The Revenge continues to release forward thinking music on his very own Roar Groove label with the announcement of Intimate Connection – a double EP featuring all new tracks plus special ‘live dub’ recordings from title winning ‘Love That Will Not Die’. Graeme Clark has rebuilt the foundations in the form of Roar Groove releasing his own original material with a range of vocals, tempos and dubs along with esteemed likeminded producers.
Toeing the line between divinity and profanity, blurring beauty and debasement, is Drvg Cvltvre. Following Offender Status and Gauwvuur is an eight track album: Into the Endless Night. From the guttural emotion of “Where Embers Die” to the bleak ferocity of “Brakes are Death”, a complex and hardened array is on display. Buried angst is never far away. “There Were Rumours” flexes with embittered bars before the unrefined purity of “Jericho Flats.” Respite from this whirring carnival is a rarity, relief from the seesawing serration of “Shock Corridor” or rollicking jeer of “Charge of the Haploids.” But there is reprieve, radiance breaks through. “Into the Endless Night” pulses with brightening hope, one which is reflected in the gritty finale of “Winnerden Flats.” Heartening warmth piercing the hail. Balancing on the precipice, an album of scared and soulful sounds from this darkeyed light in modern electronic music.
Mikron’s love of melody and pattern are very much at the forefront with every track full of great hooks and rhythms. The album takes you on a journey through various sub genres all delivered with careful execution and enviable studio mastery.
Schaltkreis Wassermann returning with a 2LP album including all their 1980’s minimal synth and soundtrack productions from around the recording sessions of their debut album Psychotron. The bands captured the impressions from the LSD dimension, converted them into synthetic sounds and bringing them to the listeners mind with their music releases. An unique form of art, expecially exciting if you are minding they are from the inner circle of group around Albert Hofmann (the explorer and designer of the substance LSD which changed the world in 1960s). Stella and PJ lived in Albert Hofmans house, on weekends they done their LSD research sessions in their studio, experimenting with their ARP2600 synthesizer. Some tracks made it on their debut album Psychotron, the rest is available now on their 2nd album „SKW“.
Jamal Moss AKA Hieroglyphic Being with the Gherkin inspired treats. Combining tracks from CDR releases, of the same name, that were circulating at the end of 2015.
DJ Nomad and Dirk Leyers’ Africaine 808 project has been responsible for some of the most inventive and enjoyable music of the last few years. It’s little surprise, then, to find that the Berlin-based outfit’s debut album, Basar, is rather special. Built around their now famous polyrhythmic, Afro and Latin influenced drum machine programming, it begins with a touch of snaking jazz, and climaxes with a dense, rising, uplifting Afro-gospel workout that should leave listeners thrilled and breathless. In between, you’ll find 21st century broken beat, delicious downtempo torch songs about break-ups, Juke-influenced Cajun blies bangers, and hard-to-define – but thoroughly engaging – dancefloor wig-outs.
New Yorkers Matt Morandi (Jahiliyya Fields) and Max Ravitz (Patricia) take the buyout, cash in their 401k’s, and opt for early retirement down to ”Deep Florida” on their debut LP for L.I.E.S. Titles like Humid Widow, Dark Duties, and Chasing the Dream set the tone for what can only be called a tropical storm of synthesizer chaos atop dusted drum programming and hazy vibes.
One half of Genius Of Time, Alexander Berg makes his debut on Hivern as Dorisburg. Irrbloss features nearly an hour of Dorisburg new music. Eight cuts in which Berg unleashes several incarnations of his sound and delves into his most melodic and mystical facet. Tracks such as Irrbloss and Votiv exude a highly spiritual feeling, connecting the majesty of archaic folk music with state of the art electronic production. Gloson and Gripen, in contrast, are much more dancefloor oriented eorts, showing Berg’s most cerebral and somber side. Kassiopeia and Cirkla are two slices of sinuous cosmic techno that demonstrate once again Berg’s ability to blend evocative landscapes with club eciency. Finally, Insvept and Sagofabrik conde a more meditative and adventurous approach. In other words: a gripping journey with a kind of inspirational energy not easily found in today’s dance music.
