Cultivated Electronics continues it’s output from excellent Dutch producers right now. CE LTD 002 comes from heavy weight Boris Bunnik under his Versalife alias. Haunting melodies and crispy digital beats make this some of Versalife’s darkest work to date. Out on limited run, vinyl only, hand stamped wax.
Since forming in 2006 post-punk experimentalists Sebastian Melmoth have been on a thoughtful and adventurous musical journey. In a constant state of aural evolution, the London-based four-piece has a delivered a string of albums and EPs that variously touch on everything from garage-rock, grunge and lo-fi pop, to electro, new wave, dark ambient and music concrete, all the while drawing on a myriad of literary and artistic influences. The band’s first release for Artificial Dance digs deep into their admirable and eye-opening catalogue and draws together some of the Amsterdam-based label’s favorites from the more electronic end of the band’s output. Entitled “The Dynamics of Vanity” – a comment on Western culture’s obsession with rehashing the past and the band’s own in-built distrust of artistic naval-gazing – the set is not a ‘best of’ retrospective but rather a ‘sort of’ selection of stylistically interconnected cuts that gives a very specific snapshot of the band’s work.
Exploring the balances between pop song writing structures, 80s cold wave bedroom style electronic production, and dreary gloom rock, Paris based Mathilde Mallen aka Dissemblance presents her debut lp “Over the Sand” for Mannequin Records. Over the ten tracks Dissemblance treads the fringes of a blurred dream world, using her bass guitar, voice, and drum machine as the backbone to create haunting yet soothing pop atmospheres in her songs.
Aborted At Line 6 was a project that emerged from the inside of a Swiss company which sold electronic equipment and batteries. Carlos Perón (founder of Yello) sat on the same desk as the later publisher Urs Steiger. The other members Martin Sturzenegger, Moritz Faccin and Andrea Fürer sat separately through a glass pane in their own office and sold TEAK products. Chris Lunch was the only not employed in this company. He was working on some stuff at the Slatt Studio owned by Carlos Perón. They all had a ritual to drink a bottle of Mumm champagne early in the mornings. Since it was not allowed to drink in the workplace, the glasses were disguised as a coffee mug and used the winged word “Mümmli”. It’s in this situation that Aborted At Line 6 developed into a “crazy idea”. They did some recordings in the studio of Andrea Fürer and mixed everything in just one go. The equipment used included one 808 Roland Drumcomputer, a Roland Drumatix, a Roland Bassline, one EMS Synthi A1, a Duke guitar and a Roland SH 3A operated and programmed by Carlos Perón and Chris Lunch. All this took place in 1982 and a 12″ single was released by Off Course Records (home of Grauzone and Stephan Eicher). This iconic and very hard-to-find single is re-issued included the original tracks.
Adam X’s highly respected, deep, science fiction laden, Traversable Wormhole project celebrates its 10-year journey with a first full-length studio album titled Regions Of Time. Lying mostly dormant since 2012, with a cameo appearance on Hospital Record back in 2016 with two tracks, TW is now fully awoken from the long travel through the space-time continuum with eight new songs of thought-provoking, psychedelic, bass-heavy, galaxian techno. Adam X’s back catalog is, of course, vast, spanning over a period three decades under several aliases. The New York native recently released his devious escapade through rumbling EBM and industrial techno in the form of his full-length album Recon Mission, released under his Sonic Groove Imprint. With this project being under the Traversable Wormhole alias, be sure to expect a completely different facet to X’s repertoire of pounding excursions. Step through the wormhole portal and take a deep cerebral mind trip into “Regions Of Time “
DJ Nobu returns to his own Bitta label, his personal playground for new musical projects with a focus on artists coming out of Japan. The label functions as a space for experimentation with the intention of instigating multiple styles by unexpected artists or pairing them with stimulating remixers. The unique chemistry created by these cross-genre connections results in an exciting catalogue carefully curated and directed by DJ Nobu himself. After recent outings on Rush Hour, Token and BleeD, the Japanese producer dives even deeper into a pure and adventurous techno journey with his most simplistic output to date. A DJ tool EP designed for the club, with four tracks of stripped down yet powerful dance floor workouts. All cuts have been tested and proven in Nobu’s own DJ sets before now, so he decided to make them available for fellow DJs to play and experiment with.
