Waveform Transmission Vol.3 initially came out in 1994 on Tresor Records. The eight titles on the album marked a turning point for Jeff Mills. It indicates a transition from the straightforward sound he had created through the early 1990’s, into the different facets and sound pallet he will develop through the remainder of the decade. It is a significant piece within Jeff Mills’ masterwork.
Ron Morelli has put together a 13 track album for his returning release on the American based label, Hospital Productions. The album digs deep into the punk roots of the L.I.E.S. boss as he touches upon everything from raw industrial techno to mind-bending electronics and sinisterly cold ambience. This is one not for the faint-hearted, get a little taste below. “Composed over the last two years in various foul states, the album is a fusion of base level hardware programming, open room mic recordings and extensive computer processing, all finalized in the Paris studio of Krikor Kouchian.”
Ectomorph occupy a unique and strange place within Detroit Techno history. Founded in 1994, they released their first 12″ singles in 1995 as an attempt to make Detroit music for Detroit itself, rather than exclusively for export. The mystique of their early singles led to mythic status and a strong underground cult following, which they have continued to develop through releases on their own Interdimensional Transmissions label. Their live shows are legendary for their ability to fluidly incorporate improvisational techniques into synthesized music (and for the sheer amount of hardware that they bring to the stage). The Ectomorph show is all analog, no computers or samplers or even drum machines: all sounds come from the modulars and the mountains of Moogs. Ectomorph (now officially comprised of BMG & Erika) reconvened in 2016 to write new music, which led to a series of live shows where the new material was tested via performance and allowed to evolve in form. To capture the energy of these performances, the new material was recorded in the studio totally live, multitracked for further engineering, but with no editing whatsoever. The entire album was recorded live in one or two takes in the Interdimensional Laboratories in Detroit. This is the sound of the idea that is Ectomorph, presented in its natural and organic format, live and improvisational.
‘In The Senses’ is a soundtrack concept album from Fernando Pulichino based around the premise of music for film. Melody, ambience and mood are central to these pieces influenced by the likes of Angelo Badalamenti, John Carpenter and Johnny Jewel. The result is timeless electronic music infused with bittersweet synth chords & melodies, beat less atmospherics, bubbling electronics and synthesizer minimalism.
Abstract Orchestra’s Madvillain Vol 1. explores the jazz, TV soundtrack and film score aspect of the original work, combining it with classic big band writing and a focus on improvisation. Bandleader and arranger Rob Mitchell says of the record: ‘”Madvillain’ is a jazz album as much as it is a hip-hop album and I wanted to explore this reciprocal territory there has always been between jazz and hip-hop. 70’s cop show soundtracks have always captured my interest and imagination, and I discovered so much amazing music through TV themes, Quincy Jones and Lalo Schifrin in particular. They explored sounds that were menacing, angular, dissonant, frantic and yet captivating. They were also able to write music that was the flip side of all that dark chaos, and write lush and beautiful music. Arranging and scoring up Madvillain Vol 1. Has allowed me to explore these sounds that I’ve always loved, yet keeping a strong hip-hop identity as the core of its sound.”
On his new album “R.U.R.” the Berlin producer Djedjotronic lets the cold machines have warm heartbeats, and vice versa. Recorded in a basement in southern France Owns “r.u.r.” A collection of techno-futuristic themes on modern isolation, robotics, simulation and cyborgs. The most aggressive dancefloor moment is undoubtedly “Take Me Down” featuring Douglas Mccarthy (Nitzer Ebb) on vocals, an industrial arpeggio monster track.
The legendary Heinrich Dressel and former Simonetti’s Goblin bass player Federico Amorosi, team up for the collaboration of the year. Crawling from freshly cracked tombs, dripping with ooze and bloodlust, these 8 tracks are the perfect soundtrack to some long lost Italian Zombie epic or Supernatural Giallo. Nods to the greats, from that perfect Italian prog-rock bass sound, to the atmospheres of Frizzi and the disco groove of Carpenter. Unashamed hardware worship with the X firmly burned into the flesh at the alter of Elka. Giallo Disco is proud to present this masterwork from two Italian greats.
