The NE-21 return to She Lost Kontrol after their first pitch-perfect 80s dark wave release in 2016. After releasing a collaboration with Donato Dozzy with the project ‘Men with Secrets’ at the beginning of the year, the duo lands on the label with their new work “In The Realm of Electricity”. The album is a collection of 8 tracks composed and recorded between 2012 and 2020 at the Sy6 studio in Boscoreale. The outcome is a perfect blend of synth pop and minimal wave, filled with icy synths, shuddering bass, and anthemic vocals, ranging from mumbled vocoder to arch talk-singing. While diverse in atmospheric scope, swells of ghostly synths circle the driving beat throughout, producing a haunting totality drenched in an ethereal midnight trance; the submerge of cold, spectral vocals sing within the darkest depths of a starry soundscape – the gloomy romanticism of low, distant vocals bursting with post-punk melancholia. The album in essence sounds unashamedly distinctive, unique and charming. Whether you fall in love with the whole act or you’re just stunned by the bizarreness of it all, one thing’s for sure – you’ll be compelled and gripped right to the infectiously smutty end.
Under exhausted lights of civil discontent the count has just began. What you parodied, what you scrutinized rears its pure gaze when punctured beyond performance. We cried for justice but instead found order, and now we face the chain. PC World comes through with a haunting EP on She Lost Kontrol to distort the view and warp the vision of industrial addicts and mutant punks with their second release “Order”, a discursive counterattack on four distinct forms of command. The South London duo disfigures the unconscious reduction of pleasure and fetish, the connective tissue between privatization and violence, the seduction of societal norms, and the neurotic tendencies of self-defeat. Like the surrender to a future shock, these four interwoven tracks are produced for the recognition of restraint and the demand for wanting more. B-side remixes of the title track “Order” come from Physical Wash (former member of High-Functioning Flesh) and Aktion Mutante (featuring members of Violent Poison and Unhuman), two additional perversions of protocol from synth-punk veterans on both sides of the Atlantic.
Mannequin Records is welcoming back Le Syndicat Électronique with a collection of lost tracks raised up from the deepest vaults of the French synth-electro pioneer. Over a period spanning almost twenty years, ”Rebuts” (the French word for ”thrown away”, ”forgotten”) is bringing back to life 8 titles that have been put aside during the different moments of creation of Le Syndicat Électronique. Founder of the seminal Invasion Planète Recordings, the first French minimal electro/wave/experimental label founded in late 1998, and heavily influenced by the work of masters like Kraftwerk/John Carpenter/Front 242, AA// is responsible for many others dark electronic / industrial / neofolk projects – to name a few: Bruta Non Calculant, Swesor Brother, La Séduction Des Innocents, It & My Computer.
WRWTFWW Records reissue Swiss cult band Grauzone’s self-titled album in an expanded 40 Years Anniversary Edition packed with the original 1981 album plus 9 extra songs, as well as extensive liner notes by Swiss music historian Lurker Grand. The pioneering band from Bern (Switzerland) had a short-lived but highly-regarded career which birthed a cult discography that still fascinates and resonates today. Consisting of core members Martin Eicher, Stephan Eicher, and Marco Repetto, and on-and-off participants Christian GT Trüssel, Claudine Chirac, and Ingrid Berney, the elusive group broke new grounds in the early 80s, experimenting with punk and industrial music, early techno sounds, minimalism, new wave, pop, and various electronics. With an innovative and polished approach to design, visuals, performance, and all around style and philosophy on top of their superb music, the constantly transforming unit developed a whole experience – the Grauzone experience: wild and unpredictable, yet sophisticated and cohesive, or as Swiss music historian Lurker Grand would call it, “an Art band with a Punk attitude”. Completely rejecting the music industry rules and refusing to play the game of promotion, touring, release schedules, and TV appearances even though they had a multi-platinum international hit with the song “Eisbär”, the band quickly disintegrated in full convention-defying glory, leaving behind an inspiring music legacy for the world to discover and discover again, one generation after the other. This extended version of their debut (and only) album beautifully crystallizes the Grauzone miracle/accident – where pop and youthful experimentation meet at (new/cold/no) wave and industrial crossroads.
Sed Blava is the Barcelona-based solo project of Daniel Boix, well known as Dj.Simplexia or also Ciutat Solitud, his ambient-industrial project. “Nit Sublim” is his first album as producer and may evoke the dark sounds from Valencia in the 80’s. But if you dive deeper, you will uncover a trove of intricate details elaborated with Sed’s touch. Ranging from catchy tunes and emotive passages to powerful dance-floor tracks, his vast music background and his long-time membership to the underground music scene should be highlighted. Both of these elements give rise to a broad spectrum of genres and influences in his music, bringing together a timeless mixture of old-school Electronic Body Music, New-Beat, Electro, Synth-Wave and even Ambient.
These tracks where included on a CD-R at the first 100 S.M. Nurse EPs “30th Anniversary 1980-1983” (Domestica, 2013) – now remastered on vinyl & including an extra remix version by Rude 66.
For the second release of KHIDI’s various artist series, the club combines together music from international pioneers Oscar Mulero and Orphx and its local, distinct residents Vulkanski and Yanamaste. All four original tracks undoubtedly illustrate and radiate the curated sound, vision and atmosphere of KHIDI. The second VA melds together diverse styles of techno, thus creating a singular and contrasting compilation.
