Mysticisms’ present a 2 x 12” DJ double pack of the music of Toyko Offshore Project. Featuring the productions of Simon Lovejoy, Frankie Valentine and Kiyoshi Myaura. T.O.P released a series of EPs from 1990 to 1994, recorded in London and Toyko. This best of selection of released and unreleased tracks covers the nascent UK / Japanese house sound through to Afro, Ambient, Balearic and Street Soul, a compilation that brings this evolution of electronic music back on to vinyl for a new generation…
Noamm, the darkest entity on Planet Earth delivers an extraordinary album full of analog sequences and surgical drums. Haunting electro at its best. Warning: the content included in the track Necro Science maybe disturbing or traumatizing for some audiences. This track includes sounds and voices sampled directly from the autopsy room.
“Ambidextrous. The electro-plasticky sculptural sonic opera that invites you in & out & in again. Presented in first-person, at other times in third but always out-of-body. Like a beat up stroboscope slamming into a Walt Disney number, raggedy abstracted cartoonish characters are pumped, plumped & squashed into the adhoc scenery. A tree is now a paint tube or maybe a shoe horn but only because it has to be until it isn’t, or maybe it never will be for you. Very filmy, sometimes flimsy and on occasion chunky; presenting to you, actual variety. Definitely not a tidy digital affair…you can hear the tape bias deep breathing & hasty splices popping with an immediacy that does not waste time to tinker. Shattered bronze becomes the glue, the glue becomes your dinner companion as well as the plate & window seat. Not unlike a Goldilocks and the Three Bears scenario, depending on your moody attention span, you may find certain characteristics to be too something or not enough something but perhaps just right. Open for interpretation & again for re-interpretation – this monument gives what you take. Hidden naked in plain sight under the raincoat of Fashion Flesh is John Talaga. His homemade concrete-conceptual sounds & visions have been pilfered, snubbed & consciously left unmentioned by many unmentionables. FF’s breathed the same dank air & marked his territory in rooms & on records with brave battered pioneers like Momus, Ian Svenonius & Alexandra Cabral (Escape-ism), Ann Shenton, etc etc…leaving a trail of recordings on far-out labels like Unknown Precept, est. 83 (Fit Sound) and Jacktone to only name just a few. Keep listening.”
“We Are Power”, Galaxian’s first album in over a decade, cuts a new path. On this Foul-Up and Shipwrec joint release, Mark Kastner presents a rumination on the confrontation and power clash between humankind, nature, the spiritual and mechanistic industrial growth societies. What is authentic power? What is granted power? What is innate natural power? How is power accessed, wielded, utilised, felt? On this album the blistering beats and razor-edged rhythms that characterise the Glaswegian’s productions have been softened, the menace melted, the angst soothed (well almost.) Across eleven tracks, distinct audio vistas are surveyed. This album is unmistakable Galaxian, it marks a high-point and brings with it a culmination of intense expression.
Third full-length album of veteran Swedish producer Ola Obergman. A heavy collection of 808 based electro-techno fusion tracks in classic Pariter style.
Detroit legend Jeff Mills’ returns with an exciting new LP, and as always, there’s a deep concept behind it. Mind Power Mind Control explores various techniques used for mind control, the deceptive techniques devised for such purposes and its power over people. Similarly, the music on offer here is incredibly hypnotic – this is a Mills album after all – with each track’s complex sonic tapestry sure to entrance you. All of The Wizard’s idiosyncrasies are on offer: immaculately programmed 909 rhythms underpin majestic strings and sublime tones, all delivered with his trademark style of futurist minimalism. While less dancefloor oriented than some of this revered DJ’s previous releases, it’s awe-inspiring nonetheless. Essential listening.
Versatility does not even come close to describing how the humble Japanese ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U is considered to be one of the best DJs in the world by many of his peers. In this special mix album, Yukimatsu gathers round his producer friends to build vessels of the story structure. Threading the pages together, interweaved by friendship and sine waves, he has crafted a masterful presentation from their individual messages. Pulling and stretching all sonic shapes and shades while exploring the farthest reaches of sound, the result is a frequency soup of twelve outstanding tracks that when sequenced together, become part of a greater, grander story: Midnight is Comin’.