Kerridge’s 3rd long player marks a more fluid, or effluent, refinement of his sound, blurring the boundaries between organic audio sources and custom-constructed synths to flooding the senses with waves of bristling, oxidising industrial tones and coruscating texturhythm seemingly intent on separating flesh from bone. It’s evil stuff, all seven tracks of it, forming a closed feedback system of guttural, choking frequencies and cardiac arrhythymatics.
Hypercolour announce the latest long player from UK stalwart, Ed DMX AKA DMX Krew, the visionary British electronic producer who has been responsible for a slew of excellent releases since the mid 1990s. ‘You Exist’ is DMX Krew’s debut appearance on Hypercolour, and as expected the record features nine tracks of beautifully crafted, melodic electronic sounds. From the opener ‘Spiritual Encounter’, DMX sets the tone perfectly with oodles of pitch perfect synth riffs and driving drums, working his way through snappy and bright pop moments like ‘Hard Copy’ to more melancholic, darker cuts like ‘Computational Paradigm Shift’. DMX breezes in and out of electro techno territory to more contemplative IDM vibes with ease, testimony to the guy’s talent (that’s also seen him wear the hat of over 10 aliases throughout his career to date). ‘You Exist’ captures a very true and genuine musical form, produced and delivered with love from one of the scene’s unsung heroes, and makes it a great companion piece to another Hypercolour released album from similar stock. A consistent and engaging album then from DMX Krew that will pleasure the ear buds of discerning listeners everywhere.
99LETTERS steps up on THRHNDRDSVNTNN with a collection of chugging, otherworldly house and techno excursions. Tape saturated machines groan under ghostly synth pads and layers of static, whilst over driven percussion pounds overhead.
Among guitar aficionados, they don’t come much heavier than acid-drenched enigma Eddie Hazel. A founding father of Funkadelic and responsible for the blazing ”Maggot Brain” solo, he released just one album. A concentrated dose of guitar-driven psychedelic soul and loping funk-rock, Game, Dames And Guitar Thangs(1977) was co-produced by George Clinton and features the full Mothership crew. Despite impeccable credentials, the album sank and dropped out of print for years, becoming a sought-after collector’s item for funkateers ever since. Mercifully addressing the dubious legitimacy and quality of previous reissues, Be With Records present a worthy and welcome 180 gram edition, limited to 500 copies. Eddie Hazel was a pioneering guitar genius, but his troubled lifestyle led to a dearth of recorded material that demonstrated his strengths. It’s a wonderful thing, then, that this lost classic is available on vinyl again. Possibly the finest slice of P-Funk you’ve never heard, it’s a record that will make your brain dance and one every funk fan needs.
The Left Ear label hit that sweet spot once more, diving into the archive and coming back for air brandishing a veritable slab of private press jazz funk history. Originally pressed in 1979 in a run of 100 copies, Thesda was the brainchild of Thomas Crawford and Eugene C. Hagburg, backed ably by a handful of like-minded musicians, and existed for brief moment of sublime expression, captured in its entirety on this gorgeous LP. “Spaced Out” takes us on a cosmic journey through jazz funk, soul and disco into that far out dimension of groovesome psychedelia inhabited by Mandre and Dexter Wansel. Fully licensed and reissued for the very first time, this Left Ear pressing is your best chance to own this forgotten piece of jazz-funk history without having to remortgage the house.
In addition to his prolific output as Not Waving, London-dwelling Italian Alessio Natalizia has developed quite an interest in profiling the vast archive of music that surfaced from his motherland in the 1980s. After Strut tapped him to curate the Mutazione compilation back in 2013, Natalizia has taken to square his focus on more specific artists, with this Tapes retrospective following a similar profile of Daniele Ciulini last year. Selected Works 1982 – 1992 spans a decade of recordings from Tapes, aka brotherly pair Giancarlo and Roberto Drago whose style of industrial music absorbed the counter-cultural influence of William Burroughs or Throbbing Gristle, and the sci-fi dystopia of J.G. Ballard and John Foxx. The 21 tracks here will delight anyone with an interest in the obscure annals of European primitive electronics.