Following six years spent tickling the fancy of quality electro lovers the world over, Mikey Melas AKA Jensen Interceptor has finally got round to recording a debut album. This will come out on the Lone Romantic imprint and it’s a pretty hot collection of cuts, with the Sydney producer joining the dots between ranging, angular peak-time slammers (“Ultramax”, “Drip Freq”), bustling and bass-heavy workouts (“Haze”), bleeping space symphonies (the Sinewave-esque “Dimensional Thought”), Drexciya-style missives (“Ufology”, “Shadow Network”) and more crystalline, melodious affairs (“Mother”). Some of his scene pals swing by to lend a hand, too, with The Hacker and Assembler Code collaborations standing out.
Tucked away in a shed in Portland, Best Available Technology continues to cultivate an unmistakable sound grown around a seemingly untiring exploration of the machines that he works with. Across ‘Enginetics & Plasmalterations’ his densely layered sonic design agglutinates with a healthy appreciation for the unplanned or unexpected, forming a polymorphic collection of tracks for the 6th release from 12th Isle. While more traditional means of classification have become increasingly insufficient, it wouldn’t be unfair to suggest that the music on this record bears a mutated resemblance to stuttered Downtempo or the dubbier side of Techno and Bass, connected by way of tonal plasticity through drone-jams and intermittently skewed synth loops.
“Romantic Fiction” the debut LP from Curses is an honest musical expression drawing influences from his youth growing up in NYC in the 80s. References to new wave, post-punk, synth music and early EBM are skillfully merged with the DIY approach of punk and rock n roll angst. Brandishing an immersive sonic palette, all instruments throughout the album were played and recorded by the artist.
Mannequin Records presents a 2xLP retrospective compilation of the french electro/wave pioneer Le Syndicat Électronique, the historical electro/wave project by Alaxis Andreas G., founder of the seminal Invasion Planète Recordings – the first French minimal electro/wave/experimental label founded in late 1998 by the insurance proceeds of a car crash. Heavily influenced by the work of masters like Kraftwerk/John Carpenter/Front 242, Alaxis Andreas G. is responsible for many others dark electronic / industrial / neofolk projects – to name a few: A//, Bruta Non Calculant, Swesor Brother, La Séduction Des Innocents, It & My Computer, Eva VIII.
Second album by Vril on Delsin Records. A deep excursion for mind and body, combining his trademark dub techno grooves with experimental ambient trips.
Inimitable percussionist Eli Keszler takes time out from 0PN’s ensemble to unfurl the incredible, dextrous rhythms and electro-acoustic jazz keen of his masterpiece, ‘Stadium’. An isolationist avant-jazz masterpiece that is a total must-hear for late-night listeners, perhaps the most wondrous thing about ‘Stadium’ is the way it describes the paradoxical quality of keeping your head amid the chaos – a notion that will surely resonate with inner city dwellers as much as fans of the finest noise, jazz, avant-garde music of all stripes, and is firmly at the heart of ‘Stadium’ and its amorphous milieu of sound.
“An Island In The Moon” is the perfectly conceived minimal ambient project from Italian composers Pier Luigi Andreoni (Doubling Riders, ATROX) and Silvio Linardi. Andreolina being a mix of the names of the two musicians who were both deeply involved with the label Auf Dem Nil on which the album was originally released in 1990. The duo stick to a disciplined and simple palette using only two synthesizers and a Roland S50 sampler. They are joined by fellow electronic journeyman Riccardo Sinigaglia who contributes piano and samples on two tracks. Taking influences from Italian minimalism while adding some jazz hints Andreolina sprawls, weightless instrumentals that never stay soporific for too long on this singular rare album.
Lucky Brown delivers another album for Tramp Records. Since he joined the Tramp family in 2007, Lucky has developed his own trademark production and sound whose depth and honesty form a basis from which his work will ever remain timeless. On “Mesquite Suite” he is forging new paths by soaking up musical styles from all over the world to infuse with his own totally unique way of producing. It has been Lucky Brown’s aim to paint for the world a picture of the vernacular jazz that America’s neighborhoods once crafted as their own homegrown cultural heritage. Lucky Brown’s music is a rejection of the elitism, classism and status of the music industrial complex and is an antitoxin to it’s resultant homogeneity. He wants with his heart and his art to transmit an everyday people’s sound, made by everyday people, dedicated to the upliftment of all people.
