In the last years the Berlin-based duo Ausgang got attention in the worldwide techno scene through releases on their own label Ausgang Records. Nico and Roseen show on their first LP a clear vision of taste and quality, coming from the true techno culture. Eight tracks moving from electro to techno, based on radical essential elements reflecting their 90ies roots. Both share the basic idea of techno: raw and gritty sounds with pounding rhythms. Made for darkened rooms with fog and strobe lights. Nothing more, nothing less.
Mannequin Records introduce you a brand new album by Johannes Haas aka L.F.T. (Love, Fist, Tears) – one of the hottest electro/wave names around the globe. Pursuing a stubborn DIY aesthetic with an extensive use of lo-fi technology, over compressed drum machines and tapes, over the last two years L.F.T. has released several records on different labels like Helena Hauff’s Return To Disorder and Elena Colombi’s Osaré Editions. Endorsing a distinctive contemporary sound, ‘Salz’ is moving forward to an highly authentic mixture of electro and synthwave, with a lo-fi analog power blended all over his tracks, somewhere between Liaisons Dangereuses, I-F and Bakterielle Infektion, bringing us back – and fresh as never before – the amazing early days of CBS Radio – now Intergalactic Fm.
Brilliant album from the legend LeRon Carson on Sound Signature. Raw dusty early Chicago flavored house. LeRon Carson is one of the many unheralded but still legendary producers out of the American Midwest. His next move takes him to Theo Parrish’s mighty Sound Signature for a new album of his textbook dusty drums and lived-in house grooves. Of course, they are all linked in some way, left of centre of experimental in how they are assembled. That’s the case right from the off with the scruffy drums and twanging synth lead of ‘Under The Conditions.’ What sounds like a speech from Martin Luther King is sampled on ’72nd & Oglesby’ over a sweet of raw, tense beats and elsewhere the bittersweet synths of ‘Bismarck Nite’ strike a different but equally powerful note.
Volume III, the return of Lo Joe Soul and Electro Wayne as Circuitry.. 10 track LP of midwest madness, tweaked to its limits during 2020 lockdown. Featuring vocoder-funk classic ”Sexy Body”, the lost slo-jam ”This Is Dedicated”.. and unreleased electro bomb ”Arrested By The Funk”. Badass electrofunk album.
An exciting horizon of textures, landscapes and evanescent worlds, close to a dreamlike experience, are synthesized in “Espai, Temps i Materia”, the title of the new HC Records reference signed by the Valencian duo Spammerheads, formed by Ana Escudero and David Garrido. An audio-visual project forged in 2019 under the punk concept “do it yourself” in which both sound and graphic creation (videos and covers) have been developed by the duo.
Megatron Man is the second studio album by American disco producer and musician Patrick Cowley, released in 1981. Highlights include the vocoder-driven title track and the relentlessly funky “Get A Little.” Cowley is most famous for his collaborations with American disco vocalist Sylvester.
DAS DAS is a synth-punk duo from Berlin composed by Cosey Mueller (voice & Guitar) and Jo Schwund (synth & programming). “Leben in Bildschirmen” their second album, was release in April on Phantom Records and now it gets a release also on Detriti Records.
Mini-album collecting early work by Tennessee’s Human Figures. “After An Ordeal” sees HF’s Daniel Holt moving forward by looking back. These are no mere embryonic demos, these are intricate and majestic anthems of defeat from Holt.
Strut return to the rich archives of Black Fire Records for the ”Drum Message” album by Ghanaian master percussionist Okyerema Asante from 1977. Featuring members of Oneness Of Juju and Brian Jackson on piano.
Greek electronic music legend Lena Platonos returns to Dark Entries with Balancers, an LP of previously unreleased material recorded between 1982-1985. Athens-based Platonos has worked with the label previously to reissue her three solo LPs – Gallop, Sun Masks, and Lepidoptera – as well as to release three accompanying 12” EPs featuring modern remixes of her work. She is renowned for her forays into cutting-edge electronic experimentation as well as her striking, impressionistic poetry and lyrics, always recited in Greek. The twelve tracks on Balancers reveal a murkier side of Lena, one draped in tenebrous washes and oneiric utterances. Ragged analog rhythms feature on several tracks, even breaking into a brooding electro groove on “A Cat in the Corner”, but the predominant tone is sparse and somber. Mournful instrumental “Phaethon” swells to mythological proportions, while “In September” feels small enough to fit in your pocket. Lena’s poetry sits amidst lush pads and Radiophonic Workshop-esque squiggles, her voice setting an intimate tone in the shifting electronic sea. Inspiration is drawn from Greek mythology and architecture, and lyrics evoke a soft sorrow, an ambivalence towards love, life, and the passage of time. Although the material here spans 3 years and features a range of recording fidelities and synthesis techniques, the collection possesses the heft of a singular artist’s vision.