Continue reading “The Tapes – Selected Works 1982 – 1992 [ELP017]”
Montreal-based electronic duo Essaie Pas is comprised of Marie Davidson and Pierre Guerineau. Both are respected musicians in their own right – Marie having released two acclaimed solo records, with Pierre being best known for production work on underground Canadian musicians such as Dirty Beaches and Femminielli. Essaie pas was born on a hot summer night in 2010, releasing some ultra-limited singles which culminated in their debut LP, Nuit de noce (Teenage Menopause Records) in 2013. The mix of drawling guitars, français mumbles, and minimal electronics caught the ear of DFA Records, who booked the pair to open for Factory Floor on their first North American tour.
In interviews, Alessio Natalazia has freely stated his next album would be “very different” and “very intense”. That album, his first for Powell’s Diagonal stable, has finally arrived, and it’s as ballsy, robust and full-throttle as he promised. While it contains nods to the woozy, shoegaze and ambient influenced soundscapes that have been a feature of his previous full-length excursions, these are well hidden behind clandestine fusions of techno and industrial, surging EBM-influenced workouts, post punk-goes-post rock explorations and atmospheric analogue electronics. For those well versed in his back catalogue, Animals makes for arresting listening.
Picking up where he left off on his last long player ”Mirrors and Copulation” we hear an evolution in Haslam’s sound New York’s Gunnar Haslam appears on L.I.E.S. with his third lp for the label titled “Lebesgue Measures”. Picking up where he left off on his last long player “Mirrors and Copulation” we hear an evolution in his sound throughout the nine songs. Still there are the understated yet grooving acid lines next to carefully programmed drums and attention to surrounding detail which creates beautiful and balanced atmospheres. There is a brightness coupled with an underlying sullenness tapping into some sort of mystical and seemingly obscured narrative which moves through the entire record. Deep and immersive stuff to say the least.
Some 31 years after they were first conceived, the cuts that make up Anna Homler and Steve Moshier’s Breadwoman & Other Tales remain thoroughly odd, out-there and entertaining. During the duo’s mid-1980s collaboration, performance artist Homler channeled the spirit of a character she’d created called Breadwoman, delivering bizarre vocals – half sung, half spoken, in some kind of made-up dialect – she referred to as “divine speech”. These were worked into musical pieces by experimental composter Moshier, who utilized cheap drum machines, battered analogue synthesizers, and chamber music players to create hypnotic, otherworldly tracks that remain hugely charming. The story of their creation and performance, told in great detail in the accompanying liner notes, is also fascinating.
The mysterious Knowone imprint presents a collection of dusty, smoked out, dub techno journeys. This is the real deal; for those of you who aren’t familiar, this label is highly recommended for fans of Basic Channel, Echospace or Meanwhile. Enough said, right? This collection comes in a limited edition, handmade wooden box with 5 x 12″s and 2 CDs. It’s hard to pick a highlight from here because all the tracks on here are so damn good. But we do particularly enjoy the glacial and cavernous vibes of Track 3, the hypnotic and dubby deep house on “Track 5” while “Track 8” sounds like Jeff Mills and Stephen Hitchell going on a stoned UFO journey over the Arctic.
Here at Giallo HQ we first noticed H ø R D whilst searching for tracks for the fictitious Wild In Blue Ost, and his music has gone on to be some of the best we’ve ever heard, so much so that we jumped at the chance to release the debut album by this incredible artist. Eight Reverb-Soaked Urban-Gothic Melancholic songs, between synth-shoegaze and violent EBM, Focus On Light is a beautiful heartbreaking LP that will resonate strongly with fans of Pornography-era The Cure, Joy Division and classic Nine Inch Nails.
The Hipodrome Of Music 