Karen Gwyer returns to cement her reputation as one of the most individual and daring voices in dance music with ‘Rembo’, her first full LP for Don’t Be Afraid. Reflecting the sheer energy of Gwyer’s improvised, undulating and unpredictable live shows, ‘Rembo’ captures Gwyer in her element as a techno producer not afraid to smudge both the physical and emotional edges of what we may have come to expect in the club.
Terrific 12inch purple vinyl and as Waste Editions crew are really into emotive and personal sounds ,on this occasion this new release ‘Inside us’ by Old Coroner can’t be otherwise. We can’t talk about a trend since the producer from Barcelona Victor Safont ,who is the man behind this project ,started producing synthwave music in 2003. Yes siree! Powerful beats ,dark textures and touching melodies which are perfect for a diabolic dance floor or a meeting at a lodge.
L’Avenir is the cold synth side project of veteran electronic musician and sound artist Jason Sloan. Known throughout the space and ambient music scenes for his contemplative electronic soundscape work for over a decade; Sloan founded L’Avenir as a side project in 2012 to explore his long time love of synthpop and minimal wave music created purely from analog and vintage equipment.
Casino Shanghai was a “techno-pop” band started in the mid-80s in Mexico City. They released their debut and only album “Film” in December of 1985. An album considered today as cult status. Casino Shanghai were part of a great cultural change in Mexico and its music scene. The band made various controversial appearances on TV when a band without a drummer or guitarist was unheard of. All members had been in different notorious bands in the local scene. Ulalume was the lead singer of The Casuals (Punk-New Wave) and DenseUndergrowth (Avant-garde). Carlos Robledo and Walter Schmidt were part of Size (Post-punk) and have been playing together for many years in Decibel (Experimental). Humberto Alvarez played with MCC (Prog Rock) and is currently a well-known musician and multi-instrumentist. Before the band split-up they recorded two last songs in 1986, “Le Tombeau d’ Edgar Poe” and “L’Action Minimal”, as part of an unreleased solo EP for Ulalume. “Film” has been restored and remastered for this new edition including all original tracks plus two bonus: “Le Tombeau d’ Edgar Poe (Haunted Version)” and “Cuerpos Huecos” (Spanish version of “Hollow Bodies” available only on a promotional 7?).
Hand-picked selection of tracks by UK’s Negative Response in this initial limited run of 300 discs. Negative Response is a DIY minimal synth project that formed in 1980. They self-released 3 cassettes from 1981-1983 as well as playing a number of gigs from 82-85. The tracks embody a very melancholy atmosphere reinforced by their arsenal of early electronic analogue equipment. This collection will certainly appeal to fans of early bedroom synth artists such as John Bender and other DIY home recording moguls of the era.
On his debut full-length album as Marker, New Orleans artist Mike Wilkinson eschews traditional pop catharsis for total submersion into a blue, luminous tunnel. Guitar, bass, and Wilkinson’s voice are all treated through a variety of outboard and software effects, gently blurring into one another. Written and recorded between 2012 and 2015, the songs distill themes of isolation and connection, unreliable memory, identity, and the problem of infinite introspection and its relationship with reality. Filled with surprise melodic turns and evocative, vaporous production, “Marker” is an immersive work of otherworldly pop, encouraging its listeners to retreat inside themselves.
Third full length album by Circa Tapes (solo project of Adam Killing of Kill Memory Crash). Following excellent previous releases on Romance Moderne and DKA, this third album displays the evolution of Killing’s spot on ability to masterfully blend dark early 80s synth, industrial and cold wave into a completely new entity. Much heavier and wonderfully darker, this LP will appeal to fans of classics like Skinny Puppy, as well as cutting edge EBM contemporaries such as Broken English Club, Boy Harsher and other cold wave / industrial hybrids.
Italian label Out-ER (Out Electronic Recordings) welcomes long standing Detroit producer Terrence Dixon for a 21 track triple vinyl pack ‘12,000 Miles Of Twilight’. The legend has been putting out material since the mid-nineties. Recognized worldwide for his visionary, futuristic sound, Dixon unites ages of inspiration traversing diverse musical styles including electro, jazz and minimal sci-fi techno. This overall hypnotic approach can also be seen in his parallel project Population One, which appeared on Out-ER respectively in early 2016 with two-tracker solo ‘Temporary Insanity EP’. ‘12,000 Miles Of Twilight’ remains an experimental techno asset offering a non-linear, emotionally absorbing journey into the singular experimental edge of the Detroit artist, pulling the listener in all kind of directions from the opening track to the closing finale.