Be As One boss Shlomi Aber’s latest driving four track release lands on Joseph Capriati’s Redimension imprint. ‘Zohar’ opens with cantering chords, solid analogue kicks and splashing cymbals before ‘Tora’ then follows with down pitched keys, tight rides, a rattling synth line and subtle risers. On the flip ‘Woodhill Grove’ bubbles with a dark arpeggiated lead, slicing percussion and crackling distortion noise when ‘Going Distance’ then closes with echoed stabs, zapping electronic hits, swung drums and hissing hats.-hats, floating pads and a punchy kick.
In order to see someone elses perspective on his latest album “Nonlinear Times”, Florian Meindl presents an EP with a remix from Iconic Industrial Techno producer Black Asteroid and 2 big remixes by Dutch techno stalwart Jeroen Search.
Brand new 12” from BLD on his own imprint. 3 highly effective cuts of stomping break beats combined with 303’s, hypnotic basslines and mellow chord synths.
Here are some recordings from this year’s Dekmantel Selectors festival.
The highlights for us were Mick Wills, who opened the festival for us on Thursday, Solar, who we are really happy to finally hear live for the first time and the b2b between Intergalactic Gary & Pasiphae which marked the closing of festival for us on Monday. Another premiere for us was listening for the first time live the Romanian duo Khidja. They really rocked the place and the chilling rain made it even more memorable. Also Rabih Beaini‘s three hours ritualistic performance at sunset was one of the best performances from the festival.
One of the highlights of the festival was the IFM Boat Party with Identified Patient & Pasiphae, Intergalactic Gary. There is a special vibe on these boat parties and IFM one was one of the best so far. Unfortunately there are no recordings from this party, yet.
Andy Stott’s first release since 2016 and first EP since 2011, ‘It Should Be Us’ is a double EP of slow and raw productions for the club, recorded this year and following a series of EP’s that started with ‘Passed Me By’ and ‘We Stay Together’ early this decade. Recorded fast and loose over the summer, these 8 tracks harness a pure and bare-boned energy, melodies subsumed by drum machines and synths; slow, rugged hedonism. It’s all about rhythmic heat and disorientation, pure dance and DJ specials rendered at an unsteady pace, from percolated house and percussive rituals to moody tripped-out burners.
Italo-Disco, (at times abbreviated as Italo) is a music genre which originated in Italy and was mainly produced from the late 1970s to the late 1980s. The origin strongly tied to marketing efforts of the ZYX record label, which began licensing and marketing the music outside Italy in 1982. The genre faded in the early 1990s. Italo disco evolved from the then-current dance music (including hi-NRG) and developed into a diverse genre. The genre employs drum machines, synthesizers, occasionally vocoders and usually sung in English. This compilation contains some of the long lost tracks of the genre restored for the first time on CD. Vivien Vee “Remember” and Capricorn “I Need Love,” are early work by Italian pioneer Claudio Simonetti (Goblin). All tracks digitally remastered along with its booklet, the original artwork and the original recording and extended versions.
Remastered re-issue of this Italo classic. Written and arranged by Claudio Simonetti and produced by Giancarlo Meo, both known for their Easy Going, Goblin and Vivian Vee fame.
‘A Pastime For Semi-Gods’ is an evidence to a new mythology, is the genesis of a collisions. Of waves to a statement on the static, extending in perpetual change. With this album, Ekman is describing the chaos of erotic imagery that is unbroken. On the border of mythology and science fiction. ‘A Pastime For Semi-Gods’ is Ekman’s fourth release on Bedouin Records and his album debut on the label.
The Hipodrome Of Music 