Void Vision – Sub Rosa [MNQ054]

Void Vision is a Philadelphia-based electronic project helmed by Shari Wallin. It began around 2009 at a time when a wave of synth-revivalists were materializing, but the quality of the songwriting and intense vocals set the band apart from the pack. In a rare instance, Void Vision has managed to combine vintage dance elements with melodic structures, haunting melancholy, and lyrics that have a palpable soul. The songs themselves are dynamic, referencing a cross-section of the last 30 years of electronic music, while simultaneously retaining a uniqueness all their own.

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Void Vision – Sub Rosa [MNQ054]

Jonas Kopp – Beyond The Hypnosis [TRESOR273LP]

In the eight years since his emergence as a promising 19 year old producer, Argentinean Jonas Kopp has amassed a solid discography with a veritable clutch of 12″ material for the likes of Curle, Ilian Tape, CLR, Krill, Stroboscopic Artefacts and Tresor. Sensing the time is right to try his hand at the album format, Kopp’s chance comes via the later Berlin techno behemoth with Beyond The Hypnosis a weighty 12 track endeavour. This vinyl edition features only eight of those tracks spread across the two slabs but still gives a keen display of Kopp’s talent for crafting finely sculpted techno.

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Jonas Kopp – Beyond The Hypnosis [TRESOR273LP]

Steffi – Power Of Anonymity [OSTGUTLP018]

STEFFI - Power Of Anonymity

Berlin-based Dutch DJ and producer Steffi returns with her second album Power Of Anonymity on Ostgut Ton, featuring laid-back, melodic cuts like ”Pip”, ”Fine Friend” and the break-heavy title track next to more straightforward, hypnotic dance floor pieces such as ”Selfhood”, ”Bag Of Crystals”, ”JBW25” and ”Bang For Your Buck”. Besides her solo instrumental productions, Steffi’s collaboration with longtime friends Dexter and Virginia on the uplifting, percussion- driven vocal track ”Treasure Seeking” is the icing on the cake. Just like ”Power Of Anonymity” as a single piece of music, the album itself lives on an industrial-resonating structure of 808s, crisp synth stabs, pulsing staccati and dark, percussive drumbeats. With her second album Steffi recalls classic, landmark Detroit Electro, while creating her very own modern, retro-futuristic sound.

Continue reading “Steffi – Power Of Anonymity [OSTGUTLP018]”

Steffi – Power Of Anonymity [OSTGUTLP018]

Gunnar Haslam – Mirrors And Copulation [LIES055]

Gunnar Haslam returns to LIES records for his second album, Mirrors and Copulation. Following a slew of 12″ releases this year, Gunnar delves deep into his darkest palettes for a return to his patient, haunted soundscapes that shrouded his debut LP, Mimesiak. Across eight tracks of ambient techno both brooding and tumultuous, Gunnar Haslam unravels a narrative on overpopulation and its potential environmental ramifications inspired by the Borges quote the album title references. “Meter By Me, Sybil” cascades arpeggios through a thick fog that never leaves Mirrors. “Ajapajapam Version” cuts through with a sluggish 3/4 strut and nauseated 303 bassline, but the rest of the A side is fully enveloped by the Gunnar’s peerless recreation of the wet ambience of a ghostly rainforest. “Cloud Castle Lake” offers an uptempo cut buoyed by a blasted kick drum and frenetic 606 workout. Still enshrouded, “Cloud Castle Lake” further explores Gunnar’s sonic terrain with the force of a freaked dancefloor’s momentum, much like the album finale, “In Argo Teurano”, which blasts forth from the mist with a weathered adventurer’s grit.

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Gunnar Haslam – Mirrors And Copulation [LIES055]

Heidi Lord – English Electric [WEME028]

Heidi Lord is the wife of Rephlex/WeMe artist Jodey Kendrick. Three of Heidi’s tracks are featured on the famous “EDM” Compilation Albums This is the Debut album from Heidi Using a unique pallet of sounds from MRI machines to modular synthersizers to conversations in a super market to her own processed voice Co produced by her Husband “I could describe what the album means to me, But i would much rather leave it to listener to experience and feel and to interpret how they see fit”.

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Heidi Lord – English Electric [WEME028]

Andy Stott – Faith In Strangers [LOVE098LP]

Andy Stott returns with his first new album since 2012’s ‘Luxury Problems’, straddling analogue club music and vocal pop songs. ‘Faith In Strangers’ was written and produced between January 2013 and June 2014, and was edited and sequenced in late July this year. Making use of on an array of instruments, field recordings, found sounds and vocal treatments, it’s a largely analogue variant of hi-tech production styles arcing from the dissonant to the sublime.

