Sought-after cosmic jazz funk album from 1977. Plastic disco in the style of Jean-Pierre Massiera! Check the title track “Le Payback”, a French sleazy disco rework of the James Brown classic.
album
Banda Black Rio – Maria Fumaça [331651]
Banda Black Rio is a Brazilian musical group from Rio de Janeiro that was formed in 1976. It has a repertoire based on funk but also including samba, jazz and Brazilian rhythms. Banda Black Rio developed a particular style of instrumental soul music fusing together elements from a number of genres. This is the official reissue of the instrumental album Maria Fumaça from 1977.
DJ Bone – Soul Funktion [SDD010]
Ed & Jen – Love It Or Leave It [EDJ005]
It’s been three years since husband-and-wife team Jus’ Ed and Jenifa Mayanja released their collaborative debut album, Let’s Groove. Since then, both have been busy with solo projects, delivering a large volume of releases in their distinctive warm, melodious and loose deep house style. Love It Or Leave It, then, is something of a rare treat for those who dig their wholeheartedly positive and spontaneous take on deep house. It’s perhaps a little breezier than either producer’s solo work, with less immersive pads (though they are present, particularly on the chiming “Love Bubbles Change”). It’s still deep, though, with cascading melodies, picturesque chords and occasional soul-flecked vocals riding a range of deep, sinewy house grooves.
Pye Corner Audio / Not Waving – Intercepts [ELP006LP]
Intercepts is a split album between Pye Corner Audio and Not Waving. Drawing inspiration from the shadowy world of espionage both producers embark on a voyage of forward thinking yet backwards compatible, cosmic tinged, techno excursions. Pye Corner Audio leads off with ‘Perfect Secrecy Forever’, centering on a progressive, doddering synth pattern paired against muted thuds whereas Not Waving opts for something a little more direct with ‘Protecting The Revolution’ oozing with dark, italo disco vibes owing to it’s dominating, feral arpeggio. The clandestine spirits permeate these eight tracks of dreamlike industrial techno, impressionist synth burbles, fragmented post-modern ambient and cosmic sci-fi adventure.
Richard H Kirk – The Many Dimensions Of Richard H Kirk [DS110]
This collection of recordings by Richard H Kirk is now released as a 3xCD box set by Die Stadt,in association with and under license from Intone.The box set contains the three albums for the first time on CD. CD 1-Richard H kirk-Reality is Opposite (guitars, breakbeats, electronics and digital interference in the sound of insurrection.) Cd 2- Orchestra Terrestrial-Umladen(classical analogue mood music) Cd 3-Richard H Kirk and the Arpeggio 13-Anonymized (minimalist analogue arpeggio workouts). All three albums were recorded between October 2010 and December 2011 as cities around the world were in turmoil. Richard H Kirk is a co founder and now sole member of electronic music pioneers Cabaret Voltaire and last year celebrated 40 years as an audio/visual artist.
Population One – Theater Of A Confused Mind [RHM013]
Deadly Population One album from Terrence Dixon on Rush Hour. Under the Population One codename, Detroit citizen Terrence Dixon has realized some of his most vivid, esoteric portals to the Motor City mindset. ‘Theater Of A Confused Mind’ is Dixon’s 2nd album in this mode, twenty years after his debut album, ‘Unknown Black Shapes’, and the ‘Hippnotic Culture’ 2LP, whose ‘Rush Hour’ track inspired the company’s name.
Push/Pull – Bang The Drums [RHRSS011]
Reissue of 1990 NYC house record. Ben Cenac aka Dream 2 Science with a master piece African influenced house LP. This sounds somewhere in between NYC band No Smoke (Koro Koro) and the Dream 2 Science’s signature sound.
