From the depths of night shine beams of light. Temple invites you to enjoy these peaceful excursions.
VA – Kale Plankieren: Dutch Cassette Rarities 1981 – 1985 Vol. 1 [KH009]
Featuring a wide range of artists (Das Ding, Plus Instruments, De Fabriek for a start!) from the Amsterdam Fetisj scene and cities such as Rotterdam, Utrecht, The Hague, and Zwolle. It gives a glimpse into the artistic DIY music movement that was growing extensively outside of mainstream circles. The beautifully printed record sleeve was designed by Steele Bonus. It includes liner notes (in English and Dutch) that paint a great picture of the context where these bands and artists lived and breathed. It is compiled by Mark van de Maat and mastered by Rude 66.
Trenton Chase – Deadlock [JUNE012]
Trenton Chase returns on June Records with a bold solo LP marking his departure from the sound of his previous releases on the imprint. For his first album attempt, Trenton embarks on the search for everything and manages to encapsulate the whole essence of the June Records ethos within 43 minutes of music. Although initially not planned as an album, Deadlock was conceived organically as it only took a few months for its completion during the artist’s most abundant 2017 studio spring sessions. This body of work transcends formulaic attempts to showcase a very refreshing and uncompromising take on synth music. Chase followed a crude approach to songwriting, rehearsing and improvising live until the best take would eventually become the final track.
Severed Heads – Come Visit The Big Bigot [DE180]
Dark Entries present the deluxe 2xLP reissue of ‘Come Visit The Big Bigot’ by Severed Heads, one of the longest surviving bands to emerge from the Australian post-punk independent music scene. They began in Sydney in 1979, incorporating 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. After many line-up changes featuring Garry Bradbury and psychedelic guitarist Simon Knuckey, Severed Heads was the vehicle for composer Tom Ellard. ‘Come Visit The Big Bigot’ was Severed Heads’ first record to be released commercially simultaneously in Australia, North America and Europe in 1986. It was a prime period for this ‘industrial dance music’ and Bigot was a respected album that did well from the tour they did with Skinny Puppy that same year. Quite a few people still define the band by this period. ‘Come Visit The Big Bigot’ was made on a Fostex 16 track recorder in Tom’s bedroom, employing the newly acquired AKAI S612 sampler and Roland SH-101 to create most of the drum sounds. The album signaled a new direction, flirting with the dance floor and the pop song. Presenting the Heads at their most cohesive, while retaining their distinctive musical stamp. Tom’s vocals are harmonized, slowed down, sped up, run through fuzz boxes, backwards, drum machine rolls, sampled guitars, horn sections, and voices but with a subversive rather than malevolent intention. Tape loops are more subtle and define their own space and texture. Like the original Australian version of the album, we’ve included a bonus disc featuring three extended remixes by Sydney DJ Robert Racic (who produced the edited 7” version of “Petrol” we reissued in 2015), plus three B-sides from the ‘Twenty Deadly Diseases’12” and two additional tracks from the same recording sessions. All songs have been remastered by Tom Ellard, who worked very slowly and methodically with much better equipment over two years, letting each track have its own breath.
Hypnobeat – Prototech [DE179]
Amongst those that keep track of these things, German trio Hyonobeat are considered proto-techno pioneers. While it’s not known whether Detroit’s Belleville Three were fans, you could argue that Hynobeat’s rhythm-focused approach pre-dated both techno and Chicago house. Thanks to this fine retrospective from Dark Entries, you can judge for yourself. The material included was all recorded between 1983 and 1986, with the wild, off-kilter polyrhythms and ragged TB-303 lines of “The Arumbeya Fetish”, mutant electro of “Kilian” and high-octane thrust of the decidedly out-there “Mission in Congo” standing out. Remarkably, Hypnobeat would chain together drum machines and bass synthesizers to create their tracks – a practice that would later become common during the acid house era.
Traxx – SSFB Mix Series #9
TYVYT|IYTYI – Platforms [PBD008.5]
TYVYT|IYTYI. A dusty tape of six tracks unearthed beneath the Pinkman Broken Dreams division. Nothing is known about this unnameable artist apart from his sound. A legion of hiss marches across the cassette, a blighted beat bites into lancing synthlines that bellow and writhe in their pitiful attempt to escape. Strings are left to howl in turmoil in tracks born out of a crude joke and wry smile. Mick Wills offers no condolences, the Stuttgart man lashing away any humanity with his embittered edit. Found in the pit, made for the pit.
