album

Ma Spaventi – Isola Sommersa [MOSLP4]

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SPAVENTI, Ma - Isola Sommersa

A year after his debut album “Viaggi”, Amsterdam based italian Marco Antonio Spaventi is back with another fine full length statement. Entitled “Isola Sommersa” and landing on M>O>S Recordings, it follows up after many great EPs on the label over the last five years. Spaventi has a passion for old school house but always brings it up to date. Using hardware tools like a natural extension of his body, he cooks up rugged grooves, nostalgic moods and smoky atmospheres that cocoon you in sound of its own. Long the way here, Spaventi dips his toes into various waters with equal success. There are spaced out and invitingly warm grooves such as the rubbery ‘Tape Noodles’, blissful ambient interludes like ‘Undisclosed’ and serene synth passages filled with retro future beauty such as the closer ‘Titanic Moments.’ Cuts like ‘Simple Mind’ prove this artist can conjure up genuine feelings of internal reflection as well as raw physical drum lines, and ‘Best Regards’ is a tantalisingly go slow bit of cosmic house that erupts into a fluid acid track. Though Chicago and Detroit are obvious reference points, Spaventi always develops his own ideas with a refreshing vibe. It makes for an album that is house at its heart, but also one that is ambitious, absorbing and widescreen in the way it is executed.

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Ma Spaventi – Isola Sommersa [MOSLP4]

Effetto Joule – Mechanic Soldier [MR059]

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Medical Records in collaboration with Crispy Nuggets returns to Italy for it’s 59th release. Hailing from Bologna, Italy in the late 80s, Effetto Joule were brothers Flavio and Valero Biagi , Massimo Chericoni and Valerio Tassinari. Drawing on influences of the early 80s new wave and synth pop scene and armed with an arsenal of synthesizers (Korg Poly-800, Roland alpha juno-1 and juno-2, etc) from the mid 80s, Effetto Joule crafted their own sound. With the exception of the few of the tracks, almost all were home recorded during the years of 1988-1990. Effetto Joule self released a couple of cassettes entitled Ultraviolet A and B as well as one 12″ single in 1989 on Top Sound Record (recently reissued by Mannequin Records with bonus material). The rest of their music has been unreleased demos from which thee tracks were hand selected. The tunes can best be described as densely new romantic with unquestionably catchy hooks and lovely vocals to boot. Standout tracks include Active Ray and Stars Your Memory.

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Effetto Joule – Mechanic Soldier [MR059]

Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids – We Be All Africans [STRUT144]

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IDRIS ACKAMOOR & THE PYRAMIDS - We Be All Africans

Those turned on by Spiritual Jazz should already be aware of West Coast combo Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids. They’ve been playing and recording together since the 1970s, though We Be All Africans is only their sixth full-length outing. Predictably, it’s a fine set, effortlessly fusing their spiritual roots with elements of jazz-funk, soul and, of course, Afro-jazz. Highlights are plentiful, from the swinging, Tony Allen style rhythms, swirling vocals and punchy horns of “Rhapsody In Berlin”, and the clarinet-sporting sweetness of the brilliantly percussive “Epiphany”, to the stretched-out drum workout “Traponga”, which sounds like the work of three drummers and a whole troupe of percussionists.

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Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids – We Be All Africans [STRUT144]

Microlith – Dance With Me [CPU00011110]

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Sheffield’s Central Processing Unit has been one of the most prolific electro and techno labels over the last few years. Their fifth release of 2016 comes from up-and-coming producer Rhys “Microlith” Celeste, who made his debut on the imprint a few months back. As debut albums go, Dance With Me is a fine effort. Sitting somewhere between the underwater intensity of Drexciya, the melodiousness of Artificial Intelligence-era Warp releases, and the spacey sound of vintage British intelligence techno, the album bristles with gentle acid lines, ambient chords, punchy rhythms and Motor City inspired melodies.

single / album

Microlith – Dance With Me [CPU00011110]

Severed Heads – Stretcher (USA Stretched Version) [MR060]

