WRWTFWW Records and MEG Museum (Geneva) announce a new full length album by celebrated Japanese percussionist Midori Takada (Through The Looking Glass), in collaboration with Buddhist monks belonging to the Samgha group of the Shingon school of Koya-san, led by Reverend Syuukoh Ikawa. “You Who are Leaving to Nirvana” is a majestic work combining a suite of six Buddhist liturgical chants and a musical creation by Midori Takada. After supervising the recording of the Buddhist chants, Midori Takada added her own compositions, with subtle layers of percussion and the melodies of her beloved marimba, giving full life to the sacred texts.
Contrarily to the rest of Tasos Stamou’s experimental discography, the musician’s latest album “Balkan Express” has a more obscure electro-folk approach. It consists of seven pieces, all recorded with seven different vintage electric keyboards from Stamou’s own collection, blended with oriental acoustic solos. Since Stamou grew up in the Balkans in the ‘80s, he wanted to pay homage to the essence of the sound of the era that unintentionally shaped a whole culture. It was when these inexpensive, available-to-all electronic keyboards with synth sounds and drum machines replaced traditional Balkan folk music ensembles. The acoustic instruments solos and melodies of the album were influenced by local traditions and the heritage of the Ottoman music. “Balkan Express” is meant to be a time capsule taking the listener to the folk-wave retro-Balkan subculture.
Levon Vincent returns with his fourth full-length studio album “Silent Cities” a striking departure from his previous records. This, his first release experimenting with the cassette format, Silent Cities is a kind of mixtape through more private moods and personal pitches (literally given Levon’s non-standard tunings). While Levon has always produced dance floor jams with the intention of raising people’s heart rates, Silent Cities began with 72 bpm: his average resting heart rate, and the concept of tuning the music he was making to his own body rather than increasing anything. This brought the tempos down to 72 bpm or even half of that, at 36bpm. Programming the record during the empty cityscape of Berlin lockdowns, this is the first time Levon’s created an album for the home stereo or for headphone listening whilst navigating through a city. A mixtape specialist in his youth; he was always wanted to play with the cassette format. The results are sure to delight any listener, with the ever-present ambient, krautrock, shoegaze, hip-hop and electro influences coming to the foreground on this work.
The original Versalife tryptich on Clone West Coast Series. “Night Time Activities” is taking us down deep into the night. Versalife is creating a setting with sounds radiating the midnight atmosphere that reflects the twin peak-esque life on a almost deserted windy Dutch coastal island where the clouds rush through the dark night time skies projecting all variations of grey and black on the mystifying dunes. Futuristic electro techno tracks with emotive synth work created with exploratory imagination. Dark, sinister and intense!
Prolific and often nomadic label boss, producer, and studio engineer, Tony Price (Maximum Exposure) has been making a name for himself over these last years, as he’s lurked in the shadows while moving from city to city around the world, leaving a unique and wide-spanning musical mark in his wake. On his 14 track IBM-CONTRA LP, Price conjures up a wild melange of free jazz and high speed electro funk next that sits next to dusty ambient, street tough house, and even Bill Conti-esque dark alley rainy street jams featuring saxophone work from Alex Zhang Hungtai and Colin Fisher. The album is unmistakably Tony at his best, as he weaves in and out of these genres making them make sense next to each other. Whether it’s providing a shady saxophone driven backdrop for the next inevitable worldwide bio-warfare crisis or tapping into the roots of stripped down classic electro and house for the floor, this is the artist at peak creativity flexing his skills.
Techno legend Jeff Mills and keyboard wizard Jean-Phi Dary embark on a live musical trip, documenting their most recent performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland – and encapsulating their mission to fuse techno and jazz. In the past Jeff has spoken of the need to “take a few steps back and try and assess what has been done, and what might need to be approached to be able to go forward.” Jeff’s reassessment manifests as jazz-hno, film music-hno, conceptechno… anything to happily build of the mad range of influences he’s drawn on over the years. Paradox: Live at Montreux is the result. Jeff Mills – electronics; Jean-Phi Dary – piano, Fender Rhodes, synthesizer; Zaf Zapha – electric/upright bass.
Höga Nord Rekords kindly welcomes Tecwaa back to the label, following up his last full length-album “Beyond the Altai” with “Elysian on Moon Lake”. He is still exploring the intersections between house, electro, techno and dub and once again he manages to harness the analogue electronics in his machines to produce modern psychedelia. “Elysian On Moon Lake” is rawer, less airy and not as sparkling as his last album. This is a tighter, and slightly darker experience than Tecwaa’s previous work, maybe caused by being in quarantine for extensive time during production, letting some of the dreaminess aside for the harsher reality in a pandemic world. Still, you get a mind-altering experience in a lot of tracks since the album starts off in a lighter tone than how it later develops. Switching from the A- to the B-side works as a rite of passage going from dusk to night; the sun rays through the blinders are replaced by neon light dancing on the walls and ceiling.