‘Inside The Microbeat’ is the long-awaited debut album by Sync 24. London’s Phil Bolland, known as Sync 24 has been flying the electro flag for over two decades via his popular Scand parties and beloved Cultivated Electronics label which he launched in 2007 as a direct response to the dwindling electro scene in the UK at the time. The label has gone on to feature many of his own releases, his collaborations with the likes of Silicon Scally (Carl Finlow), DMX Krew (they collaborate as MMT-8), The Exaltics and Morphology as well as playing host to many of electro’s leading lights, eventually becoming instrumental to the scene’s resurgence in more recent years. Now it’s time to turn the spotlight firmly on his solo work. Across it’s eleven tracks ‘Inside The Microbeat’ is not just a collection of 12”s although tracks like the album’s name sake, ‘Oriental Sunset’, ‘Drunk on Delays’ and ‘Lightwire’ are firmly primed for the dance floor, there’s also more experimental beat-work like ‘Inspired Law’ and ‘Sluper Smashed’, or retro electronica like ‘Haunt Times’ and ‘Spatial Racing’, as Bolland drives you through his own intimately constructed landscape.
Marco Shuttle’s third album, Cobalt Desert Oasis, features a varied collection of music recorded across a two year period. Often traveling to remote destinations, Marco would come back to Berlin with field recordings, images, and other inspirations to process in his studio and turn into sound. The theme of the journey turns into a something more abstract than a travel diary, where environmental sounds blend in with modular synthesis, drum machines, effects and analog oscillators resulting in a cinematic listening experience where psychedelia, ritualism, and mysticism weave together in a sort of alien soundscape – that as the title of the album suggests, is reminiscent of a parallel utopian world. The album is rich in complex rhythmics, and more than in any of his previous work, has strong acoustic elements. Amongst other percussion instruments, Marco used the Tombak, a traditional Persian hand drum capable of reaching a very wide range of frequencies – from deep round subby toms, to high pitched sharp rimshots, throughout the record. Marco Shuttle is certainly not new to these sort of elements, but in Cobalt Desert Oasis he brings the environmental element of his sound into the forefront in a way that takes the listener into a hazy expanse where it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the machine elements from the natural – and where the music almost becomes a visual experience, which relates to Marco’s own photography used throughout the cover and insert images.
The Override Switch combines the talent of two Detroit natives: Jeff Mills and Rafael Leafar. The latter is a multi-instrumentalist with a strong affiliation to jazz music. Through Mike Banks, he was introduced to Jeff Mills, where the idea for “The Override Switch” began to manifest. “The Override Switch” gives control back to the musicians. Unrestrained and unshackled by the semiotics placed by conventional dance music, it looks to a frontier beyond what is conditioned by genre. By infusing the mercurial elements of jazz, it gives electronic instruments the avenue that it always had the potential to travel down; as an unrestrictive genre, exploring the boundless possibilities in which it is capable. It looks to innovation and transcends what has come before; it is a switch in a practical sense, overlooking its past before switching to the future. The album is a homage to artists like John Coltrane, J Dilla, Kraftwerk and those who inspire experimentation with what can be evoked through music.
Pavel Fedoseev is KIKOK. As one of the few remaining members of the Komi tribe, he used the Komi words Ki (= arm) and Kok (= leg) as his brandname. Born in Kudymkar (capital of the Komi-Permyak nation) , now lives in Perm, no less than a 22-hour train journey east of Moscow, placing Fedoseev in what, he says, feels like cultural and social isolation. This 10 track album acts as a means to escape the monotonous cycle of his hometown. KIKOK works on this album with Loua (Luciana Russo) an electronic music producer based in Amsterdam. She’s taking care of vocals and voice snippets. The end result is a record that sounds both propulsive and hypnotic, an album that sounds like moving forward and in circles at the same time. Rich lashings of synthesisers pulse over beats that switch between techno thump and restrained ambience, with tracks seamlessly moving from dance floor stomp to woozy comedown let-up. Russian Rave Pop at it’s best. Perm is a disgusting city,” says KIKOK of his hometown. “It’s dirty, boring and rough. I’m afraid of walking outside; that’s why I sit at home and watch movies and make music.”
7 piece instrumental soul group from Melbourne, Australia featuring members from Karate Boogaloo, Surprise Chef and Saskwatch. Produced by Henry Jenkins, the recording mind behind Surprise Chef and Karate Boogaloo, Waiting Room moves deftly through moments of fuzzed-out psychedelia, dusty deep soul backbeat and incendiary minor key funk.
The first new album from Les Filles de Illighadad in four years At Pioneer Works is the highly anticipated new album by the Tuareg Avant-rock group. Les Filles de Illighadad recorded the album in Brooklyn at the tail end of a two-year-long world tour. At Pioneer Works finds Les Filles at the height of their powers, creating a sound that transcends all known genres. This is a heavy and meditative set of music from one of the world’s most exciting bands.
The debut album of the Greek one-man project HERE-X contains everything we could expect from a leading modern post-punk act. Cold wave ambiances fulfilled with sumptuous guitar riffs and beautiful synth lines surrounded by exuberant vocals.
Palmbomen II’s new album ‘Make A Film’ can be viewed as a faux crash course in film making plus the soundtrack to score your first movie. This beautiful double vinyl album comes with an extended step-by-step course on writing, directing and shooting your first film. To make it easy, Palmbomen II included twenty four tracks that set the right mood for different scenes, from “Medium Melancholy” to “Slightly Dark”. Everybody could ‘Make A Film’.
The Hipodrome Of Music 