Subwax Bcn is a new born record shop based in Barcelona and run by two swedish music lovers. To celebrate the opening of the new shop they here proudly presents Iceland’s finest ambient/dub producers Yagya! This album was originally released back in 2002 and has since then been a real collectors gemm. It features 10 stunning and timeless ambient/dub techno tracks, recorded in Reykjavik during the frozen summer of 2001.
Ill new Charles Manier album on Chicago’s, Nation. This self titled album takes that noise and cranks it right up over tipping point. Nation, a label designed to push the underground to a new level of electronic sound thru experimental styles of musical consciousness. In our recent releases the idea is to never go with the same formula twice. Jakbeat introduces a new concept of productions, music with a sense of novelty that can be accentuated in a certian setting a state of mind. This is a rare assemblage of recordings and live performances from the archives of the Ballard and Ridgewood-Cantullinix Studios in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Recorded 2001-2012, these are the solo visions of Charles Manier. He summons the spirit of early industrial music and breathes in it’s corpse again. Not unlike his previous releases on Ghostly International,here are virtigo endusing arpeggios that twist around a futuristic pulse, and occasionally sting. Here are ritual themesongs for the heathen cyberpunk and experimental landscapes, built from old metal and old plastic, that were designed for a lost future recommended for people who dance to Esplendor Geometrico, Severed Heads, Suicide Liaisons Dangereuses, DAF, Psyche, Executive Slacks & Das Ding.
Dark Entries has dug deep in the New Jersey basement of Smersh to release the double LP compilation “Cassette Pets”. Smersh was the duo of Mike Mangino and Chris Shepard, who started writing music together in the late 1970s. They were uninterested in traditional notions of songwriting or live performance. Everything they needed was in Piscataway NJ: a basement full of musical toys and instruments, novelty space microphones, a TR-606 (the same “Roland” who was listed as a member of Big Black), a SH-09 (Cabaret Voltaire’s favorite synth), and — perhaps most importantly — a couple of tape recorders. By 1981, this dedication to spontaneous creativity had already produced countless recordings, and the duo began releasing cassettes as Smersh via their own Atlas King label. On “Cassette Pets” are 17 songs, featuring some of the many highlights from Smersh’s vast discography, spanning 1981-1994. Smersh’s sound is a lush hybrid of techno, industrial, dance, and experimental. Sometimes easy, sometime not. Most songs revolve around driving EBM style beats, intricate industrial noise manipulation and synth melodies. The Smersh sound has so many faces it doesn’t fall into any one category.
The Product were a duo from the small villages Kvistgaard and Espergaerde, in the north of Denmark. Dan Stielow Mortazavi wrote the lyrics and sang while Kenneth Neuhaus composed the music and played the instruments. They met in the Autumn of 1982 and recorded their sole album “Alive Again” over a weekend. The LP features 11 songs recorded in two short live takes directly onto one cassette. The Product employed a basic set up of Micromoog, Roland JX-3P and TR-606 Drumatix. Nine of the songs employ only these two synthesizers and drum machine while two songs feature a guest bassist. With these three instruments they crafted melodic, icy electronic rhythms with detached vocals. Lyrics revolve around growing up in broken homes, alienation and romance.
Mannequin label from Rome release the “Summer, Jesus” LP by Soviet Soviet, first released on Tannen Records. This post punk LP includes 6 tracks and is burning mix of new wave and dark geometric linear reflections that are then.
Italian ice-wave princess, Mushy gives up the delectable synth romance, ‘Breathless’, her second album on the Rome label Mannequin. Dark, post minimal wave electronix.
Reissue of Ceramic Hello’s seminal 1981 LP, ”The Absence of a Canary.” A long-time cult favourite among fans of obscure ’80s synthpop, this LP remains highly sought-after by ”minimal synth” vinyl collectors.
Minimal wave album by Nancy Fortune on Chicago label Nation. Its about times of change and transformation, where we feel odd, lost or alienated. Life comes and goes, people in our life come and go, emotions come and go. we have a limited time on this planet and nothing stays the same and everything is in constant change.