Retrograde Youth – We’re Not Humans Anymore [PBD008]
A new recruit has been drafted into the Broken Dreams ranks. Retrograde Youth, also known as Felipe Marin, takes up his position with four tracks of tooth and nail electronics. His style is ensconced in EBM, but trying to pin him down is near impossible. Guttural techno aches through the clang of metal and the rattle of rhythms, wave lances in with spiking synth lines as lost samples stalk. Music for scarred psyches that will leave hearts and minds raw.
Roberto Auser- Color Of Your Soul [PNKMN021]
Four years after his excellent Eclipse 12″, Roberto Auser is back on a Rotterdam staple: Pinkman. Color Your Soul has adopted some, but not all, of its older brother’s attributes. Lumbering with menacing intent, the title piece leaves wreckage in its bruising wake. “Do You Want To Believe” is cut from the same deviant cloth. Grunting rhythms stomp on tortured strings, industrial shrieks cry beneath the boot of a raging beat. The closer, “Wake U Up”, has Auser toying with his victim. Steam hisses, acid lines bulge, pistons pound and sirens blare in this boiled work of brooding brutality.
Helena Hauff @ Boiler Room x Dekmantel Festival 06.08.2017
Jeremiah R. – Visions Of Vega [VG004]
Franck Kartell – Alaska [BA060]
French artist Franck Kartell returns with Alaska, his fourth full length release on UK imprint Bass Agenda Recordings. Critically acclaimed for his masterful blend of low bpm heavy beats and signature deep atmospheres Kartell moves from the fascination with the work of film maker Chris Marker’s that powered his last two albums to the drama of Alaska. Like its geographical namesake the album spans ethereal beauty, drama, light and darkness and similarly provides a very individual landscape.
One Day In Metropia – Rat Life 11 EP [RAT011]
Rat Life is back with more unheard material from the hidden bedroom studios of East Germany. One Day In Metropia – is a project that was active around the year 2008 – operating out of the concrete suburbs of Dresden. Its main focus were live appearances in the citie’s underground electronic music circle. Just a few signals of its enormous creative output were published on various sound carriers to this day. So it was time to release some more of this large bulk of data that has been lurking on storage devices for years. Rat Life’s operator Credit 00 is proud to be allowed to contribute a remix version to this sonic document.
Simultan Festival 2017
SIMULTAN is an annual festival dedicated to media art and artistic experiment, creating a bond between different media.
Conforce live @ Dimensions Festival 01.09.2017
Steffi – World Of The Waking State [OSTGUTLP027]
On ‘World Of The Waking State’ Steffi stretches her wings, having created the album in a period when she found herself free from the past and more comfortable in her own skin. The shift in her mindset led to a new freedom of exploration in her creativity, enabling her to write more experimentally and logically resulting in this new album. Gone are the classic drum sounds and conspicuous melodies of her previous works. Instead, Steffi’s productions unify disparate molecular details to forge a greater whole, reflecting a serious commitment to abstract electronic composition that manifests itself here as a totally inimitable collection of tracks. World Of The Waking State is a confident and mature work of complex rhythms and refined melodies. The overall effect is as subtle, unique and thought provoking as the artist herself.
Derek Carr – Distant Systems[FS008]
The EP entitled Distant Systems is a musical adventure for a quest for a new home land, a new planet, a new start, It is proper techno; proper melodies , beats and pads for this adventure. Derek Carr is a master at creating thoughtful emotive and simply wonderful techno that fits in so naturally on FireScope Records.
Colophon – Pattern Formation EP [LWRC002]
Lowercase Life returns with more melancholia out of machines made in the past. Detroit and 90’s UK vibes brought to present time in three originals and a killer electro remix by Orson Wells.
Tornado Wallace – EP For Animals Dancing [ANIMALS003]
After a fashionably long hiatus between drinks, Melbourne’s Animals Dancing returns with its third release, this time from Boroondara’s Tornado Wallace. Strap yourself in and feel the G’s.
Vincent – Fast Forward [MFM024]
Music From Memory return, this time with four tracks drawn from Virgil ‘Vincent’ Work Jnr’s little-known cassette only debut from 1987. This album reflects a more stripped back and raw musical approach from the St. Louis musician. The ‘Fast Forward’ sessions grew out of a series of late night jams with Vincent’s brother Scott who was then living in Kansas. With nothing planned in advance and no written music involved in the final recording sessions, the songs that would form ‘Fast Forward’ very much evolved out of improvisation. As Virgil himself explains, the title of the album in fact came about because it felt “as if I had fast forwarded to a different sound”. Although the album received a good response from local radio DJs and music magazines, the album sadly never gained enough momentum or demand for a further run of copies. Fast forward to 2017, exactly thirty years are their production, and Music From Memory are delighted to be able to finally make Vincent’s music commercially available again.
The Hipodrome Of Music 