Obergman – Quilted Multiverse [AFS017.5]
The latest release on Abstract Forms finds Swedish electro purist Ola Bergman return for a second offering in his ongoing series of Multiverse releases as Obergman, having inaugurated proceedings with Cyclic Multiverse back in March. Much like that seven track set, there is much for fans of minimal machine funk to savour on Quilted Multiverse, and Bergman uses the album format to really showcase his full production palette. So whilst opener “Resemblance” or “Supersymmetry” are classic jittering electro with subaqueous textures and rippling rhythms, Bergman also indulges his more bugged out side on “Alkaline”, “Coma Cluster” and the rhythmically interesting “Gravitational Collapse”.
Popsimonova & Zarkoff – Die Brucke [JAMTRAXXSP003]
Ideally in transit between yesterday and today, between adolescence and maturity, between an arcadian dimension and a more actual reality made of mirrors and metal, here it is the sonic trip for these two singular characters, Zarkoff and Popsimonova, a taste of sci-fi retro comics, as the bridge of hyena plisskinn in Carpenter ‘1997 escape from ny’ or the characters of the bridge of William Gibson, the master of cyberpunk american literature. The minimal futurstic attitude is deformed, exagerated, distorted, in some case it becomes just a cold expressionism, violent sintetic colors as the sky of Munch, but the scream this time is purely electronic… The bridge, this eternal symbol of passage, the union of opposite realities, in this case reflected itself in the music, with deep roots that lie in the past (for the analog instrumentation) and then leap into the future, materialized from essential and modernist musical structures. Each human being builds its own bridge, a piece at a time, and so it happens the magic of communication, it takes place. In Die Brucke it happens in the ideal musical dialog between this two singular characters, with their composite way to write songs. Including two L.A.S.’s Crime Remixes.
Solitude FX – SFX [ENFANT025]
Solitude FX is no stranger to Enfant Terrible. This German Duo has been present on the great Dutch label since the first compilation from 2006. This new album consists of 10 super melancholy lo-fi minimal synth tunes for the true new wave fan…
Kettenkarussell – Easy Listening [GLGLP004]
In times where a rave feels pretty much like a funfair, the chairoplane is still the nicest ride. Thinking of Kettenkarussell some might remember one of those gathered moments in a low summer night under the clear sky when things made sense for a while. But those memories fade away quite fast or seem really strange a few years later on youtube. So what is it that is left behind? After 10 years of collaboration the couple decided to do an album that might challenge the comfort zone of those who try to keep up that easy living. It’s a record full of holes. And still this is what keeps them together. In pain we trust… and yes i believe you and me will make love forever…
Orlando Voorn – Black Diamond [OUTA002]
Orlando Voorn is back with a new album, on Out-Er. Acid European influences combined to Detroit techno with continuous dance melodies. Orlando Voorn experimental and innovative music strikes again.
Anthony Nicholson – Four LP [DAS006]
Anthony’s fourth album is simply called ‘Four’ and features 12 masterpieces of deephouse music. Every track is a masterful lesson in the art of this genre. They are beautiful and originally composed, including elements of jazz, garage, disco, RnB and classic house. Anthony Nicholson clearly shows that he is gifted with an amazing imagination and also a proper knowledge of musicality.