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Andy Stott – Faith In Strangers [LOVE098LP]

Neel – Phobos [SP037]

Abstract electronic pieces on Phobos,the debut LP from Neel, well-known as the sonic mind behind the Voices from the Lake project, together with his fellow Italian DJ, friend, and cosmic joker Donato Dozzy. Neel is a young mastering engineer with golden ears, and through Voices from the Lake, he and Dozzy have brought a level of immaculate sound production to techno.

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Neel – Phobos [SP037]

The Greg Foat Group – Live at the Playboy Club, London [JMANLP071]

The Greg Foat Group are currently the resident band at the Playboy Club, located in Mayfair, London. Earlier this year a couple of nights were recorded for Jazzman, and the results are here for all to enjoy. Recorded live and direct onto 1” analogue tape the album captures the energy and atmosphere of the group at their regular gig. Awash with library-esque soundtrack-themed jazz grooves with a modal edge, jazz has never been so much fun! This is the 3rd album by the Greg Foat Group on Jazzman, and is the first album to be recorded live at the Playboy Club for over 40 years.

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The Greg Foat Group – Live at the Playboy Club, London [JMANLP071]

The High Society Brothers – High Society Brothers [MWLP003]

The group is composed of the key members of the Finnish funk powerhouse The Soul Investigators, who have previously backed worldwide success stories for artists such as Nicole Willis and the vocal duo Myron & E.  This is an instrumental pressing of the “Lost Soul” album, which High Society Brothers did with New Orleans Soul Legend Willie West.

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The High Society Brothers – High Society Brothers [MWLP003]

Willie West & The High Society Brothers – Lost Soul [TRLP008]

Born and raised in Louisiana, Willie West made his first recording already in the year 1959. While being backed by The Meters, he also had one release on Warner Brothers in the mid 1970’s, plus numerous singles produced by Allen Toussaint. Even though he was noticed locally and in the circles of soul music aficionados with minor hits such as ”Did You Have Fun” in 1960, Willie never managed to break to national success. During the past years, he has lived in Minnesota and kept himself busy in music. Lost Soul might be just the thing that finally gives him wider recognition. Lost Soul continues on the moody path laid by the 7” single recordings West has done with The High Society Brothers band from the year 2009. The group is composed of the key members of the Finnish funk powerhouse The Soul Investigators, who have previously backed worldwide success stories for artists such as Nicole Willis and the vocal duo Myron & E.

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Willie West & The High Society Brothers – Lost Soul [TRLP008]

Rolf Kuhn – Stop Time! [SONOL085]

First release of a previously unknown album from the personal archives of ”clarinet bird” Rolf Khn, recorded 1962 in Hamburg. Outstanding modern jazz and hard bop session featuring Klaus Doldinger (ts), Ingfried Hoffmann (org/ p), Cees See (d) and Herman Schoonderwalt (b), with plenty of tunes made famous by Horace Silver (”Sister Sadie”), Charlie Parker (”Au Privave”), Miles Davis (”Solar”) or Thelonious Monk (”Bemsha Swing”) – all arranged by Khn. Comes as limited vinyl LP commemorating the 85th birthday of Rolf Khn, carefully mastered in 2014, with unreleased photos and new sleeve notes written by Khn’s biographer Maxi Sickert.

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Rolf Kuhn – Stop Time! [SONOL085]

Florian Pellissier Quintet – Biches Bleues [HS114]

FLORIAN PELLISSIER QUINTET - Biches Bleues

Timeless, Florian Pellissier Quintet journey through jazz from Paris to New York. A rule of the game is to find the flavor of New Yorkers groups from the 60’s to mix with European musicians of the time. Organic, inspired, it would take ten years of concerts and two albums to reach the goal: ”iches Bleue” promises to be a gateway album, a hidden passageway between eras, a scientific miracle. A sax, trumpet, piano, bass and drums, no artifice, a simple sound.

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Florian Pellissier Quintet – Biches Bleues [HS114]

Dollkraut – Schimanski’s Black Lullabies [THEGYMLP002]

Accurately describing the sound of Dollkraut, aka producer Pascal Pinkert, has always been tricky. Over the years, his sporadic 12″ singles have variously touched on analogue disco, krautrock, deep house, Italo, nu-jazz and beatbox electro. This belated debut album – released some five years after his debut 12″ dropped – continues this theme. It flits between styles at will – bold African rhythms, post-punk, soundtrack schtick, Serge Gainsbourg style sleaze, odd guitar-laden lo-fi rock sketches – whilst retaining a unique dustiness and aural sensibility. It’s a fine set, all told, and in the circumstances holds together remarkably well.