Altres are a band from Dundee, Scotland who originally formed in 1983. They were playing mostly instrumental, improvised electronic music at a time when very few bands, if any, were making this type of music in the UK. The Altres’ initial line-up was Jeremy Bryning (synths), Joseph Donnelly (synths), Kevin L. Guthrie (synths, sequencer, drum machine), Brian Hutton (synths, sequencer, vocoder), Mike Nelson (guitar) and Maurice Richardson (synths, sequencer, polysynth, drum machine). Most Altres compositions begin with a sequence and a drum pattern. These wrap around arpeggiated synth pulses, and are accompanied by shrill feedback. Instruments used on the recordings include Casio MT40 Moog Prodigy, EDP Wasp, Roland SH-101, Casio VL-Tone, Korg MS20, MS50, SQ10 Poly-61, Ibanez guitar and vocoder. All of the instruments are fed through various effects and echo units. Everything is played and recorded live – there are no overdubs.
Benjamin Brunn has been honing his distinctive and original sound over a series of intermittent releases. His use of the Nord Modular synth is one of the defining characteristics of his sound. He uses the instrument in a wide-ranging and original way, accompanied by a Roland TR707 drum machine. “A Sun Life” was not conceived as a piece of work with a theme. Over a period of two years, Benjamin Brunn sent tracks to Third Ear. Slowly the album began to take shape and become A Sun Life, an album full of different vibes, different grooves, different flows. “A Sun Life” shows Benjamin Brunn achieving something like a perfection of his sound. All the tracks have a fluidity and viscosity, whether like water or oil or honey .. air or sunlight. They start, flow and grow, shift and shimmer, their latent power held in some kind of check. Then they dissipate and fade.
The tone always makes the music. But only those who actually make the sound? An ancient-house-avantgarde dream has always been there since the legendary Warehouse days of Ron Hardy, to bring more sounds and tones constantly to an independent, repetitive development. And thus beyond the limits of an executive creative artist on the otherwise purely commercial sense what we call in common beyond imagination. “Raw Footage”, the latest album concoction of Chicago house legend Ron Trent on his new imprint Electric Blue works in the best sense of Stanislav Lem heroes Trurl & Klapauciusals, cruising like those two metal brains frantically invented by the universe of 4/4-Sounds to get insane tracks out of the new material matter located there, and put them together to brand new ones. This trackwerk varies as well as of course between classical Chi-Town to the context of contemporary, epic house dubs and lives in a perfidious manner from the interaction of various computer modules that constantly spits out new and exciting interactions.
Through the years, Basic Soul Unit has established a solid following for his quality melodic techno. “Motional Response” is a work of art. A finely crafted suite of ten tracks where elaborate techno rhythms battle with intricate synth harmonies to create a genre defining full length. Throughout this album, 303s, 909s and 808s are a constant nod to Basic Soul Unit’s Detroit and Chicago influences without ever compromising his melodic vision in techno and house. The album is including “Breath” , Basic Soul Unit’s first track with a vocalist along with a remix from label owner Jerome Derradji (with Gerald Mitchel – on strings).
Get Physical presents Kris Wadsworth and his debut album – ‘Life and Death’. Opening with the dark monologue of “Alienated American”, the stage is set for a look into what Kris is capable of when he turns his thoughts to sound. “It’s the present state of the music I make.” explains Kris, “It is a look into the future of my music, what I am capable of, but also limited to by label aesthetics.” While tracks like “Definition Of” are pretty straightforward in their own right, pieces like ‘Famous Anus’ are full of irony. “Music is my career, so it is ‘Life and Death’ to a certain extent. But also, there are too many uptight people in this industry that take themselves too seriously. It’s me: Serious music which also makes fun of the world around me.” On the other end of the scale is “Girl Talk”, a deep and gripping track, bringing a perfect late night vibe together through various pads and the organic percussion. The present vocal lines provide a rhythm and weave a thread throughout not only this track, but the general spirit of the album. The album operates on a very natural level, providing deep dancefloor gems along with timeless tracks for every occasion. It’s not your typical dance album, it pushes boundaries and challenges your expectations because that’s where it plays at it’s best – on the edge of your comfort zone, expanding your horizons and tastes while consistently delivering on all fronts.
Madteo serves up his debut album on the Finnish imprint Sahko. With a deep love of hip-hop, boogie and beatdown running through his veins, the NYC-based Italian has never been a conventional house producer, and sure enough, he’s made a thoroughly unconventional album. But Noi No doesn’t jump from one style to another so much as suavely weave a path between styles, creating its own eccentric sonic language the process; what’s more, it’s brilliantly cold and dissolute, as if Madteo has really absorbed the rarefied Scandinavian chill of his new label.