Bruno De Angelis and Giovanna Gulinello unwittingly met in London in the late 70’s, after being introduced by a mutual friend. It wasn’t until Bruno rescued Giovanna from an awkward date that the pair became a couple. At the time, music was just something they did for fun. In 1981 the pair moved back to Italy and found an apartment in Rome. It’s here that they began to focus on their music and where they started ‘recording’ their tracks. As with many artists during the early 80’s, the Influenza Prods’ sound was the direct result of the accessibility of emerging electronic instruments and the recording equipment available to them. Influenza Prods managed to ‘release’ three tapes which comprised of the Greatest Tits (1983), Cheek-A-Bomba (1984) and Quasi Solo (1985).
Flock is a brand new collaboration between five leading musicians from London’s open-minded jazz and experimental scenes: Bex Burch (Vula Viel), Sarathy Korwar, Dan “Danalogue” Leavers (Soccer96, The Comet Is Coming), Al MacSween (Maisha) and Tamar Osborn (Collocutor).
From 2008 comes ‘Keys, Strings, Tambourines’ – Kenny Larkin’s fourth full length LP. Yet another advanced, singular and funked out techno milestone that bears all of Larkin’s idiosyncratic stylings and melodic touches. Once more he shows us how it’s done, sounding like nothing you’ve heard from him previously, ‘Keys, Strings, Tambourines’ is a truly adventurous record that defies categorisation today. Quietly influencing producers and DJs since its release, it points to where techno can go and what it can be and is a truly and criminally overlooked modern Detroit techno classic.
As one of the iconic partnerships from the electroclash era, Miss Kittin & The Hacker helped define seedy synth tackle at the turn of the century. Given the prevalence of minimal wave in this day and age, it feels like the perfect time for them to come back with a new album. Teetering between pop nous and the darkest of deviant nighttime dreams, this is everything you would want from a return of the Grenoble greats. Listening to ‘Purist’ and they could easily be taking on the charts, while a trip into ‘La Cave’ is like donning your finest leathers and sliding into the dungeon.
Local Suicide announce their long awaited debut album ‘Eros Anikate’ which will be released May 13th, 2022 via their own label Iptamenos Discos. The title translates to ‘love invincible’ and draws influence from a play written by Sophocles titled ‘Antigone’. The album holds true to the duo’s ‘technodisco’ sound that the couple has become so well known for and showcases their signature style of blending a retro feeling with a modern twist. In usual Local Suicide fashion, the duo’s debut album showcases tongue in cheek modern-day circumstances, mystical adventures, and moody baselines; all tied up with the promises of happy endings. You can instantly hear that this album comes from the duo’s hearts. Inspired by the travels and experiences they encountered throughout the pandemic, it’s also a love letter to the friends they met during their career – some of which are also featured on the album: Lee Stevens, Curses, The Hidden Cameras, Sissi Rada, Skelesys, Theus Mago, Hard Ton, Kalipo & Greek new wave legend Lena Platonos.
Not much is known about the mysterious pop sensation Vumani or his short musical career. Originally from KwaZulu Natal he made his way to Johannesburg in the mid 80’s to follow his dream of becoming a recording artist. He was able to make that dream come true when talent scouts from Decibel Music came across the charismatic youngster. At the time Decibel was still a small fish trying to make waves and the label believed in Vumani they had found the star they were looking for. Being a label with mostly groups signed to the catalog they needed a Front Man to push into the growing demand for Solo Artists that were dominating the airwaves and catching the hearts of youngsters. In 1896, they released two singles by Vumani, Black Mampatile and Guy Fawkes. Both singles were received well and a few more tracks were later recorded to create the full album Isiqedakoma.
Strut continue their deep dive into the archives of Black Fire Records with a new reissue of Oneness Of Juju’s Bush Brothers & Space Rangers, showcasing the band at the peak of their powers in 1977. Primarily recorded at Arrest Studios in Washington DC, the album ispacked with landmark Oneness tracks including ‘Be About TheFuture’ (“possibly the first ecology-themed song that I know of”) the George Clinton-influenced ‘Plastic’, an acoustic alternative version of ‘African Rhythms’ and strong covers of Caiphus Semenya’s ‘West Wind’ and Bobby Womack’s ‘Breezin”. Plunky continues, “The album is composed of several different sessions featuring different personnel and only first came out as an album in its own right when Black Fire MD Jimmy Gray started working with P-Vine Records in Japan during the ’90s. For me, it’s one of the hottest periods for the band.”