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Medical Records presents it’s 60th release with the much needed reissue of Australia’s Severed Heads and their 1985 release – Stretcher. The Severed Heads story continues with the expanded and Stretched 2LP reissue. After personnel changes in 1985 (Garry Bradbury and Paul Deering left the band), Sev was now down to a 2 piece (Tom Ellard and Stephen Jones). Stretcher was originally released to be a compilation to introduce the band to an American audience, but it was ultimately sold in three versions due to other countries desiring their own version (an EP in Canada and England and an LP in Australia). The name was taken from the sign on the emergency stretcher at the front of every Sydney ferry during that era. This version is based on the Volition release (Australian version) but with all the tracks from the other versions for a full collection of 17 tracks over 2 LPs. A bit more “accessible” than the previous City Slab Horror with a number of dance floor stompers filling out the collection such as the 12″ versions of Halo and Petrol. The collection mostly consists of new tracks written for the multiple releases for each country release but also contains a few older tracks remixed and even a demo version of Harold and Cindy which would be later fleshed out on The Big Bigot. The Heads toured the LP across Australia in 1985 resulting in a lot of “exciting adventures with audiences who wanted to kill us” – Tom Ellard. Two other interesting facts in regard to this collection is that it was the first time Sev used MIDI and a DX7 and every track has some radio signal mixed in there somewhere, always by accident. The original version(s) are all long out of print and becoming rare on the collector’s market. Presented in a beautiful gatefold 2LP on high quality classic black 160gm vinyl with original artwork as well as new gatefold layout by Tom Ellard with extensive liner notes detailing the back story and creation of each individual track. Get lost in it.

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Severed Heads – Stretcher (USA Stretched Version) [MR060]

Lunapark – Gefangene Voegel LP [DE113]

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Lunapark is the trio of Burkhard Ballein, Klaus ”Schlips” Gebauer, Reinhard ”Zoppen” Benisch from Wuppertal, Germany. Formed in 1981 when the boys were dissatisfied with their surrounding musical environment. They packed their instruments and a cassette recorder and set off to create their own brand of Neue Deutsche Welle (NDW ‘New German Wave’). Their influences included The Beatles, Colloseum, Roxy Music, Frank Zappa as well as Sex Pistols, Ian Dury & The Blockheads, Blondie and The Cure. “Gefangene Vögel’ (‘Prisoner Birds’) is their debut album released by Intakt Records, Stuttgart in 1982. Utilizing a simple set up of guitar, bass, drums, drum-computer, Korg MS-10 and Korg MS-20 they recorded 10 tracks that make up the album. Songs bridge the Belgian-type industrial and cold sounds with NDW quirkiness. In the vein of Sad Lovers and Giants, and Schleimer K they blend post-punk and new wave music with electronic influences. All songs are sung in German with monotone vocals and epitomized the urban Zeitgeist of the Cold War. All songs have been remastered for vinyl by George Horn at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. The vinyl comes housed in a replica of the original jacket design, which features a drawing of birds on a grid. There are 4 different color versions of the screen printed jacket: blue, yellow, magenta and turquoise. Each LP includes a copy of the double sided 11×11 insert that was included with the original pressing with lyrics and photos.

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Lunapark – Gefangene Voegel LP [DE113]

Dam-Funk – DJ Kicks [K7332LP]

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DAM FUNK/VARIOUS - DJ Kicks

A lot of folks feel like they know DaM-FunK, he is laid-back, affable and personable but to truly get the guy, I mean really understand him, is to know a deep love of music like no other. A more suitable reflection of this is his contribution to the beloved DJ-Kicks series. A snapshot into the mind of the pioneer of Modern-Funk music…get to know the man behind the shades. For fans of George Clinton, Madlib, Theo Parrish, Flying Lotus…

vinyl / CD

Dam-Funk – DJ Kicks [K7332LP]

Pellegrino – Periplo [EAS011]

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‘Periplo’ marks the solo debut of Early Sounds Recordings co-founder Pellegrino S. Snichelotto, following occasional contributions to other material from the label’s extended family of artists. Pellegrino goes for a periplus around Mediterranean savors, dispensing a multi-flavored cocktail of fast-moving disco groovers, spacey jazz-fusion experiments and sun-bleached funky melters. Stylistically, most of the tracks sit somewhere between jazz-funk, cosmic funk, and the kind of melodious Afro-Cosmic fare that was once a staple of Northern Italy’s eccentric club scene. There’s plenty of hazy musical humidity to enoy, too, with the impeccable “Ad Libitum” standing out.

