Timothy J. Fairplay finally lands on Pinkman, furthering his sonic excursions into raw, jacking, yet evocative house music. ‘Convictions’ rattles through drum-machine workouts topped with soaring synthlines, inviting you to spiral in the club’s darkest corners. Between the shuffled claps, ominous melodics and delay-laden syncopation, ‘Convictions’ playfully evokes both the mechanical exploration of urban space, and the claustrophobic intimacies encountered within it. There’s even a nod towards 1980s’ cult cinema hit ‘The Bronx Warriors’ at the end. Naturally, these six tracks find a perfect home on Pinkman.
Luminous Machines, the eighth album by UK based Emile Facey recording under his Plant43 alias, is made up of eight dancefloor tracks and eight cinematic interludes all of which are inspired by visits overseas to play live in 2023.
In 1994, UK ambient pioneers O Yuki Conjugate recorded their landmark Equator album. To mark the 30th anniversary of this musical milestone, many of the same personnel – Roger Horberry (co-founder of O Yuki Conjugate), Dan Mudford (ex-Sons of Silence and co-creator of the Shaun of the Dead soundtrack), Joe Lamb (ex-Sons of Silence) and Malcolm McGeorge – came together to make New Meridian, reflecting the range of influences they’ve picked up over the intervening years. Generously described as “almost like normal music”, the eight tracks of New Meridian feature instrumentation ranging from classic analogue to actual wooden logs. The result takes you on a rain-drenched, open-top ride from Electronica Avenue to the drone caverns of Uranus, with various Fourth World ambi-dub diversions along the way.
Viernulvier Records presents its new LP release ‘Quadric Surfaces’ by iconic electronic producer Hieroglyphic Being aka Jamal R Moss. It collects the soundtracks Moss wrote for ‘Parallel Spheres’ & ‘Figures in Mynd’, two parts of an abstract animation film by visual artist Gabriela González Rondon. The film premiered in October 2023 during Videodroom / Film Festival Ghent.
Sahrawi singer-songwriter activist Aziza Brahim’s fifth album Mawja (Wave in Hassaniya Arabic) is fashioned from a simple but powerful foundational palette: Saharan and Iberian percussion entwining with stately guitars and warm, enveloping bass. The album is co-produced by Brahim with long-time collaborator Guillem Aguilar.
The Debut Album “Latin Freaks” by Funkool Orchestra is finally out. Get ready for another dose of Neapolitan Funky Disco Boogie madness with a Latin touch. The Long Playing is a mixture of Rare Grooves, Napoli Sound, Disco Boogie, Latin Soul and Boogaloo, ideal for a trip to Nueva York and back to Naples just to say hello to your Puertorican uncle Manolito “Gennaro” Marròn.
Island style electronic dub from the Mad Professor. Originally released in 1985 on the same Ariwa imprint. True D.I.Y. business from this UK dub pioneer.
This Dutch music project was created in the late 1980s by two graphic designers, Edwin Van Der Laag and Huib Shippers, who were in love with electronic music. Their debut album is divided into two parts, the first with Edwin’s music and the second with Huib’s. Obviously Van Der Laag’s songs are inspired by Laserdance, for which Van Der Laag also designed album covers, however Shippers’ part is slightly different, less aggressive, trance-inducing. This is the first part of the album and is the first vinyl reissue of this album since its first appearance.
Since 2019, Amsterdam-based curator Pieter Jansen has used his yeyeh label as a vehicle for carefully considered (and sometimes unlikely) ‘first time’ collaborations between different experimental and avant-garde artists. The idea of getting saxophonist/composer/producer Jerzy Maczyński in the studio with Chicagoan DJ/producer Hieroglyphic Being was the genesis of this record, the debut album by Universal Harmonies & Frequencies. In June 2022, Hieroglyphic Being flew to Amsterdam to spend five days improvising with Maczyński in a rented studio beneath Volkshotel, under the watchful eye of recording and mix engineer Rein De Sauvage Nolting, better known in electronic music circles for his work as RDS. During those sessions, 26 long, improvised compositions were recorded, with Maczyński contributing saxophones and electronic tools, and Hieroglyphic Being laying down synthesizer parts and vocals. These sessions were captured on film by VLF (Katarzyna Debska), who later created the artwork and visual language for this record release. Some days after the recording sessions, Sauvage Nolting – who had delivered artistic input during the improvisations – sat down with Jansen to select 13 pieces to put forward for the album and a loose conceptual framework. It was then that the hard work began. While a decision was taken to present some improvisations in full, most of what you will hear on Tune IN, as the album is titled, is based on fragments of improvisation. The resultant pieces were reconfigured, re-worked and re-produced by Maczyński and Sauvage Nolting over many months, and in discussion with Hieroglyphic Being. Maczyński added more layers of instrumentation, creating a “whole digital band of reed instruments” – a method he previously utilized on Sariani. What you hear when you play the record defies categorization. It is rooted in a specific moment in time and the spontaneity of musical improvisation – both Maczyński and Hieroglyphic Being are experienced improvisers, albeit with different musical instruments and tools – but also the product of extensive post-production and reflective re-shaping. It is not free-jazz, ambient, electronica, rhythmic cubism (as Hieroglyphic Being’s distinctive sound has previously been called), or avant-garde experimentalism, but something that combines all these musical approaches and more, with a sprinkling of far-sighted futurism mixed in. It is a magical and mystical meeting of musical minds that will pass the test of time in decades to come.
