The new Phormix Tapes release comes from a Greek artist based in Trikala, Tatat. With retro sensibilities, complementing it with some mid- to -late ’80s sonic influence. Everything is written live, with hardware synths, drum machines and pedals, out in one channel. The album consists of 10 inner emotional musical vignettes which meant to catalyze a wave in sense of nostalgic enchantment that synthwave die-hards will love.
Alina Kalancea’s Impedance is an entirely instrumental album spanning four sides, contains powerful rhythmic sequences, heart-beating frequencies and hypnotic loops that are paradoxically encapsulated in carefully crafted compositions which are full of secret passages and hidden doors. Kalancea’s work creates ungraspable sonic experiences, which overtakes you, immersing its listeners in powerful and mind-altering soundscapes. There’s no quick payoff on Impedance. This is the sound of new, patient electronic music, full of depth and substance. Alina Kalancea is a Romanian sound artist and composer based in Modena, Italy. She has studied sound design and synthesis with Enrico Cossimi and collaborated with producer Alex Gamez, and artists Julia Kent and Raven Bush.
Long-time AI associate Wolfgang Voigt returns to the London label with his newalbum – Rückverzauberung Exhibition. The Exhibition reimagines the concept with renewed purpose, opening the gates to deliver an arresting 60-minute journey into the underworld. Dense soundscapes mutate with alchemic fluidity, unravelling with vast symphonic counterpoints and synesthetic textures. Intoxicating in its Mephistolean dissonances and ambitious sonic structure, the sprawling ”Rückverzauberung” itself becomes a nebulous organism shrouded in the seeping mist of the unknown.
For almost three decades now Kosta Athanassiadis aka XDB has been involved in the constantly changing world of dance music. His curiosity and dedication to electronic music spiral deep into the depth of House Music and Techno and where ever he appears he generously shares his unique knowledge in this field with equally dedicated crowds. Now he presents “Inspiron” actually his debut album, coming out on Dial.
Transient Visitor are Alex Cargill and Martin Jensen. Formed in March 2020 when most of Europe was deep in lockdown due to Covid-19, Alex and Martin decided that the music should still flow, thus forming Transient Visitor and setting out on a mission to record a collaborative album together-apart in Kent, UK, and Luxembourg on the continent. TV1 is the first instalment from this process. Eight tracks unlocked and now being released into an uncertain world in the humble hope that it might help bring smiles to ears. TV1 is dedicated to Ray Cargill (1951-2020), Alex’s father who sadly fell victim to Covid-19 and passed away earlier in the year.
For their first outing, new London-based reissue label Foam On A Wave resurface the remarkable debut album from one of the UK’s foremost artists of ‘ambient techno’, Ultramarine’s ‘Folk’. Like the surrealist collage of the sleeve designed by Benoît Hennebert, Ultramarine weave together unique instrumentation and sonic influences into rich, ethereal soundscapes, now fully remastered for its 30th anniversary. Conceived at a time when technology began reshaping the process of recording and production, the band’s interest in fusing the organic and the electronic is apparent, and one that has remained with them throughout their career. ‘Folk’ both sits apart from and serves as a precursor to the ‘pastoral techno’ sound Ultramarine went on to pioneer.
Cold Blow has once again dipped into Jason Adkins’ archives – this time to deliver a compilation of his turn-of-the-‘90s UK techno works as part of cult Bedford-based trio Liquid Son. Released in collaboration with fellow archival electronic music specialists Musique Pour La Danse, “Garden of Eden” gathers together tracks made and released by Liquid Son in 1991 and ’92, as well as a previously unheard demo version of the trio’s best-known track, ‘Tone Float’, which Adkins made in his bedroom way back in 1985. The compilation contains a string of sought-after gems that frequently blur the boundaries between Detroit techno, early UK bleep & bass, electro, EBM and the industrial funk of Cabaret Voltaire, while also boasting the kind of slick technical polish and musical depth so often missing from British club tracks of the period.
Self-styled ‘house husband, record producer’, DMX Krew, continues his effortless stretch of releases that date back to the early 90s, with a new album for Hypercolour. His deft melodies and mechanical, electro-tinged beats have made for some classic albums in his repertoire, from his incredible run of albums for Rephlex Records, up to 2020’s ’Ghost Bubbles’ long player for Terrestrial Funk. And so ‘Loose Gears’ marks DMX Krew’s fourth album for British stalwarts, Hypercolour, and fans will not be disappointed. Armed with an arsenal of hardware, and a head full of futuristic visions, ‘Loose Gears’ collects eleven tracks of the customary quality we have come to expect from DMX Krew. From the funk laden ‘Solar Transit’ to bleepy chugger ‘Dejected Ambient Twerp’, the vibrant synths and spongy rhythms of ‘Torpedo Tube’ to the beatless wiggle of ‘Xpansion 2’, there’s much in store to be savoured on ‘Loose Gears’, as DMX Krew serves up another fine selection of electronic goodies.
