In the place of the eternal blazing sun there exists an underworld, a dark and cold space of interlinking caves and dank corridors. Occupying the subterranean land is an army of worker drones, busying themselves with a never ending series of tasks, both laborious and mechanical. Once a task is completed, a report is filed and then sent to the Gatekeeper. The owner of the keys is the one they call Cardopusher, cruel and unrelentless. Sitting atop his throne of screws and iron, he patiently waits as his minions build the weapons he seeks to finally overthrow and conquer the people of the overground. ZGEMI is the sixth of 12 releases. One for each sign of the stars and then Zodiac 44 is forever dead and gone..
This benefit compilation for Andreas Gehm is being split into 5 parts. You can buy each part for 7 Euro or the full combo package (with all 5 parts – 129 tracks in total) just for 14 Euro (10.64 GBP, $15.56 USD, $20.27 CDN, $21.66 AUD); you can pay more if you want;
All donations go directly to Andreas Gehm to assist with financial stresses due to ongoing health issues (the “Buy” button sends your contribution to Andreas’ PayPal account).
Comp For Andreas Gehm features unreleased and exclusive material.
Scienceofuse is a new electronic music label from Ljubljana, Slovenia. Its purpose is to transmit futuristic frequencies by using the science of creation to transcend perceived limitations. Connecting the advances in our culture and technology with the important lessons of visionaries that came before us. The label’s first release, “Responsible Design” by veteran DJ and expert knob-twiddler known as Electronic Badminton King (E.B.King for short) is an acid-tinged affair with a darkish early noughties electro vibe on the A-side, while the flip delivers an abrasive technoid banger coupled with a deeper floating acid cut.
Kevin McHugh returns to his Delft imprint as LA-4A for his & the label’s first artist album. Phonautograph represents an artist album in its purest sense: a deeply personal work that feels like the culmination of a lifetime of passion and experience – one that ebbs and flows across a variety of styles and tempos, from the electrifying acid house and electro of ‘Resistor’, ‘Capacitance’ and ‘Dialup’ to slower tempo ambient and experimental excursions such as ‘Frequenzvariabler’, ‘Blitzlicht’ and ‘Semantron’.
After his exciting album ‘Elasticity’ on his own imprint Elastic Dreams, A Sagittariun delivers the equally fascinating three track Oxidize EP’ for german label Couldn’t Care More. While ‘Heights’ is a stripped-down basic-channelish techno ride, rough, edgy and with a hint of hypnotic melodies, the title track heads in a quite different direction: still it’s raw expressionistic techno, but the flow is ever-changing, mesmerizingly shifting and twisting between hissing beats and enlightened synths. For the remix of ‘Oxidize’ Golden Pudel Club resident and odd-house virtuoso RVDS fires up the acid machine and does it Detroit style, warm and cold, uplifting and melancholic.
Andreas Tilliander returns to Kontra-Musik in a grand style with his second TM404 album. Titled ‘Acidub’, this highly anticipated release is much more of an evolution than a repetition of the first superbly self-restricted album, where Tilliander even decided to use only one of the two Roland TB-303 waveforms. Acidub is a more playful and open listening experience, no doubt inspired by his extensive live touring with the TM404 concept. In fact, you can almost hear Tilliander’s flock of acid machines breaking free from the restrained modus operandi. Every sound is like a migratory bird with a heart yearning for high altitude and favourable winds. The opening track Alinge paints a lucid picture of these acid birds leaving a cold industrial landscape behind; the flickering black shadows from their wings against the white smoke rising from a forest of chimneys below. The very last seconds of Alinge even echo of the place the silver birds are longing for, but that will remain a secret between Kontra-Musik and the avid listener. Sufficient to say, we can follow these birds of passage as they’re heading south towards a warmer climate, fleeing the cold discipline of the North. Mutron Mantra, for instance, brings us to a rainforest full of serpentine lianas, giant leaves dripping with moist and green pools of water bubbling with organic life. Don’t Defend Mascot guides us through a steaming savannah at dusk with hundreds of yellow eyes following our every step while Pade vividly describes the perils of the flight and the pace and courage needed to press on. In all, Acidub is a surprisingly exuberant follow-up to the more introspective TM404 album. But while the musical journey of this second album is quite different, the experience of sheer aural eminence remains the same. Andreas Tilliander has done it again, and Kontra-Musik couldn’t be prouder.