Thanatos Of Funk is a milestone in Japan’s underground music and electro funk/early hip hop history. Entirely self-produced, designed and distributed in 1985 by Fushimi, a high-school teacher by day and music experimenter by night, Thanatos Of Funk is a love-letter to counter-culture, DIY, drum machines and synthesizers blent with some killer shamisen and guitar playing. Comes with a 4 pages insert including the original hand-written insert/comic by Minoru Fushimi, with English translations. Minoru “Hoodoo” Fushimi’s most wanted and impossible to find first album Thanatos Of Funk is finally reissued for the first time ever, in collaboration with Fushimi himself.
Martin Steinebach active producer since 1994 with their different akas (Conscientia Peccati, Monoid, StillStand, Compest) presents his new project EM1V, with the album called “Hidden Mutation” a mix between e.b.m, electro and synthpop.
Venom Vampires is a dark beat band from Texas, US. Front-man Tohm Thicken started as a Darkwave DJ in 1999. The line-up also includes Russell Dove and Adrian Ortega. “Luxury In Deceit” is their debut album on Detriti Records.
Known for his work on Transient Force, Gigolo, and of course as a contributor for Fundamental’s Time Capsule a.k.a. 808 Box project, -=UHU=-‘s album is a selection of his best unreleased tracks. Compiled from an old folder full of tracks that have that twenty years old spirit in each of them, that futurist funk that -=UHU=- can deliver so well. ”Ezzential Electro” is the biggest project Electro Records has done so far. It consists of 36 vinyl records produced by artists they consider essential for the current underground electro movement.
“Every 4,044 years comet Calanhi enters the inner solar system, returning from its long and silent voyage through the Oort cloud. As it approaches perihelion, billions on Earth gaze into the night sky, transfixed by the celestial spectacle of their lifetime. While solar winds tear at the comet’s surface, deep inside the glowing ball of ice, ancient machinery springs to life…” Over the past five years Daniel Lodig and Martin Sovinz aka /DL/MS/ have been continually commuting through the electro singularity, constructing their unique brand of fragile bass music from extradimensional sound salvage, and spreading their frequency patterns via the subspace channels of Frustrated Funk, Pomelo, and TRUST. ‘Calanhi’ is the Viennese duo’s debut album – 12 tracks that combine the eternally fresh aesthetics of Detroit-style electro with a relentless curiosity for rhythmic and harmonic experimentation. Seismic club thumpers like ‘Invisible Bits’, ‘Mountains’, and ‘Trusted Funk’ alternate with moody ambient interludes, boldly constructed beat inventions, and blissfully melodic acid breaks. Two collaborations further switch up the flow: Nigerian artist G.Rizo (Hezekina Pollutina, Deejay Gigolo) drops her cryptic rhymes on ‘Divide & Conquer’, and Spanish singer Xx Isis xX provides vocals for ‘Accelerated Frequency’.
Emerging as one of the most vital producers from South America to Europe, Filmmaker is back on Veyl with the new album, Fictional Portrayals. Recorded in his home country in Envigado, Colombia, the release delivers 8 tracks of raw, body pursuits proving yet again that he remains at the forefront of EBM, industrial, wave and beyond. While always carrying the producer’s soundtrack influenced sound, the LP kicks off with the haunting ‘All About That Pyramid’ moving next to the title track’s driving energy while then shifting to the more cerebral programming of ‘Possession’ ft. Bad Faith Actor. Things are just picking up with club decimators like ‘Splitter’ and ‘Immune to Propaganda’ while also switching moods with the more sinister ‘Orphic Eggs’ and the mesmerizing ‘Continuity’. Rounding out the release is the cold, emotional ride of ‘Far From Prospect’, leaving us with a sense of dread while simultaneously questioning just what is fact and what is fiction – something we never quite know in today’s multi-dimensional existence.
The Hipodrome Of Music 