The Badge Époque Ensemble group came out with a surprise album on Telephone Explosion Records, the fittingly titled “Future, Past & Present”. A compilation of sorts, the album collects instrumental, alternate mix versions of all BÉE songs which originally featured guest vocalists. In practice this results in a pseudo-greatest-hits survey of the Ensemble’s catalogue to-date, touching on highlights from all three releases while emphasizing the group’s strength as versatile mood-conjurors. Where these songs once featured vocal heavyweights like Meg Remy, Jennifer Castle, James Baley and Dorothea Paas, they are now strung together instrumentally in a sequence which represents the purest distillation of BÉE’s collective musical chemistry to date.
Drenched in gloom and gloss, OorsprongPark’s soundscapes hexed our minds once again, and we couldn’t be happier to welcome back the Utrecht-based producer for his second release on Mechatronica. Dark Marble is bleak, gleaming and doubtlessly fluid, a sublime followup to his 2019 debut album Velvet Curtain.
NYC by way of Miami, Moist 96 is a new project of Rene Nunez, mostly known through the years for his work under the name, Horoscope. Culled together from decaying tapes, bled out and dubbed one too many times over, Nunez took pieces from these 4 track demos drawing back on the music of his youth; Miami bass, freestyle and coked out funk to create this record. The LP being a raw in your face snapshot which is the musical equivalent of a pit bull being locked in a car for hours during a heatwave with the afternoon mix show on full blast.
As the artist says, “This is not trying to be some jokey-ironic-funny-costume-campy bullshit. It is trying to be on some real illegal pre-internet bootleg rush-hour mix; 808’s on blown-out car systems; cassette tapes melted in the center console speeding by Hot Wheels and Club Madonna’s neon signs; pants-shitting bass frequencies, like a roundhouse kick to your chest type shit. If you’re tired of all this cum fast video game techno you might enjoy this project. And if you don’t, that’s cool, too. I hope everyone keeps their head up, Releasing music right now can feel stupid and unimportant, but hopefully this record can take your mind off shit for a second and have some fun. Thanks for taking the time and listening. ”
It has been almost 30 years since Mantris, real name Dirk Eggermont, shared music with the world. A driving force of pioneering Belgian house outfits The Black Sun and Brown Hardware Inc, Mantris had a productive music career forecasted, but he vanished into thin air and no more music was ever heard of him. Mantris is now transmitting again from his small apartment in Bombay, India. Completely insulated from hypes and scenes, these 10 rich, phantasy provoking cinematic jams are the inauguration for the Souvernirs From Imaginay Cities label, started by Kong DJ and Hill Men.
Two artists who have carved out their own niche in todays techno universe join forces for their first collaborative full length. Ten tracks across two vinyls demonstrate the unique synergy between these two friends. In their collaboration they each focus on their own expertise, combining best of both worlds. Amandra on drums and Mattheis on synths – creating overlapping, constantly shifting patterns, like an endlessly captivating moire effect as result.
B12 was originally a duo before Steven Rutter took over the alias as a solo artist, but after a string of, he decided to start producing under his own name. Steven Rutter kept his sound the same, but shed the skin of B12 to mark a new point in his musical career. Battling with personal demons, the B12 sound had become dark and introverted, and the Steven Rutter style keeps that same moody atmosphere, while adding upbeat rhythms and more jovial chord progressions without losing focus of the core sound that’s made his music so influential. “Riddle Me Sane” is the third album Steven Rutter has done under his own name. Cosmic melodies and sci-fi influenced textures with dystopian sound design, the thought provoking album paints pictures of alien landscapes, while its down tempo grooves also have the key elements needed for the dance floor.
Nahawa Doumbia’s new album Kanawa concisely captures this current moment in Malian history. The singer, whose storied career spans more than four decades, reflects on the immigration crisis from the Malian perspective in the title of her new album Kanawa. Across eight songs recorded in Bamako with a band including traditional and modern instruments, Doumbia merges her early work that relied on a spare expression of her trademark didadi rhythm with the bombastic range of contemporary Malian pop. The beautifully complex musical accompaniment that results is courtesy of the large ensemble she pulled together with producer and arranger (and day one collaborator) N’gou Bagayoko. The band features two highly expressive Malian string instruments, the ngoni and the slightly smaller kamalé ngoni, as well as a variety of percussion, drum programming, karignan (a metal scraper) and acoustic and electric guitars. Doumbia weaves together a roadmap of her psyche when it comes to the good and bad life has to offer. She talks about marriage and women leaving home to join another through the metaphor of a tree in the garden; she includes gunshot samples in the song “Foliwilen” to honor the bravery of hunters, soldiers and other courageous people; she uses a bird in “Djougoh” to talk about lazy people; and, in “Ndiagneko” she advises people to ignore critics, just do you. Mali has gone through an intense period of regional strife and terrorist incidents over the last ten years and Doumbia roots the album in tragic local concerns with deep global implications.