Finish The Sun, the second offering from Shane Cooper & Mabuta, is a glowing and energetic album, rooted in grooves from all over the African continent. The six-piece outfit draws on influences from Mali, Nigeria, the Sahel, Morocco; and the many sounds that make up their native South Africa. This musical trip seamlessly dances through Afrobeat, maskandi, funk and hip hop, to moments of cinematic beauty. All embedded with subtle hints of 70s psychedelia. The core group of Shane Cooper, Bokani Dyer, Sisonke Xonti, and Robin Fassie invited international guests on drums including: Jamie Peet, Arthur Hnatek, Christopher Cantillo, and more…
Re-issue of seminal Mr. Fingers album ‘Amnesia’, available officially for the first time in 32 years on Larry Heard’s own Alleviated Records. This remastered collection of early Mr. Fingers works is an absolute must have.
James Asher is known for his individual and and distinctive approach to creating tribal drum music. He combines a confident grasp of fusion and worldbeat with a crystal clear audio production style. For the first time since Asher`s best selling releases “Feet In the Soil” and “Shaman Drums”, Sleepers Records are delighted to be the first purveyors of his work in vinyl form, with six dazzling tracks which are earthy, grounded and compelling.
Libertine 19 features the first album from Roman master Gianluca Bertasi AKA Teslasonic, a journey of 10 stunning tracks from pure electro to Italo infused techno and space disco. Operating in the corner of electro where dystopian dreams (or should they be nightmares?) are made, TeslaSonic haven’t forgotten how to keep things fun no matter how dark the vibe gets. Gianluca Bertasi keeps the project flying with this double LP drop on Libertine which has a nod to the likes of Maggotron in the nasty funk of opening track ‘Ion Drive’, while also knowing how to turn up the techno dial on the stiff and driving intensity of ‘Poly Verisof’. These are tuned up, rough, ready and raucous electro cuts for those who like to have fun even as things get deadly serious.
Sync 24’s Cultivated Electronics label presents a double-pack by Alonzo, aptly named ‘They Come In Twos’. Originally from Miami and now based in New York, Alonzo has previously released on W.T. Records, Zement, RotterHague, Phormix, Kraftjerkz, and Lost Soul Enterprises. He’s also known as Lithium Parasites alongside bandmate, Vidrio. Alonzo’s uncompromising approach draws influence from bleak urban landscapes, old city ruins, kinematics and all things bass which he finely represents across these 8 new tracks.
The current transmission from the Squirrels On Film universe is Nezzy Idy’s full-length album presented on glorious magnetic cassette tape. Emit Idy, along with the rest of the Oakland based Katabatik collective’s music, events & DIY community ethos have been a consistent inspiration for many in the Bay Area electronic music scene, & The Squirrels are delighted & honored to bring this album to the wider world. From the sonic miasma of opener “Ateh,” with its banshee wails & scrap metal synths, into the kaleidoscopic boogie of “Hallow” & “Prometheus,” Idy explores early Industrial, Cold Wave & Acid House textures. “Contumacy” & “Nyquest” add elements of Electro to the cauldron, conjuring spirits, emotion & drama from his vocals drum machines & synthesizers. “Teeth” goes full-on Warehouse Rave, evoking the sweaty late night illicit undergrounds that once drew wide-eyed revelers from all over the Bay Area to the seemingly abandoned industrial dark corners of a pre-gentrification Oakland, California every weekend. “Y Is The Sign” & “Systemic Volume” are hallucinatory funk workouts & “Xiolin” comes full-circle back to the radiant sound-collage of the opener.
Suction Records announces RX-101’s fifth album, “New Discoveries”. As the title suggests, “New Discoveries” is not just more of the same — this is a new side of the RX-101 sound. Rather than taking inspiration from braindance heroes like Aphex Twin and Bochum Welt, “New Discoveries” is a reflection of Erik Jong (aka RX-101)’s love for classic Detroit techno – Juan Atkins, Derrick May, Carl Craig, et al. Like some of the UK producers who mined this sound for inspiration, from B12 to Kirk DiGiorgio, the influence of Detroit techno is crystal clear, even if the sound has a distinctly EU/UK flair.