Lives of Angels was the brainchild of Gerald O’Connell from London, England. ‘Hole In The Sky’ is an 11-track compilation of material from the Lives of Angels archives. Including two tracks from the original ‘Elevator To Eden’ cassette omitted from our vinyl reissue, two tracks from Color Disc compilations and 7 previously unreleased tracks. This compilation features the very earliest Lives of Angels recordings “Call Moscow” and “Somebody Else” as well as the final composition from 1986 “The Infinite Corridor” plus original mixes of “After Dark” and “Look Out Kid” different than the versions on the ‘Color Supplement’ compilation. ‘Hole In The Sky’ is an impressive example of early ’80s home recording; a DIY interpretation of the elegance and ambition of the previous decade’s krautrock.
Udacha just gets better and better with every release, branching out into ever more exciting shapes and styles beyond their house and techno foundations. On this album from Vyacheslav Shutov aka Indoor Plants, wild fourth world visions collide with hardware processes in a dazzling display of transcendental music for those who like their thought-provoking tunes to pack a punch. The likes of “Targitaus” deconstruct club music conventions in a quest for new rhythmic purpose, and yet the soundsystem pressure is expertly sculpted out of the daring shape of the music. Elsewhere there’s surrealism in abundance, as on the wonderfully weird “Hunch”, and that’s just scratching the surface of this truly essential LP.
‘Atmosfear’ Glenn Underground’s debut album was originally released in 1996 and set the standard for sophisticated dance music. Dreamy melodies, heavy basslines and acid grooves blend beautifully with jazz vibes and Detroit techno. Glenn Underground is the founding member of the Strictly Jaz Unit. He was raised on disco classics and freeform jazz in Chicago’s Southside, the place where house music was born. Taking inspiration from Chicago’s original pioneers, Larry Heard, Ron Hardy, Lil’ Louis, and the like, Glenn has produced many sought after house gems for some of the most well respected deep house labels such as Prescription and Guidance.
“Dilla” by Abstract Orchestra has been generating a buzz since it’s inception in 2016 and subsequent UK tour, during which the album was presented to the public in its live form. Led by Saxophonist Rob Mitchell, Abstract Orchestra seeks to reflect the diversity of music sampled by Hip-Hop producers by presenting music that has the complexity of jazz, framed within the simpler structures of Hip-Hop. Complex harmonies are framed within simple loops and complex bar structures and time signatures can pass by unnoticed. “I selected the tracks on the album with very much the live performance in mind” says band-leader and arranger Rob Mitchell “So the album is a reflection of the tour and the music we performed”. Inspired by the legendary live performances of The Roots with Jay-Z and the 40 piece orchestral arrangements by Miguel-Atwood Ferguson of the work of J Dilla, classic arranging techniques underpin modern loop-based structures.The band itself is based on the classic jazz big band instrumentation of saxes, trumpets and trombones and features the cream of the north of England’s jazz scene who collectively have played with Jamiroquai, Corinne Bailey Rae, Mark Ronson, Martha Reeves, John Legend & the Roots, Roots Manuva and Amy Winehouse. “Dilla” by Abstract Orchestra is a tribute to the work of the highly acclaimed and influential producer.
Tadd Mullinix’s Charles Manier project returns with a third double-LP, Luxus Steroid Abamita, an edict of nine new amorphous transmissions and clustered, clangorous, hemi-synthetic funk. This is experimental machine music: it’s inspired by the fringes of dance, but skirts petrified arpeggios and other stock Wave and Technopop emblems. Its spirit elicits Sheffield Post-Punk and Düsseldorfer NDW desiderata, but exploits are crisp, psychedelic, and expansive. Lyrics come as laconic Dada, sociopolitical impressions—in counterpoint to concrète tape smears, echoing guitar deluges, and entrenched in ever-shifting grime. A wide spectrum of density is proffered. Atmospheric zones are submerged, modulating knells. When tempos increase, sample & hold mutations make synthesizers sputter and writhe. The title track and opus,“Yopo (Calcium Tree)” carry this with heavy pulses—storming like locomotives.
