Igaxx – New Lights LP [ISLE-023]

12th Isle return to familiar downtempo, club-adjacent ambient and analogue house stylings with eight tracks from Japan’s sprawling metropolis. Tokyo based producer Igaxx lands on the label with his debut full length album. Influenced by leftfield electronic music from the 1990s such as releases on Elektrolux and Rising High, Igaxx (Shota Ikawa) works with multi-tracked hardware synthesizers manufactured throughout the 1990s and 2000s, embracing subtle variations and unexpected moments that emerge through performance. Allowing chance and unpredictability to become an integral part of the music, Ikawa’s process and sound design also speaks to the lighter side of vintage UK labels such as Irdial and Radioactive Lamb or the psychedelia-infused touch of the West Coast scene in the states. New Lights exists somewhere between the dancefloor and music for focused listening, carrying a sense of weightlessness and a quiet sense of humour, balancing immersive sonic environments and moments of sly unexpected detail and improvisation.

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Igaxx – New Lights LP [ISLE-023]

Vague Imaginaires – L’ile Sous l’Eau [ISLE-009]

VAGUE IMAGINAIRES - L'Ile Sous l'Eau

The Underwater Island is a collection of four tracks from Grenoble based producer Denis Morin. Philosopher, gardener, father and sonic explorer. For ISLE009, Vague Imaginaires gifts us with autobiographical field recordings, FM synthesis and skilled sound design inspired by the ocean and the Drac river which flows through the mountains of his city. Harmonising natural sound sources with digital realms, he navigates through minimalism, ambient techno and flashes of dub inspiration. Morin combines these musical ideas with Roland TR-8, 303 emulations, hydrophone recordings and vocal fragments from Tunisia, Morocco and Vercors Massif.

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Vague Imaginaires – L’ile Sous l’Eau [ISLE-009]

Best Available Technology – Enginetics & Plasmalterations [ISLE006]

Tucked away in a shed in Portland, Best Available Technology continues to cultivate an unmistakable sound grown around a seemingly untiring exploration of the machines that he works with. Across ‘Enginetics & Plasmalterations’ his densely layered sonic design agglutinates with a healthy appreciation for the unplanned or unexpected, forming a polymorphic collection of tracks for the 6th release from 12th Isle. While more traditional means of classification have become increasingly insufficient, it wouldn’t be unfair to suggest that the music on this record bears a mutated resemblance to stuttered Downtempo or the dubbier side of Techno and Bass, connected by way of tonal plasticity through drone-jams and intermittently skewed synth loops.

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Best Available Technology – Enginetics & Plasmalterations [ISLE006]