This Perfect Day – No Frills, Just Noise [SS015]
This Perfect Day was a band formed in Manchester, UK around 1981 by vocalist/blues harp player John Sama Snowden and synthesiser player Mik Hayes. John had the street-cred having previously been vocalist with The Limit and for a short time was the vocalist with The Passage during which time they played gigs alongside Joy Division. Mik, by contrast, had no street-cred, having been bass guitarist with a semi-pro cabaret/covers band, playing 2 hour sets of pop songs every Saturday night. The antagonism between the two, the fight between atmosphere and melody characterizes This Perfect Days sound… in fact the name This Perfect Day is an attempt to convey this. It comes from the novel by Ira Levin in which everything on the surface is perfect, but underneath this surface is an underbelly of pure scum! Their music was never intended to be synth music in the classic Kraftwerk / Human League / OMD / etc sense. It was music that just used synthesizers because they didnt have a drummer or a guitarist. They immediately started writing their own songs, bouncing music from track to track on a Revox B77 tape recorder, using a monophonic ARP Axxe and a Soundmaster SR-88 drum machine. Over the next 2 years, besides playing a number of gigs in the northwest of England, they were able to record a total of 13 songs on 8-track tape at Bootleg Studios, Stockport, UK, culminating in the final session with the recording of The Garden and The Time of Your Life, which utilized the polyphonic capabilities of their new Crumar Stratus synth. The Garden and The Time of Your Life were put together as a double A side single purely for promotional purposes. Copies were sent to record companies, radio stations, DJs, etc. but no-one was interested, so the music finally faded away. No decision was ever made to stop… life just took over… until now…
Julius Steinhoff – Flocking Behaviour [SMALLVILLELP009]
Half of the dynamic duo Smallpeople, founder and one of the steersmen behind Hamburgs Smallville empire as well as a producer and DJ in his own right, Steinhoff’s debut album comes on his own label. A romantic concept of house music that is at times utopian, the album gathers eight tracks that evoke late nights, hazy mornings and walks on thin air.
Synthek & Audiolouis – Unwise [NTCLP001]
The debut album by Synthek & Audiolouis can be seen like a precious gathering of different approaches to Techno, made in order to create a meaningful and elaborate piece of work. The opening tracks Miasma and Intro:spection are just a glimpse into the atmospheres which costantly surround the whole album. Strong rhythmics and overwhelming soundscapes never abandon the ears, modulating intensity and brightness along the journey through a sea full of dark acid waves. Unwise is a bold sequence of powerful tracks devotedly written for the dancefloor, but still keeps a certain emotional aspect made of few melodic Detroit-rooted cuts, standing as a tribute to the author’s primary inspirations.
Kline Coma Xero – Kline Coma Xero [MR036]
Medical Records presents the debut full length release of Kline Coma Xero. Formed in 2012, Kline Coma Xero is a group whose work embraces elements of early minimal synth wave with distinctively thoughtful lyrics and evocative melodies. Kline Coma Xero’s Tony Williams has had his roots planted in various projects in the past, spanning a realm of styles from experimental noise, tape loops and early industrial. Using a writing style that employs the use of hardware sequencers driving analog instruments rather than computers, Kline Coma Xero produces a uniquely oblique interpretation of past-meets-present in modern electronic music.
Severed Heads – City Slab Horror [MR035]
Their most varied, interesting work, City Slab Horror includes stark synthesizer workouts, several tracks of pure rhythm and noise, and, thankfully, little of the unambitious tape music for its own sake of Since the Accident. “Cyflea, Rated R,” “4.W.D.,” and the title track provide several examples of the best experimental synthesizer tracks of the mid-’80s.
Yagya – Sleepygirls [106DSRLP]
Icelandic producer Yagya release his fifth album, Sleepygirls, on Dutch label Delsin. It’s a deep, spacious and dubbed out affair that stays locked at a pleasingly sedentary tempo throughout. The album is a fine fusion of tropes from Yagya’s earlier albums, features jazz instrumentalists that improvise beautiful melodies over monotonic, almost drone-like, techno beats and also uses live recordings of Japanese vocals, saxophone and guitar to counter the repetitiveness of the rhythms. Right from the rolling bliss of the opener, you’re suspended in a womb like pillow of sound that is soft, warm and serenely beautiful. As tracks roll on, the pace stays the same but themes vary from upright and summery to more elongated and insular. This is natural, organic dub that is a delight and a pleasure to listen to.
“I wanted to create an album that’s atmospheric, repetitive, and easy to listen to over and over again. Something that works well in the background (e.g. when concentrating on work), as well as up close in a big sound system. I also wanted to learn how to make my music sound better than before, since I’m a huge sound-nerd, so that was a part of the goal for me personally.”
The Hipodrome Of Music 