‘Quarter Turns Over A Living Line’ is the long awaited debut album by Raime. Moving away from the sample-based strategies that characterized their early work, Joe Andrews and Tom Halstead have looked increasingly to live instrumentation for their first full-length work, mounting intensive recording sessions for percussion, guitar and strings before painstakingly piecing the album together at their home studio. The gothic and industrial signifies in their music remain, but more submerged and oblique than ever – no less pronounced as influences than jungle’s rhythmic dynamism and doom metal’s oppressive weight or aspects of techno, modern composition and dub. ‘Quarter Turns Over A Living Line’ is the first original artist LP on Blackest Ever Black.
“Ornamented Walls” is the most intense, brutal and, in many senses, most substantial work from Dominick Fernow’s Vatican Shadow project yet. Released to coincide with his first tour of Europe, the album incorporates the live mix rehearsals of “Operation Neptune Spear” with tracks made in their aftermath, recorded straight to tape and mastered by Matt Colton at Air Studios. Anyone familiar with Fernow’s live set-up will recognize the distinct nature of this material — making use of stems and partial tracks separated into a cassette system which is then re-layered and mixed, effected with electronic processing. In short — Fernow uses his tape machines like turntables in a mix, weaving a hazy and intuitive narrative of sounds that never quite head in the direction you expect, all imbued with an almost feral attitude that’s exhilarating to witness, their limitations and their mechanical machine qualities used to devastating effect. Side A features all three parts of “Operation Neptune Spear,” originally made available in a measly edition of 17 cassettes and sold at the first-ever Vatican Shadow live show in L.A. back in May 2012. Side B features an additional 25 minutes of previously-unreleased work made in the aftermath of the show and using the same set-up, including an astonishing revision of “Cairo Is a Haunted City,” dis-assembled and re-wired, lending it a shortwave quality that’s nothing short of revelatory.
The heavily sought after “Ghosts Of Chechnya” cassette finally sees a digital release. Vatican Shadow is unstoppable at the moment, his alchemistic beats and military themes marking him out as a singular talent. This LP champions the sound of Vatican Shadow, with its dubbed-out, reverberant noises, that make him stand out among his peers. The aptly named “Voices Came Crackling Across A Motorola Hand-Held Radio” is another beast, where chugging kick drums meet ominous pads and crackling static. “Chechnya’s Ghosts Loom Large In Death Of Former Spy” is another fine example of his creative ability to mould techno into any shape he sees fit; but it’s the filling spaces made up of eerie melodies and stripped beats, like “Snipers As A Breed Tend To Be Superstitious” which make his recordings so enchanting. Highly recommended as usual.
This is a free release by Andreas Gehm under the moniker Lausward, offered on his bandcamp page in 2011. The release includes 12 tracks featuring an original mixture of acid electro jack house.
Sigha a.k.a James Shaw confidently returns to Hotflush with his heavily anticipated debut LP, ‘Living WIth Ghosts’. For this offering he presents twelve impressive techno and ambient productions and fuses his love of classic UK techno with the contemporary sound that currently pulses through Berlin’s Berghain. Since his 2009 debut on the label, Sigha has organically shifted further and further into the straight 4/4 realm of techno, embracing the subterranean, darker soundscapes of his new production homebase, Berlin. However, hiding under all that bass, one can still hear the whisper of many long forgotten shoegaze numbers. Years of playing guitar in London bands defined Sigha’s musical start and gave him an ear for the emotive. He was able to merge both worlds after quite literally stumbling across techno by chance, igniting his love of electronic music.
New Brooklyn label Felte will be opening for business with the debut LP from doom-mongers ERAAS. ERAAS, aka Robert Toher and Austin Stawiarz, emerged last year from the remains of Noughties post-rockers Apse. The pair’s aim is purportedly to explore more occult territory than their previous gig allowed them. Fittingly, their self-titled debut – recorded in a “rambling, atmospheric mansion” in Massachusetts – is a gloomy affair, setting murky harmonies over the sort of percussion death-rattle you’d expect from a Vatican Shadow record.
The Hipodrome Of Music 