Eyes Opened features samples from a radio program narrated by Edgar Lustgarten, a crime journalist from England, referencing a double murder case that occurred in 1924. The rhythms are made by a TR-808 drum machine and an SH-1 synthesizer. A KORG PolySix was used for strings and additional atmospheric elements. The lead solo was a Casiotone run through an Octaver foot pedal. On the B-side are two solo compositions Bullet and Mount that Ellard recorded at Terse Tapes in 1982.
Domenico Crisci – The Old Candelabra [LIES021.5]
Italian, Domenico Crisci debuts on L.I.E.S. with four tracks of intense stomping warehouse techno. Straight to the point, grinding metal on metal machine music that will turn out the club. For those into the heavier, gnarlier and darker vibes.
Acronym – Nautilus [NE011]
Acronym once again surfaces for five floating techno excursions on Abdulla Rashim’s Northern Electronics.
Alex.Do – Stalker EP [DYSTOPIAN008]
This eighth Dystopian record presents the debut proper of label co-founder Alex Do. Before this he appeared on the one various artist EP alongside Rodhad, Felix K and Recondite, and it seems now is his time to shine. He does so by putting heavy emphasis on the synth work in his music and all three tracks are melodic and bright in tone which is quite the contrast to the previous releases of the label.
Robert Hood – Protein Valve (Re-Plants) [MPM021]
The Floorplan project show-cased Robert Hood’s love of gospel-tinged house, but as this, his latest release demonstrates, he remains a techno artist through and through. The Protein Valve record originally appeared on M Plant 20 years ago and like Hood’s Internal Empire and Minimal Nation releases, became a blueprint for minimal techno. On the “Re-Plant” and “Edit 1” versions, nagging, insistent percussion and an eerie organ sound create a sense of drama. However, the old approach proves to be the most effective and the second edit remains closer to the original sound, with jittery hats, unsettling organ riffs and the wind whooshing past in the background.
Digital Prophet – Transdimensional Communication Systems [MNTLTRX601]
Dusseldorf based Digital Prophet releases his first EP on MNTLTRX this year. His Transdimensional Communication Systems EP is a pure techno romance in a future retro apperance.
VA – Machines & Tapes [SIG006]
Nice compilation ep with Clone veterans Duplex and Mark du Mosch alongside Costelloe and ESS. Smooth electro techno sounds coded from Dublin.
