Deep in the vaults of AM Records this album was rediscovered. When recorded back in the days, this album felt too doomy and depressing for the light hearted era in which everybody was on the unifying love drug ecstacy. But for this moment in time, with an increasing popularity of the anesthetic ketamine and introspective psychedelics, the album feels more appropriate. Has togetherness or collectiveness lost out to individualistic painkilling, or are we healing?
Let’s Dance – 08PM – by Reda Saiarh is a 10” release on AM Records. Four oddball “New Beat – not – New Beat” tracks produced by this young dj from Geneva (of the duo Ramin & Reda) for renewed appetite for dancing after the lockdowns… title track Let’s Dance is Reda’s 2021 take on the classic Bowie song, followed by an original new production Quinz Lord, in which he samples his girlfriend’s cat. On the flip he worked with Thomas Lavanchy on E-O, a song constructed around traditional Gabonese chanting before finishing off with an ode to Yello medley, mashed up to the deepest kick of the record.
Inspired from Romanian cultural heritage, be it film, dance or musical instruments, Folclor Abstract is a glance back to the roots in search of a meaningful future. The first track is inspired from the soundtrack composed by Cornelia Tăutu for the Romanian historical adventure film “Buzduganul cu trei peceți” (1977). The film presents a politicized version of the events that led in 1600 to the unification of the three Romanian countries, in the aftermath of a victorious battle against the Ottoman invasion (Călugăreni, 1595). Dance your way through as the story unfolds. Dans cu balans is the result of a personal fascination for the cimbalom, an instrument of high versatility, frequently used in the Romanian fiddle music. In contrast to orchestral performances, which adhere to the composer’s notes to reproduce a work faithfully, fiddling is also open to improvisation and tends to produce rhythms that focus on dancing, with associated quick note changes. Searching for inspiration within Romanian folklore, I found Ivan Braga who was on his own pursuit of cultural heritage, experimenting with a variety of traditional instruments and rhythms from different regions of the country. Doba lu’ Braga is Ivan’s modern take on Romanian drum patterns performed on a traditional Moldavian drum (dobă) with an uplifting twist and arrangement for the dancefloor experience. Reverie is an expression of the creator’s state of mind. Lost in thought, stolen by imagination, haunted by memories, liberated by dreams
In the beginning of the summer of 2019, AM returns with four exotic edits and reworks to dance to on grass. Solima is a pitched down lush and spatial Afro gem that will cause instant euphoria on any dance floor, followed by a faster and uplifting African jam called Ali Baba. Both have that late 80’s synthetic vibe we dig so much.On the flip there are two tracks which are constructed upon respectively an Egyptian and a Turkish sample. Badaouiah reminds of Carl Craig’s edit of Congo Man, builds up slowly and gets highly hypnotic and deep, while the second track Mustapha rolls out a quirky rhythm pattern with a hysteric Turkish clarinet sample.
Afrobot cuts up four wavy 80’s tracks for darker times! A1 is a sleazy minimal wave banger of Ensemble Pittoresque, recorded in The Hague in ’84, now tripled in duration! After that we continue our trip from France to New York ending in the UK on the B-side. First track is a mix of a 7” b-side and a wrong speeder and a slowly pounding track with a twist is the one to finish with.
Articulat is the new artist name of Ovidiu Stanciu, a Romanian dj/producer living in Rotterdam. Under the moniker Manikin, he worked on several concept albums with titles like Popular Mechanics, Taxim and Grandma’s Attic Revival over the last couple of years. The A-side includes three thriving and pounding slow-beat bangers, while the B-side shows a Articulat’s more versatile style. Expect experimental electronic songs inspired by themes like Steampunk and Romanian folklore, very precisely engineered to experience storytelling in the most physical way.
The 04AM A-side contains two South-African 80’s Bubblegum tracks, revamped by young DJ and producer Perdu. He provided the tracks with delicate intros and rearranged them with new percussion, synths and deeper basslines. On the flip Afrobot delivers two kind of New Beat cuts, making the originals more abstract by some heavy chopping, reducing the amount of samples used, and adding disco breaks to the track Jungle.
02AM is an 4 track EP by the young producer Hekkla from Eindhoven. The first track is ‘Sunset Strip’, a slowly build house track that moves like the last waves of heat at the end of a hot summers day, walking home feeling satisfied, all ready for the night. ‘Saturday Morning Sentimentality’ is a hard to pinpoint track that sounds like the bastard son of a trio between the melancholic side of Cyndi Lauper, Alphaville and the echoes of a cheesy saturday morning cartoon theme song from the late 80’s. On the other side ‘Memories of Tau Ceti’ feels like tumbling into space with only the memories left of a good time on an alien world, accelerating faster and faster but still enjoying it, even though you know that the vacuum of space will eventually kill you. Finishing with the hardest track ‘No Math’, because, boys and girls, it’s no math.
01AM is the perfect time to start a party and it is the first release of a new label by Afrobot related to his Afrobotic Musicology blog. The record contains 4 edits of music from different corners of the globe: to begin with an epic electro pop nugget from Greece and a heavily cut up Bollywood track on the A side, to finish the journey in Africa on the flip side with a percussive acid jam and a Zulu cult song that screamed for a rework. Limited edition / hand stamped artwork by Frank Koedood on the sleeve.
The Hipodrome Of Music 