Mugwump’s Subfield label introduces its first signings with the Belgian-Italo duo Front De Cadeaux aka DJ Athome & DJ Hugosan. They expertly produced their own brand of “Supreme Rallentato”, which is a fucked-up slo-mo italo, acid, disco, techno and house hybrid that so rightly fits with Subfield’s mission statement of covering subgenres. This full Ep on Subfield features 2 original F2C obscene & dirty slo-mo tracks at their most playful, “Ouvre Ta Bouche” and “Front De Cadeaux Theme” plus the magnificent dub-house of “Killers”. Remixes comes courtesy of Factory Floor’s Gabe Gurnsey (DFA) in a quite brutal bleep-techno mood and Manchester’s nu-balearic kingpin Ruf Dug (Music For Dreams), getting into what he described as a ” 808 snare roll warehouse analog fucked-up version”
So far the most Punk release in the Borft catalog. This is the meeting between Johan Sturesson (KORD) and Petter Svensson (NEBULA). While Petter has his background as a punkrocker Johan has some years of experience in the Electronic vein this meeting result in a EBM/punk/technoEP dirtier than ever.
Album debut from Inter Gritty. This island-hopping adventure takes us from the quirky depths of Ictis through the 303 workout of Stac Lee and the brutal pounding of Swona, to the lush electronics of Cijin. The Norrköping, Sweden-based producer has taken his sound one step further from his previous EPs and painted a bigger picture, covering an archipelago of sound that offers both rough seas, jagged cliffs and serene forests.
Shipwrec rolls out its new remix series with a serious slab of electro red meat. The main course is served by a machine music master, Umwelt. And what else would the serving be but the rawest of electro, coarsened by surging acid and slicing snares. Accompanying the original are a triumvirate of talent: Ekman, The Exaltics and Eomac.
Tusk says “I wanted to go back to the way the label started for the 20th release, so I’ve put together a VA which captures the way the label has moved in the past couple of years and will continue to shift”.
The German producer Milton Bradley presents his full-length debut on his own Do Not Resist The Beat label. Bradley has been one of techno’s key names for much of the past decade. “Tragedy Of Truth” incloses in 10 tracks, the full range of Milton Bradley Techno sound: dark, Industrial leaning to 1990s style Acid.
Anom Valley follows Damcase’s recent outing on Bunker and positions the Greek producer as a leading light in hard techno. There is a rough, raw feel throughout this release for Bas Mooy’s label; “Delete Scene” is mired in distorted kicks and noisy, barb wire percussion and both “Rusty” and “Towards Them” resound to titanium-powered steel drums. “Interlogon” is probably the most extreme track, thanks to its grisly, punishing rhythm, but Damcase also has a funkier side. He showcases this on “Rn 45” and “X Gun”, where hypnotic electronic pulses, although encased in weeping layers of white noise, see him get his groove on.
Details Sound presents ‘Illumination Through Feedback Distortion’ EP a three-track release of irresistible rhythms, vibrant analogue workouts, displaying the intuitive DIY compositional approach of talented Dutch artist Maarten Epskamp, under his Klankman pseudonym.
Terminal Operations 002 sees the Berlin based imprint unleash four tracks of raw fire power. Kuno and Spaceinvasion take a side each and deliver some unruly cuts of acidic techno.
Lost Trax embody the idea of underground techno. The shadowy group, members unknown, began their music careers over 20 years ago. Output may be low, but quality is high; the style being no compromise techno brilliance. And that’s what’s on show here. Kick drums and squirming acid bars are at the core of “Faith”, a track where soaring strings shift and reshape. The chiselled claps and barbed bass of “Flatliner” follows, taking its cue from the heyday of Detroit. A watery world of analogue abstraction greets the listener on the flip, “Lost” being an atmospheric journey into to the squelching swamps of the TB303. Sniping beats introduce the lush tones of “Renderer.” Blurring the lines of electro and techno the track is an elegant end to an EP of deep and dense layers.
The Hipodrome Of Music 