Larry Manteca’s Zombie Mandingo album arrived back in 2013 and in the danced plus has only ever been available digitally. Now it makes its debut on wax and remains a bold listen that was devised as a soundtrack to a non-existent exploitation film. It fuses funk, jazz, and Afrobeat influences with plenty of niche cinematic references such as the zombies in Lucio Fulci’s horrors and Umberto Lenzi’s cannibalistic adventures. The resulting mash up is beguiling to say the least with horror-tinged exotica next to Fela Kuti rhythms and elements of Italian Library music and colourful psychedelia. A boundary pushing work to say the least.
After almost 6 years of silence since ‘Akelarre’, Synths Versus Me, the personal musical project of Nico Cabanas, co-founder of Oráculo Records alongside the young Italian promise India Nardone. Recorded analogically in just 2 months, fluctuates in a futuristic way between different kinds of unusual dark sub styles such as industrial noise, proto- tribal, synthpunk or krautwork, and, of course, among other dance-oriented such as EBM, new beat, synthwave, electro/breakbeat or trance.
Paranoid London, the electronic band of Gerardo Delgado and Quinn Whalley, has become synonymous with stripping acid house back down to its basics, rescuing the sound from smiley faces, rave, and sugary excess while paying respects to its gay, black, American roots. Performing mainly live with hardware only, often with vocal guests, as well as unique hybrid DJ sets, the duo has established a tongue in cheek, grumpy punk sound and attitude without taking it too seriously. Their new long-player “Arseholes, Liars, and Electronic Pioneers” refers to the cavalcade of c***s we find ourselves surrounded by. Our only respite being the joy that musical geniuses bring. As expected, PL has recruited a bunch of special guests on vocals including Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie, US house veteran Monica “DJ Genesis” Lockett, the novo-New Romantic/gothic, Jennifer Touch, and Joe Love, from Fat Dog, Brixton’s current ones-to-watch. As well, previous collaborators Josh Caffe and Mutado Pintado return for new recordings.
Filmmaker consistently traverses genres from post-punk, EBM, synth wave and beyond to create a unique identity still firmly rooted in film culture. Now he returns to Veyl with Hollywood Cult. Comprised of 13 tracks, the album sees the producer elevate his sound to new levels, conjuring a world of haunting atmospheres and devious directions that take the listener through a journey of unparalleled proportions.
Third episode of whispers of an ancient world. In these new interludes, the artist DMX Krew realizes his personal vision of the well-known story by Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel. Borges takes as a starting point to explain the universe two realities that are essential for the world of libraries: the library, as a physical space, as a continent, which also contains the greatest wealth that can be conceived as it is the compendium and sum of everything. human knowledge and understanding. But this place, this library is not a silent, uninhabited, inert space, but rather something alive, full of activity, guarded by librarians and used by all men, in turn librarians in search of giving meaning to their nature, to what that surrounds him, to the past, present and future of humanity. And here we have the other reality: librarians. Borges interprets that each man is a librarian, someone who inhabits and explores the infinite hexagons of the Library, in search of his particular interpretation of the world. Although it also establishes the figure of the librarian as custodian of books, of knowledge, as an interpreter who knows how to decipher all the mysteries that the Library contains inside, an official who has unraveled the content of the infinite Library that requires subjects who know how to keep it. and at the same time help men, all of them librarians, to find meaning in everything.
New release from the mysterious Body Habitat project, allegedly associated with the equally elusive German Army project, this is a 15 track tape full of broken industrial rhythms and seething sonic soundscapes, unrelenting California desert music.
YE GODS returns to L.I.E.S. with a new fill length, “No Albion”. Seven tracks of haunting ritualistic electronics, coming from the darkest realm of your psyche. Chilling ambience, voices from your nitemares, wishing to escape this world.
A collection of electronic anthems for the SOIL, following the tradition of the Soviet Gym, composed with strong and resolute strokes and delivered with straightforward, accessible, and honest language. Unyielding storylines, free from fear or inhibitions, featuring explicit themes (bordering on the provocative), intricate developments, and satisfying progressions, designed to confront clubbing and its fringes as a captivating, sensual, and cathartic journey. Dim the lights and crank up the volume. In this gym, we are adept at navigating emotions.
Greek poetry and electronic music are tied together with darkwave: kama muta present their debut album “The voices burned” on Dystatik Records. Based on a book that will be published at a later time, the songs talk about grief, love, suicide, isolation, equality and many more. The album is fluctuating from Synth Pop to Darkwave and from Minimal Synth to Synth Punk sounds, counting 8 times that the voices burned in an echo chamber full of buzz.
AI-36 comes from Ear to Ear – the debut collaboration between label regular Samuel van Dijk (VC-118A, Multicast Dynamics) and Ukrainian artist Yevgen Chebotarenko. Taken from a series of live recording sessions, the album explores in four parts a markedly darker realm of soundscape music. A cornucopia of abstract morphing scenes and heady synesthesia, the album brims with rich sonic detail and evocative gestures. Deftly blending organic sound textures with an experimental austerity, ‘Live Recordings’ displays potent and accomplished storytelling.
Absolutely killer darkside mutations from Tradecraft, aka Carrier aka Shifted, a stunning hour-long session of dank, highly atmospheric technoid alchemy that plays from the Pan Sonic/Vainio/T++/Actress songbook. Key technoid shapeshifter Guy Brewer chases a trio of aces under his Carrier alias with the murky arrival of his Tradecraft project, forging heaving downtempo slugs and vapours from a signature palette of iridescent electronics deployed somewhere along the line between Actress, Burial and Mika Vainio, on a cybergoth bent.
The Hipodrome Of Music 