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Pellegrino – Periplo [EAS011]

Africans with Mainframes – K.M.T. [SJRD333]

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Jamal Moss, aka Hieroglyphic Being, returns this time under the alias Africans with Mainframes. With fellow Chicagoan Noleian Reusse they have been releasing music under the name Africans with Mainframes for over 15 years now. The K.M.T. LP is the debut album from the group, a collage of apocalyptic Chicago acid meets industrial and transcendental post-house machine funk. Both intense and unique, the album of forward-thinking, experimental, boundary-pushing Afro-futurist electronic music shows why Hieroglyphic Being is regarded as one of the most serious purveyors of experimental electronic music today.

vinyl / CD

Africans with Mainframes – K.M.T. [SJRD333]

Ahmed Malek – Musique Original De Films [HABIBI003]

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Ahmed Malek was one of the most important musicians of the Algerian scene of the 1970s. His sountrack works that were composed for various Algerian movies of the time fuse Arabic influences with jazz, psych and funk influences. Dark cineastic soundscapes meet african Jazz at times reminicent of Mulatu. Original copies of his vinyl releases have been sold for enormous amounts. For this release we combined the strongest tracks from his releases with a selection of unreleased material straight from the families archive. The vinyl edition comes with a 8 page 12” size booklet, the cd version with a 16 page booklet with lot of unseen photos, an interview with the artist from 1978 and an introduction to Algerian cinema.

vinyl / CD

Ahmed Malek – Musique Original De Films [HABIBI003]

Der Zyklus – Renormalon [WEME31312]

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Renormalon is a collaborative effort between Elena Sizova, Heinrich Mueller: music data and Dr Olga Karelkina: visual data + encoding. Its purpose technically is to visually and sonically communicate the renormalon physics principle. Each composition is separate component of the theory representing a particular phenomenon in the realm of quantum uncertainty. The observer is to be immersed conceptually and hopefully will experience discrete states of energy which is integral in atomic behavior.

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Der Zyklus – Renormalon [WEME31312]

LA-4A – Phonoautograph [DELFT013]

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Kevin McHugh returns to his Delft imprint as LA-4A for his & the label’s first artist album. Phonautograph represents an artist album in its purest sense: a deeply personal work that feels like the culmination of a lifetime of passion and experience – one that ebbs and flows across a variety of styles and tempos, from the electrifying acid house and electro of ‘Resistor’, ‘Capacitance’ and ‘Dialup’ to slower tempo ambient and experimental excursions such as ‘Frequenzvariabler’, ‘Blitzlicht’ and ‘Semantron’.

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LA-4A – Phonoautograph [DELFT013]

Mattia Trani – The Hi-tech Mission [PM015]

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Pushmaster Discs presents the debut LP by Mattia Trani. ‘The Hi-Tech Mission’ is not just the usual techno album, it also represents a space travel around the futuristic techno vision of the Italian producer, that continues to push Detroit sounds, as well as venturing into some jungle rhythms. The shuttle reaches a mysterious planet, it seems that the mission is not finished yet.
To be continued…

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Mattia Trani – The Hi-tech Mission [PM015]

Occult Orientated Crime – Just A Clown On Crack [DKMNTL036]

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Dekmantel presents Danny Wolfers a.k.a. Legowelt’s ambient project Occult Orientated Crime. It’s for the first time ever that this moniker of the prolific Dutchman will have a physical release. Wolfers: “The OOC sound is an accumulation of twenty years of musical training and research and what effect it has on the brain. Simply put it’s electronic ambient music, which is more advanced compared to the music I’m creating with my Smackos alias. OOC is deeper and more melodic, less loose and vague but perhaps more intense. It can bring the listener into a completely different state of mind, you can almost call it ritualistic neuroscience music.” The six tracks are recorded around the same time, using coherent recording techniques. “Let’s say I was in a flow, or something like that. But I rather think it’s the music itself that gives it a distinctive sound: the way the music was composed, the notes and the sound palette. I haven’t used any sharp sounds for example, but everything is very round so your brains will soak it up as something smooth.” Apart from the track ‘Just a Clown On Crack’, the release lacks kick drums. “Most or nearly all music from PC doesn’t have a beat because it is often unnecessary, it distracts from the melody or what should be processed in the mind of the listener. The melodies, sounds and structure itself are enough to bring the listener into a certain mindset: a beat there would almost sound cheap, tacky. ‘Just a Clown On Crack’ has a trip-/hip-hop feel to it and was craving for a beat. It’s also the last track of the album and, in a rather fluent way, brings the listener back to the misery and tragedy of the normal, everyday world. It’s like returning from the OCC dimension with a soft landing.”