“The meaning of Kanawa is so simple. We see our children trying to cross the ocean all the time. I said that many of our children die in the ocean and some of them die while crossing the Sahara. But I ask them why do they leave their country? They said that they leave because of the family situation or problems like poverty and unemployment. I ask them to stay and work in their country. I call on the UN and African leaders so that we can coordinate our efforts to find a solution, to create jobs for them so that young people stop leaving. That’s why I chose it as the title of my album so that everybody can learn from it and also so that there is a reduction in the number of people emigrating. So that some will hear the message and stay home and grow the land. Leaving is not the only solution. My message is to help the youth find jobs.”
Half of Manie Sans Délire, June, turns up on Artificial Dance with his anticipated new mini-album, ‘Horizons’ – following on from his studio companion Trenton Chase’s ‘Planar Array’ released earlier in 2020. True to the signature synth-splattered sound of his and his duo, June’s newest wave-imbued manifesto has us swimming amidst an organized chaos of roughly extruded keyboard wizardry, punk-minded drum programming and a retro-futuristic headspace. Scanning out the gap between Italo, new wave, EBM and new beat, ‘Horizons’ shifts seamlessly from forward-moving, arpeggio-laden circuitry (‘JW’, ‘Infinity Room’) to hi-intensity body music (’New Horizons’), through ambientoid spaced-out sonic explorations (‘Uncharted Territories’) and quirky downtempo chuggers (‘Reverie’, ‘Psychic Process’). A kaleidoscope of rhythmic tricks and shape-shifting mirages, June’s scope-expanding six-track voyage vows to play mind games with its listener till all lights have gone off.
Montreal’s based Kindest Cuts is without any kind of doubt one of the actual world’s leading synthwave/synthpop acts. Perfect pop structures and outstandingly captive musical progressions in perfect combination with classical genre male deep lead voice, following the trace of early Depeche Mode or Camouflage.
Angel’s Flight is the new album from highly-acclaimed producer and composer Biosphere. It features twelve tracks based on Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14 that deftly tread the peripheries of classical and electronic composition. Much of the music was initially composed for Uncoordinated Dog, a dance production by the Ingun Bjørnsgaard Prosjekt in 2019 that explored the personal, the ambiguous, exposure and beauty – which gives you a sense of what the album holds.
Created in Brussels in 2015, Azmari is a weaving musical odyssey that expertly fuses ethiogroove, dub, psychfunk and eastern sounds. Azmari, literally “one who praises” in Amharic, is an Ethiopian singer-musician, comparable to the European bard or the West African griot often accompanied with a masenqo – one-stringed fiddle or krar – lyre, two traditional ethiopian instruments. The nine tracks that make up debut album ‘Sama’i’, released via Sdban UItra, is a deeply hypnotic experience where mesmerising rhythms and winding improvisations send the listener in to a higher state of consciousness. From the magical sax of album opener ‘Zegiyitwali’, to the dubby template of ‘Cosmic Masadani’ and joyous horns of ‘Kugler’, Azmari seamlessly blend African and oriental melodies with effortless precision, providing a fresh take on the ethiojazz sound. Elsewhere, the heavy, rhythmic sounds of ‘Tariq Al Sahara’ and the mystical and cosmological ‘Azalai’ continue our sacred journey full of raging saxes and wig-out percussion, while the free-spirited, trippy ‘Kadikoy’ coming in at nine minutes in duration, lends a trance-like quality to proceedings where psychedelic jazz meets afro-funk.
Legendary Turkish psych innovators Moğollar grace the Artone Studios in Haarlem for a masterclass in the original Anadolu psych roots, cutting a compendium of their rawest hits and most-wanted psychedelic rock classics. Formed at the end of 1967 with five young musicians, Moğollar were the original Anadolu psych originators. They were the first Turkish pop band who tried to blend the microtonal folklore and traditional instruments of rural Anatolia with Western pop and rock; they were the first Turkish psychedelic band to achieve overseas recognition. More than fifty years after first forming, Moğollar materialised in the Artone Studios to give a masterclass in fuzzed-out folklore and Turkish psychedelic roots for Night Dreamer’s Direct-to-Disc series – a fitting follow-up to Night Dreamer’s BaBa ZuLa set, coming straight from the group who laid the foundations of the genre. For this Night Dreamer session, Moğollar spent two days in the Artone studios, recording sides A and B on the first day, and C and D on day two. With BaBa ZuLa’s Murat Ertel adding contemporary sonic punch behind the boards, the band revisited their most renowned hits to lay down energised new versions, and dusted off some of the most sought-after cuts from their enormous catalogue. The result is a showcase set by a band that are one of true pioneers in global psychedelic rock, and a masterclass in the true roots of the Anadolu psych sound: fuzzed-out, committed, and straight from the source.
The Hipodrome Of Music 