This is the third release in Modern Cathedrals’ “Sacred Sevens” catalog, a series of EP’s released on marbled 7″ and 10″ vinyl records. The vinyl version of this release features two original tracks by ASC.
For their first collaboration on an original audio-visual artefact, Ali M. Demirel and Anthony Linell have developed a stunning and unsettling work that studies the Icelandic landscape as a motor of mythology, a snare that binds us in contradiction. Far from being an acoustic summation of the collaboration, this release is a snapshot of Linell’s musical contribution at a moment of reflection in the project’s evolution.
Originally released on CD in 1999, Astral Industries present a first vinyl issue of Monolake’s much-loved ‘Gobi’, licensed from Imbalance Computer Music. Set to the backdrop of the Gobi desert in eastern Asia, two shimmering vistas plunge the listener into a vast and deeply hypnotic nocturnal soundscape. The perennial hiss and rattle of insects float along the fresh night air in soft waves. The desert thrives with quiet activity as a westerly wind skitters across moonlit dunes, granulated folds dancing like sheets of thin silk. Tectonic plates murmur beneath the shower of stars overhead, their millennial cycles whispering of aeons past. Vividly textured and enticingly synthetic in its sound design, Gobi succeeds as a stunning piece of minimalism.
Valentino Mora returns to Spazio Disponibile with his first full-length ‘Underwater’. A mesmerizing listening trip over the course of eight tracks taking you into his deep sea world of dark minimalism and eerie drone rhythm structures.
11001 Records is a Berlin-based record label focused on techno, ambient, experimental and other forms of abstract visions. Co-founder of Teufelsberg Domecast, a sound installation podcast series with ambient experimental live performances using the dome at the top of Teufelsberg as a natural parabolic reverb. In ‘Dimensional Perception’, each song revolves around an object in outer space.
Have you ever wondered what King Crimson or Emerson, Lake & Palmer would have sounded like, had they originated from behind the Iron Curtain?
This may sound like the usual hype promoters write to draw attention, but click on the audio files from this album’s track-list and listen closely. “Amintiri din viitor” [Memories from the Future] will take you back to a time when progressive music was truly forward looking, experimental, and original. The band Experimental Q was formed in the early 1970s, by a group of music students from the Gheorghe Dima Conservatory, in Cluj (Romania). Eugen Tunaru (keyboards), Valentin Farcaș (guitar), Nicolae Bucaciuc (bass), and Nicolae Delioran (drums) were joined by Gheorghe Marcovici (flute), and this line-up recorded a series of songs and compositions for radio and TV, without ever releasing any album on Electrecord, the sole record company in Romania at that time.
Their music was mostly instrumental and featured titles that touched upon intergalactic, or art themes. The band members may have been music students, but while their education was classical, their inspiration drew from pop music’s avantgarde. Prog and jazz-rock fans might find influences and echoes of bands that were carving out new paths in the unexplored music jungle of the late 1960s and early 1970s: King Crimson, The Nice, Jethro Tull, ELP, VDGG. After a few listens, however, it will dawn upon the listener that this music was more than just an East European response to the Western hype of the day. Facing the prejudice of their professors, the skepticism of some of their peers, as well as the numerous material drawbacks and technological limitations, Experimental Q improvised not only musically. In the end, they made their own instruments and adapted what they could get their hands on, to create some of the most intriguing music made on the Eastern side of the Iron Curtain.
“Amintiri din viitor” opens the first chapter in this still untold story of one of Romania’s best hidden music secrets. With the approval of and collaboration from the remaining band members, this project features restored and remastered audio, original artwork, as well as an in-depth essay about the band and its musical output in the socialist historical context, with exclusive photos and memorabilia.
This project is curated by Claudiu Oancea (artwork, liner notes), Adrian Matala (co-producer) and Remus Miron (restored, remastered audio and producer).
Far Out Recordings presents Mora!, and for the first time ever on vinyl Mora! II. Mexican-American percussionist and former member of the Sun Ra Arkestra, Francisco Mora Catlett originally recorded and released his debut solo LP as a private press in 1987, but the sequel he recorded over the course of the next few years with an expanded Detroit jazz brass section was shelved for decades to follow. A pan-American melting pot of hypnotic afro-cuban rhythms, frenetic batucadas and fiery sambas, Mora I & II are holy grails of latin jazz, masterminded by an unsung hero of the genre.
Kumasi, New Orleans’ own 14-piece Afrobeat orchestra, is back with their third LP and first live record. After two private-press releases, Kumasi is presenting Live at Marigny Studios to an international audience for the first time via Hiatt dB’s New Orleans-based Mystery Zone Records. Live at Marigny Studios, features 4 original compositions: jazz-centric interpretations of Fela’s classic form that incorporate rhythms and sentiments from New Orleans and the surrounding Afro-diaspora, namely Cuba, Haiti, and Brazil. It’s a bold effort that perfectly captures the infectious mix of heavy rhythms, spontaneous, improvisatory musicianship, and inclusive, participatory style that characterize Kumasi as a group, as well as Afrobeat as a whole.
The Hipodrome Of Music 