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Occult Orientated Crime – Just A Clown On Crack [DKMNTL036]

TM404 – Acidub [KM044]

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Andreas Tilliander returns to Kontra-Musik in a grand style with his second TM404 album. Titled ‘Acidub’, this highly anticipated release is much more of an evolution than a repetition of the first superbly self-restricted album, where Tilliander even decided to use only one of the two Roland TB-303 waveforms. Acidub is a more playful and open listening experience, no doubt inspired by his extensive live touring with the TM404 concept. In fact, you can almost hear Tilliander’s flock of acid machines breaking free from the restrained modus operandi. Every sound is like a migratory bird with a heart yearning for high altitude and favourable winds. The opening track Alinge paints a lucid picture of these acid birds leaving a cold industrial landscape behind; the flickering black shadows from their wings against the white smoke rising from a forest of chimneys below. The very last seconds of Alinge even echo of the place the silver birds are longing for, but that will remain a secret between Kontra-Musik and the avid listener. Sufficient to say, we can follow these birds of passage as they’re heading south towards a warmer climate, fleeing the cold discipline of the North. Mutron Mantra, for instance, brings us to a rainforest full of serpentine lianas, giant leaves dripping with moist and green pools of water bubbling with organic life. Don’t Defend Mascot guides us through a steaming savannah at dusk with hundreds of yellow eyes following our every step while Pade vividly describes the perils of the flight and the pace and courage needed to press on. In all, Acidub is a surprisingly exuberant follow-up to the more introspective TM404 album. But while the musical journey of this second album is quite different, the experience of sheer aural eminence remains the same. Andreas Tilliander has done it again, and Kontra-Musik couldn’t be prouder.

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TM404 – Acidub [KM044]

ZYX – Trust No Woman [DE112]

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ZYX are the duo of Inge Graf and Walter Zyx. They formed in Vienna, Austria in 1977. Committing themselves to the “aestheticisation of everyday life” in all fields of art, their works with video, photography, graphic design, and music are visually influenced by Pop Art, Constructivism, Futurism, Dadaism, Beat culture, and the electronic rock of the 60s and 70s. They are considered pioneers of multimedia art worldwide, and continue to remain active to this day. ‘Trust No Woman’ is the debut album from ZYX, and was released in 1981 on the label RCA Music. It was recorded, mixed and mastered from March to August 1981 at their own Sun Moon & Stars Studio Vienna. They designed short, punchy songs around a barrage of analogue synths, rock-solid electro beats and tempered, low-key vocals. Cold and claustrophobic atmospheres collide with mechanical rhythms The songs are sung in English with a heavy German accent, and lyrics channel obscure existentialist dialogues. Despite the sombre tone, there lingers a touch of the enthusiasm that accompanied the influx of affordable technologies and new media of the era.

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ZYX – Trust No Woman [DE112]

The KVB – Of Desire [INV150]

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Having begun life as a bedroom project for then Southampton-based Nicholas Wood to experiment with ideas around minimal electronica and shoegaze, The KVB has grown with partner and collaborator Kat Day. The now Berlin-based productive pair have released four albums of woozy and immersive anthems since 2010. ‘Of Desire’ is The KVB’s most fully formed record to date, taking in influences such as Death In Vegas, Scott Walker and Roxy Music to create something that is at once familiar and yet inventive and original. Steeped in musical history, it’s an album that hums with devotion and captures a band ready to emerge from the underground and embrace an ever-growing audience. “Being able to produce from home meant we weren’t restricted.” Wood says remembering The KVB’s early days. Many of the songs on ‘Of Desire’ date back to these earliest bedroom recordings, including lead single ‘In Deep’. “It’s about longing,” he adds of a song powered by a motorik beat and distorted blasts of icy guitars.” There’s definitely a romantic undercurrent to the record.”

vinyl / CD

The KVB – Of Desire [INV150]

The Greg Foat Group – Cityscapes / Landscapes [JMAN086]

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This latest twin release of two ten inchers, Cityscapes and Landscapes offers a rare treat because for the first time, the listener is given a fascinating insight into the development of the Greg Foat Group. The recordings presented on these two EPs represent a journey from urban to rural environments in musical form. Foat actually wrote these around 2002 at the age of 23 when he was living in Stockholm, Sweden. But crucially, they sound like they were written today.

CD

Cityscapes / Landscapes

The Greg Foat Group – Cityscapes / Landscapes [JMAN086]