Credit 00 is still doing his thing with ‘Put The Funk Back In 2 Techno’, saving you from the horrors of today’s life with a bunch of stirring tracks to dance against oppression. On his seventh EP for Uncanny Valley the Leipzig based funkster finds solace in his craft, doing what he does best. And that is to make dance music that is both undeniably catchy and blessed with an ever-surprising range of ideas and styles.
Following up his anthemic late-summer burner, Hope, Credit 00 returns to Pinkman to deliver the album Midnightlife Crisis. Hopping between genres whilst remaining resolutely coherent, the twelve-track LP is a showcase of the Rat Life boss’ many influences. From the driving, mesmeric techno of Music Is A Spiritual Thing to the sci-fi electro on Bouncing Bell and Love Warrior’s downtempo, half-time shuffle, the collection of tracks is broad and varied yet simultaneously unified by belonging to the club. Whether it’s warm-up material, peaktime rollers or afterhours sludge for tired legs and scrambled heads, there’s something for every scenario on Midnightlife Crisis. And with recurring themes of melancholy and anxiety throughout, the album perhaps reflects that all too familiar period for every club enthusiast when the years are ticking by and the lights are coming on.
Funk The System! The recipe is simple: Dig deep, listen to your heart, record everything you got on a dusty old desktop computer, leave it to simmer for the time of a pandemic, and if it’s still fresh, serve it up on the finest plate of black wax! This collaboration started in Düsseldorf in the year 2018. Locked up for a week in the Flanger Studios, Wolf Müller and Credit 00 recorded everything: from the jaw harp to smartphone apps, chopping up GDR Jazz breaks and squeezing the Funk out of every synthesizer and drum machine at hand. You will hear the open mindedness towards all sorts of musical influences from the first note. Each of the five tracks showcases a wild mix of flavours: Disco Reggae, B-Girl Breakbeats, Protest Folk, Subway Funk, Tabla Rhythms, you name it… they’ll take it and shake it! It is obvious these two got sonically socialized and educated by the multiculturalism of Hip-Hop in their early days.
Teasing his upcoming full-length, Credit 00 returns to Pinkman for the first time since ‘21 with a punchy single that draws inspiration from believe and despair. Future dancefloor karaoke anthem ‘Hope’ travels through time by laying 21st century autotune pop over ancient bit crushed computer beats. Watch out for the dangerously catchy hook, once it’s in your head it won’t be leaving anytime soon!
Credit 00 returns to Mechatronica with a mind-bending blend of past, present and future, carefully pieced together in a way that could come from no other. From the mind to the floor, from dark and cold machinefunk to blazed-out sun grooves, Credit 00 leaves no sonic traveler yearning.
Credit 00 returns to Pinkman with his trademark odd-beat electro chants. While each track tells a different story, what persists throughout the EP is the streetpunk attitude and nonconformity of the king of rats. His ‘Protest Love Songs’ bows to no shiny idol, and sweeping the ashes of utopia tames the apocalypse with no fear.
Credit 00 recorded live @ Altenburg 1964 (Prague) 28.06.2020
FM Label reconnects genres and builds new bridges between music, fashion and design. Established in 2019 by Milan Fatrla, the label enters Prague’s flourishing scene with a vision of music, in which the new revisits the old. A vision where strongly-rooted love for hip-hop merges with passion for everything electronic and danceable, to offer records where these two genres meet and intertwine. With its modular attitude, FM Label plays with norms of record sleeve design and fashion. In its first phase the label will put out three trilogies, each trilogy in a different package developed with local designers and artists. The first release sees an exciting mix of German’s Rat Life Records head honcho Credit 00, and LA’s Eight-Oh-Motherfucking-Eight don Egyptian Lover. Credit 00 is known to be inspired by American 80s Ghetto music, so this mix of artists is not so distant as one might think – see it as a study and application of this strain of music in two different parts of the world. Super Scratch 12″ is held in a special cardboard sleeve which can be reshaped into a vinyl display holder.
Merciless machine funk, haunting soundscapes and rugged electro styles, drenched in concrete and vigorously fortified by the iconic German producer’s sonic development through 90s street culture. Credit 00 moves like no one else.
The Ratlife boss brings the noise with a cluster of hardwired dancefloor bombs. ‘Broken Glass Everywhere’ with broken snares ricochet off gutter-clank, clearing a path through shattered electronics and electro-murk. ‘Reject’ gears up for a dawn raid, inciting an illicit beat over janked-up loner funk, stalking empty streets for scraps. ‘Harder Faster Slower’ parades onto the B-side like a half-crazed maniacal grind show. Mardi gras drum rolls rattle over clown metal, drilled by chopped vox stabs ’n screwed hysterics. ‘Ghostride’ brings the reject party to a close, pointing a spectral finger to the exit before lending a sleazy hand for one last late-night runaround.
Thomas Clarke returns to the wider Optimo Music family with his third offering as MR TC for us and his first on Against Fascism Trax. This collection of 4 tracks were recorded over the past couple of years in Clarke’s home studio and sees him diving deeper into the psychedelic dance explorations that you heard on ‘Soundtrack For Strangers’ and ‘Surf & Destroy’.
Alex Dorn aka Credit 00 takes a sidestep from his Uncanny Valley/Rat Life camp to showcase his rumbling, industrial machine funk and bad-ass attitude on Pinkman. Vision gets blurry and panic sets in as the A-Side track “Exctasy Overdose” blasts with vibrating basslines and shrieking sirens. On the flip we have the stripped slowbeat electro cut “Data Control”, showing a huge middle finger to online mass surveillance. The EP ends with the weirdo jam “Weg von diesem Ort” in which Alex samples synth and covers vocals of an obscure, industrial cassette tape from the early 80s.
For more than half a decade Alexander Dorn has shaken electronic sounds, stirring shapes and forms as Credit 00 that adhere to few genre tags. His Bordello A Parigi debut is no exception. The alumnus of Uncanny Valley and Ratlife arrives with four tracks under the banner of The Cosmic Funk collection. Drawing on a spectrum of influences, the Leipzig based musician melts reimagined house with broken beats, blends Eastern acid aromatics with jazz abstractions and achieves a sound that is stunningly unique. Within this sonic cocktail you’ll also encounter dashes of samples, a peppery head of 90s anthems and a liberal glug of freestyle funk. A one of a kind record from a one of a kind artist.
Having established himself through a consistent stream of quality releases for Uncanny Valley and the immaculate collection of stomping dj tools for Rat Life, Credit 00 – real name Alexander Dorn – brings the heat on cassette for NYH81. These are recordings taken from his old apartment, and feature a heavy dose of reference to classic Gertronica. From Can to Kraftwerk to Neu! to (now) Munich’s Dopplereffect, this is some really nifty classic electro. From the 20 minute opening joint to the perfect pop song length closer ‘No Future Sound Of London’, these joint combine experimentation with spot on electro bangers. Audio perfection on cassette tape.
The Hipodrome Of Music 