This is the first time any of Heinrich Mueller’s highly sought after remodels/reworks have been compiled together. Many have been previously available only on limited releases and have patiently been awaiting discovery by a wider audience. These 9 specially selected examples embrace all facets of his approach. First up is the ultra smooth and minimal ‘Fadin’ Away’ by The Hacker from 2000, probably one of his most sublime and timeless creations. Then jump forward to 2011 when he serves up an infectious and sparse slice of robot funk for Albert van Abbe’s ‘NCS_0009121010’. By the time of Alek Stark’s ‘Halo 6’ (2014) he’s still got the dance-floor on his mind, but it’s located on an alien or perhaps underwater world in some dimension parallel to our own. In 2009 he works for the first time with fellow Drexciyan traveller DJ Stingray and delivers the hard edged but still quite delicate ‘Drone FX’. Jump to 2005 and he conjures the playfully disjointed ‘P.O.M. (Time Dilation Mix 2)’ for Duplex. In 2000, when he had a close relationship to the label, International DeeJay Gigolo, who were releasing Dopplereffekt and the first fruits of Der Zyklus, they commissioned him to make a series of groundbreaking mixes. On one of which he got to mesh his own futuristic vision with that of Stanley Kubrick on ‘Dave’ by Station Rose. The other closes this collection and is another of his most accessible works, with the best bassline, ‘What Use’ by the legendary ’70s San Francisco band, Tuxedomoon. In 2011 he also produced a darkly atmospheric and relentlessly mechanical interpretation of DJ Stingray’s ‘The Sadist’. In 2003, another of his best production efforts, again aimed off-squarely at yet another form of mutant dance floor, came out of a total revamp of an untitled track by The Advent. Fittingly this was originally included on Recreations, an album where artists were invited to do what Heinrich Mueller does best.
Dutch-Italian composer, musician and producer Aimee Portioli alias Grand River is back on Spazio Disponibile. After her debut record on the label in 2017, she now serves up her first ever physical long player, Pineapple. The record draws on Portioli’s love of electronic music and sound design, as well as her background in traditional composition and formal training on a range of musical instruments. An experienced sound engineer and composer for national radio, she crafts absorbing film scores, experimental and ambient projects and takes in symphonic calculations that blur the lines between traditional composition and research-based modernism. All that is evident on Pineapple, which is named after the most peculiar of fruits and is just as peculiar, but ultimately satisfying, across ten remarkable yet rewarding tracks. They are often long pieces which take in wallowing electronic landscapes, with real ambient beauty next to a subtle sense of narrative that is absorbing throughout. Unusual sound sources and a masterful sense of suspense characterize the album and make it as fascinating as it is enjoyable.
Manchester’s Ourtime Music return with something of a electronic masterpiece After a 14 year hiatus, Salford’s elusive cosmic composer returns to his Sonic Insomniac guise with a debut LP of the finest underwater electro & crisply rendered electronica.
Mutant Beat Dance has returned to Rush Hour. The debut album from renegade trio Mutant Beat Dance (Traxx, Beau Wanzer and Steve Summers) takes the wild and free sound of Chicago’s Music Box era into the 21st Century. Over 25 tracks the album mines an oft cited but rarely understood ground at the intersection of Post-Punk, Minimal Wave, Industrial, Disco Dub, EBM and proto-House / early-House. “Mutant Beat Dance.” is an epic journey into a classic American ideology that had its apex in Chicago. Traxx has been working on this concept in various forms throughout the last decade on release for Discos Capablanca, Rong Music, Hour House Is Your Rush Records, L.I.E.S. (Long Island Electrical Systems), Light Sounds Dark, Rush Hour and his own Nation label finally refining his concept into its most thoroughly developed explored on this the debut M.B.D album that was started in 2015. Mutant Beat Dance was originally a duo made up of Traxx, and self-described weirdo, Chicagoan Beau Wanzer. Given the scope of the new project it became logical and necessary to expand the unit to include its newest member Brooklyn based Steve Summers. Together this hard-working trio has completed an album with an enormous diversity of song styles unlike anything they have ever done before. Unique in its musical range and content from obscure electronics with subliminal messages to funk laden machine grooves, industrial soundscapes, Detroit dirge, cryptic ankle bitter anthems and beyond this is a genre-bending challenging epic of an album.
The Hipodrome Of Music 