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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Skudge Records presents an involved and masterful album of deep acid from Sweden’s Martin Skogehall aka MRSK.
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’.
Spanish label Fundamental come through with a ltd edition of their highly prized DMX Krew LP. Ed Upton’s been on prolific form this year for sure, with 100 Tears his fourth DMX Krew long player of 2014 following outings on Shipwrec, Mystic & Quantum and Luke Eargoggle’s Stilleben Records. The twelve tracks here really demonstrate that Upton is a grand master of electro whatever the tempo, and are apparently the result of him working with just a few synths and a drum machine as opposed to his full studio whilst in the midst of moving house. For most people this would be a stressful process, for Ed Upton the situation has resulted in a sublime, masterful album.
Abdulla Rashim and Varg’s collaborative project are back for another quest in sonic experiments and northern tales. Even if they do release obscure drone from time to time Northern Electronics continues to up hold its reputation as record label worthy of the tag: ‘buy on sight’. That can definitely be said about Varg and Abdullah Rashim’s second full length as Ulwhednar. For some dirty Rashim loops look to “De 92 Vita Stenarna” while for some Nordic drone splashed with Varg’s trademark space echoes check out “Kattarens Dom”, and if you want to experience what the crash landing of Star Trek’s USS Enterprise sounds like there’s “Askan Fran Balet”.
Dave Huismans (A Made Up Sound) returns under his 2562 codename with the oneiric ambient/concrète dancefloor states of ‘The New Today’, his 4th solo album in this guise. Where its predecessor, ‘Air Jordan’, also for his When In Doubt label, took inspiration from the arid landscapes of the Middle East, ‘The New Today’ draws upon ideas sketched out whilst 2562 was in New York, late summer 2013, and was later finished at his home studio in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Rather than disco samples, as with his last LP ‘Fever’, he sources from and splices together an enviable library of European synth experiments, new age tapes, avant-garde, post punk, pop and long forgotten aces, offering an entirely different palette of textures and tones. Ambient is a keyword here, taking inspiration from the feeling of drift of utopian/dystopian novels, as much as the sublimation of electro-acoustic processes. Between the humid concrète drone sphere of ‘Arrival’ and the sweeping celestial space of closer ‘New Life’, there’s a keen sense of momentum through dreamy time and space, taking in the airborne melodies and syncopation of ‘Vibedoctor’ and ‘Utopia’ along with killer Afro-centric gyrations in ‘Terraforming’. Inarguably, it’s the the most diffuse yet cohesive and involving album in his celebrated cache.
Skanfrom is Roger Semsroth, best known for his purist minimal techno project Sleeparchive. Skanfrom first appeared in the late-90s, releasing limited edition 7”s on his own A.D.S.R. label, part of a small movement of DIY labels influenced by the melodic, experimental electronica output of labels like Rephlex, Skam, and Warp. Skanfrom found a likeminded home in Suction Records, who were releasing records by Solvent and Lowfish with many of the same musical references. In 2002, Skanfrom released his debut album on Suction Records, ‘Hand Picked Fragments.’ A lot has changed since 2002, but in Skanfrom world, 2014 is very much the same. ‘Postcards’ is full of the same pure and melodic electro(pop) that made Skanfrom so special from the start.
Surfacing earlier this year with two 12″s on Planet E, the anonymous Korrupt Data now deliver a debut album for Carl Craig’s label. Korrupt Data’s music straddles the divide between Kraftwerk and Model 500 without the crazy frenetics of Drexciyan electro. Said to be made with ‘old kit’ this 11-track album is spread across two discs and it’s very much geared for the dancefloor and sounding distinctly Detroit. Highlights include the vocoder electro space pop of “Inter Arrival”, the glitchy tones and rigid beats of “Photons, Protons, Microns, Mutrons” and the emotional techno acid of “Memory Loss”.
The Hipodrome Of Music 