Dark Entries present the sophomore album from Austin, Texas analogue hardware enthusiast Bill Converse. Immersed in the early days of the 90s midwest rave scene, Bill began DJing at a young age in Lansing, Michigan. Luminaries such as Claude Young, Traxx, and Derrick May were key early influences. Techno, noise, ambient and tape processing are all part of his uncanny sound palette. ‘The Shape Of Things To Come’ is a 70 minute journey spread across two pieces of vinyl. It’s comprised of seven tracks recorded directly to tape with no overdubs, made at Converse’s home studio. At the time of recording, Bill was sending this material to Josh Vance (Josua Dorje Ngodup) for feedback. Most of the time Josh would respond in the form of artwork, and then Bill would create another track inspired by this feedback chain. Converse has dedicated this series of tracks to him. The songs on this album reveal a sublime influence from Detroit techno, early Chicago house, and Acid. For this album Converse slightly bumped up the tempos geared for dancefloor energy. Built around vintage synthesizer lines and gritty drum machine percussion, the tracks evoke how things have changed and how they have come to be.
Some things are just too good to be hidden from view. That’s certainly the case with Things To Think About, the first album from Dutch electronic music legend Steve Rachmad’s lesser-known Sterac Electronics project. It’s a while, though, since the public has been treated to a heavy dose of Sterac Electronics material. He first established the alias at the turn of the millennium, primarily as an outlet for hardware-driven electro music shot through with funk and soul. Recently, Rachmad and Tom Trago decided to revisit the Sterac Electronics archive, discovering a killer collection of cuts created at different points over the course of the last 15 years. Now 9 of those spellbinding hardware jams have been gathered together for the first time on Things To Think About, a warm, rich and evocative collection of electro-fuelled workouts that giddily pay tribute to the music of Rachmad’s youth.
It s time for Lewis Fautzi to introduce his first album on Pole Group, a collection of ten tracks of cosmic techno, carefully crafted making a soundtrack of the future, deep, intense and scientific. A coherent and complete collection of precise, surgical and futuristic music to be enjoyed as a whole adventure.
Reissue from this soul/jazz-funk fusion album originally released in 1982 on Poet Records. This sought-after album is an amazing and unique creative project produced and composed by David Eric Tillman including outstanding performances by some of the highest-level musicians whose common thread was their ability to kill up tempo and modal bop and excel in this jazz-funk/fusion style thanks to their up bop think quick knowledge.
Czechoslovakian band Máma Bubo was founded by Karel Babuljak in 1982; he put together five friends that he trusted. Having been more or less groping in the dark of music until then, Babuljak suddenly expressed a clear musical and human opinion to which the other members of Máma Bubo added theirs. A new band was born and although it had a clear face, it did not fit in anywhere, was hard to be connected with anything, and was isolated despite its openness. Máma Bubo always guaranteed an extraordinary and shocking experience which surpassed the level of entertainment. 1985: Babuljak’s disenchantment with the social situation as well as with artistic futility compelled him to a more profound attitude which resulted in a totally different concept, Planeta Haj, for Máma Bubo; yet, the concept was short-lived as if having been born in a place it did not fit in. In 2017, 2 LP of Planeta Haj, a record from 1985, was released on vinyl for the first time.
British techno veteran Oliver Ho has released some fine material as Broken English Club since debuting the alias back in 2014. The English Beach, Ho’s second BEC full-length and first for L.I.E.S, is the audio equivalent of a trip to a run-down North Sea coastal resort on a wet Wednesday in November. Full of end-of-days electronics, stripped-back industrial techno, moody minimal wave shufflers and bubbly EBM workouts, it’s as authentic a tribute to early ’80s electronic experimentalism as you’re likely to hear all year. Highlights include the Nitzer Ebb style bounce of “Pylon”, the foreboding, desolate electronica of “Rust Ballad”, the angry electro moodiness of “Carrion” and the rolling, organ-laden autumnal bliss of “The English Beach”.
The Hipodrome Of Music 