What is Plus instruments? The title implies the secondary nature of the tools used to produce the sounds, maybe even of the sounds themselves. The means of making sound are not important, but the sounds themselve, but even beyond them there is a force, a grumbling. Maybe best represented by the first sound heard on Plus Instruments “Februauri- April 81”, a sound that is more felt than heard. The grumbling persists throughout the album, not in the same sonic way but things gyrate and repeat until they are mineral and not purely auditory. Using toys, drum machines, and other homemade electronics designed by front person Truus de Groot, the band manages to obscure every song into a hard to maintain mix of No Wave drive, New Wave sheen, and dance music groove. Originally established in The Netherlands in 1979 by Truus de Groot in various line-ups, she hooked up with Lee Ranaldo and David Linton in 1981 when she first ventured to NYC. A trio that smashes the sound of early 80s New York with the equally as progressive European experimentation of the time. Completely without total contemporaries, Plus instruments make music free of bounds from time, labels, and place. Originally released by Kremlin records in 1981 run by Sonic Youth’s future manager Carlos van Hijfte, Domani Sounds proudly presents Februari-April 81′ featuring brand new liner notes by van Hijfte himself.
For more than twelve years, Morphology have been re-writing the rules of electronics. Michael Diekmann and Matti Turunen have melted electro, IDM and techno into their own unique sound. To celebrate their achievements, FireScope has sifted through the impressive discography of this Finnish pairing to bring long out of print tracks back to life. Split over two 2×12 inche releases, Twelve 1 & 2 brings together a decade’s worth of music released between 2009 and 2019, 24 works that traverse genres and labels like Abstract Forms, AC Records, Analogical Force, Central Processing Unit, Cultivated Electronics, diametric., Inner Space Records, Semantica, Stilleben and Vortex Traks.
After three years of experimentation in isolation, Dopplereffekt have emerged with Neurotelepathy, an oracular narrative of cerebral entanglement and advancement. The sleek mathematical models of 2017’s Cellular Automata have evolved into these synaptic interpretations, transferences and modifications, rejecting binary expectations to meditate on the possibilities and pitfalls of what’s to come. With their second LP and fifth release in total on Leisure System, the duo of Rudolf Klorzeiger and To-Nhan have themselves achieved a near-telepathic capacity for collaborative thought and mechanical construction. They continue to use live appearances to present experimental trials of theoretical models, and that effort is heard in the sizzle and swing of the percussive highlights here, programmed with a serious depth and wriggle that reflect both an extension of and return to form. The album’s core, a three-act movement of symphonic uncertainty and revelation, marks one of the pair’s most evocative compositions in a career full of them.
Lucita Octans is a pseudonym for Melissa Speirs, half of the electro duo Biochip (CPU, WeMe). “Roseoryx” is the debut album from Lucita Octans and is influenced by the full spectrum of electronica, with a unique palette of genre-busting sounds bursting forth from a singular mind. It’s raw but melodic, intense but deep, and tough yet fun. As Melissa describes it “Lucita Octans is floating adrift somewhere. She is looking for the perfect world. Melodies kind of come to her by a somekind of phenomenon. She begs you not to take her too seriously. She was never here and neither are we.”
E&S Brothers’ 1985 album Taduma holds a unique yet overlooked place in the history of South African dance music. When Shadrack Ndlovu and Ernest Segeel teamed up with Dane Stevenson, owner of Blue Tree Studio in downtown Johannesburg, and journeyman producer Taso Stephanou, South Africa’s bubblegum era had just begun, spurred on by the success of Shangaan disco. The relative success of their debut 12” ‘Don’t Bang The Taxi Door’, marketed aggressively at taxi ranks throughout the country, helped put the Blue Tree label on the map and E&S were invited back to record a full album: Taduma, featuring on keyboards Dr Buke, an in-demand session player from Soweto. Rooted in Africa, yet purely electronic, Taduma was a moderate hit, spurred by tracks like ‘Taxi Door’ and ‘Mhane’, its hypnotic refrain ‘Mhane, famba na wena’ meaning ‘Mother, I am going to you’. Other tracks like ‘Mapantsula’ and ‘Be Careful’ place Taduma within the street-savvy ‘pantsula’ style and dance synonymous with consecutive waves of music from disco to kwaito, house and beyond, while ‘Sikele Masike’ repurposes a traditional Shangaan work song. Vocally E & S are closer to rapping than singing, in a combination of English and vernacular – predating other credited pioneers of kwaito in SA like Senyaka and Spokes H. Driving the music instead of vocals are waves of searing synths over rudimentary but explosive drum machine sounds – the word ‘Taduma’ meaning the sound of the drum.
The Hipodrome Of Music 