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Dollkraut – Schimanski’s Black Lullabies [THEGYMLP002]

Mind Fair – Mind Fair [CHANNEL029]

Having impressed with a variety of weird and wonderful singles on International Feel, Golf Channel and their own Rogue Cat Sounds imprint over the last three years, it’s probably about time Ben Shenton and Dean Meredith dropped their debut album under the Mind Fair alias. Predictably, it’s an impressively wonky, off-kilter and dubbed-out affair, effortlessly joining the dots between dub disco, hazy punk-funk, heavy African rhythms (see stand-out “Voodoo Train”), slo-mo chuggers (“Neon Carnival”) and bluesy Balearica (“Sunny Carter”). Blessed with plenty of live drums, guitars and bass, as well as vintage synthesizers, it’s an attractively loose affair, with great ideas and beautiful mood pieces complimenting the low-slung, out-there experiments.

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Mind Fair – Mind Fair [CHANNEL029]

Ike Release – Noir [MOSLP003]

IKE RELEASE - Noir

Debut solo full length from Chicagos Ike Release. Ike is an accomplished solo producer as well as being one half of acclaimed duo Innerspace Halflife with Hakim Murphy, and has a long and fruitful relationship with MOS Recordings. For the last five years or so, Ike has been releasing a mind-expanding brand of analogue rich music that continues in his native Chicago’s fine traditions without resting on the usual tired tropes. Labels like MOS, Machining Dreams and his own Episodes have released it to date and now this full length, Noir, comes as a fully formed artistic statement that lays out his sound in all its glory.

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Ike Release – Noir [MOSLP003]

Chicago Jim – Chicago Jim LP [LT008]

The Lobster Theremin label is finally ready to make the move to the full-length format. Interestingly, this first LP – a double album, no less – comes from a largely unheralded source, former Vancouver resident Chicago Jim (AKA Space Jim). Chicago Jim replicates the contents of his self-released 2012 cassette of the same name, bringing his blend of Larry Heard-inspired analogue deep house and stargazing ambience to vinyl for the first time. With nods to Heard’s recently reissued Alien LP, early Transmat and Virgo Four style acid house, it’s an analogue-only set – recorded mostly using vintage kit – that ebbs and flows with great emotional intent.

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Chicago Jim – Chicago Jim LP [LT008]

Patrick Cowley & Jorge Socarras – Catholic [DE080]

COWLEY, Patrick/JORGE SOCARRAS - Catholic (remastered)

Dark Entries and Honey Soundsystem have teamed up to release “Catholic”, the lost opus of disco pioneer Patrick Cowley and Indoor Life vocalist Jorge Socarras. Perhaps one of the most revolutionary and influential people in the canon of disco music, Cowley created his own brand of Hi-NRG dance music, “The San Francisco Sound”. “Catholic” is a genre-bending concept album that ranges from minimalistic proto-techno to synth-driven post-punk. It shows a much broader range than any Cowley or Socarras material available and gives a totally new perspective to one of the most inspiring eras in music history. Patrick forges a unique electronic sound from his collection of synthesizers, modified guitars, and self-constructed equipment while Jorge’s vocals go from hypnotic to camp, singing about gay love juju and tackling classics by Donovan and Stoller & Leiber.

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Patrick Cowley & Jorge Socarras – Catholic [DE080]

CV313 – Dimensional Space [CV313LP]

There’s been a world of hurt in regard to this album, the original masters recorded from 1996-2010 were submerged underwater due to the flood in our home studio where boxes of old reel’s were never to be recovered again. Finally, years of restructure on live recordings and pain staking undulation in the restoration process have lead us to finally accomplish what so many expected wouldn’t happen: an awakening of sagacious spirit: With that being said It’s our distinct honor to present the sonic world of “dimensional space” the highly anticipated debut album from cv313. This album has taken a cosmic eclipse where two events collide for Unison. The culmination of this project lead to synergy, creative experience re-invented and re-imagined, flow of an astral vortex.

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CV313 – Dimensional Space [CV313LP]

Visonia – Impossible Romance [TRAJECTORYLP001]

Following the release of the Visonia collaboration with the mighty Dopplereffekt that delivered ‘Die Reisen’ earlier this year, Visonia returns with the anticipated debut album release entitled, ‘Impossible Romance’. Commencing with ‘Juana de Arco’, which edges finely the fragile border between expectant angst and hopeful optimism, this opening piece pretty much sets the tone for the album. Undulating between the highs and lows of human emotion which beautifully encompasses Visonia’s own conception of art to hold hands and contribute to humanity; to give beauty, wisdom, or to simply open the listener’s mind in order to reflect and ask questions of one’s own self, one’s own existence; what we have here is at times a poetic soundscape of emotions, feelings, fears and positive expression. The album, in its double vinyl format includes the previously available collaboration with Dopplereffekt, namely ‘Die Reisen’, alongside an equally striking collab with New Wave/Synth Pop artist, Mad Moizel in the form of ‘Beat Frequencies’ and late addition to the album – the sleek, driving vision of ‘Between Lies and Real Looks’.

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Visonia – Impossible Romance [TRAJECTORYLP001]