Experimental LP inspired on the streets of the big city, listening to the sounds from different angles and perspective of the city. Created just for listening, not for the dancefloor.
Architectural – Metropolitan Opera [ARCH009]
ambient techno
Jeff Mills – A Trip To The Moon [AXCD049]
The album is newly recorded sound track of the “A Trip To The Moon” film by Georges Melies in 1902. The Lobster Films in France has released a DVD of the same film with Jeff Mills’ sound tracks in November 2016. The famous silent film is only for 16 minutes or so but Mills has finished the entire tracks for this sound track album.
‘When Georges Méliès created Trip To The Moon in 1902, the world was just beginning to feel the tightening, yet exciting effects of another giant leap in modern civilization with the Industrial Age. It was a place in time that was transformable and in all dimensions of an evolutionary process: social, economic and political revolutions were buzzing. As man worked hard under the Sun, exposing his efforts and determination, it was the Moon that hatched his dreams. It was a time of realization and a time of romance’. – Jeff Mills
B12 – An Eternal Flame [FS003]
Third EP on FireScope Records the new sub label of the legendary B12 Records. This release by B12, entitled An Eternal Flame, is about Love. Love for self, a person , our planet , a planet. Each track filled with emotion and hope.
The Valley And The Mountain – Gentle Waters Keep Moving [PF013CD]
Only a few nuggets of information exist on The Valley and The Mountain. ‘Gentle Waters Keep Moving’ is the first full length outing from TVTM and their/his/her most absorbing work to date. Sharpened edges are rounded, 303 squawk softened and rhythms mellowed as ten tracks of melting music is served. The Detroit denizen calls on the sounds of the hometown. Techno is at the album’s heart but frosted touches of electro are present, warming acid twangs, house grooves with all being dipped in a refreshing undercurrent of electronica.
Yagya – Stars And Dust [118DSR]
Atmospheric and ambient dub master Yagya serves up Stars and Dust, his seventh full length album and second on Delsin. It finds the Icelandic artist perfectly pair melody and minimalism to create ten more tender tracks that will sooth both body and mind with a range of very real emotions. Electronic but organic, it is another complete work that encourages you to lay back and get lost in sumptuous sound.
Sendai – Ground And Figure [EMEGO232]
Editions Mego publish the third release by Sendai. Comprised of Peter Van Hoesen and Yves De Mey, Ground and Figure presents the duo reside in a more economic framework which allows the sound and rhythm they produce more room to shift, swirl and swim the circumference of the audio spectrum. Moving away from the twitchiness and anxiety of the earlier output Ground and Figure is a vast spacious journey from a duo in full control of their chosen path. Throughout Ground and Figure abstraction and rhythm weave amongst each other in such a sly manner that the resulting tension in the conflicting elements presents the listener with a hypothetical high-tech elastic percussive grid. A thudding, pulsating, shapeshifting ambient beast is summoned by these two creators working as one. This is machine music. This is hypnotic disorientation. This is an immense ambitious and refined world of sound and rhythm. This is the work of two producers who continuously try to top up their skills.
Ioannis Savvaidis – NSA Trusted Networks [LP012]
Greek label Lower Parts is back with a cinematic new EP from Athenean artist Ioannis Savvaidis. Influenced by his love of old school computer programming, all four tracks are live jams made with classic Yamaha machinery from the nineties. Form start to finish this is an absorbing ambient release that transports the listener into the world of science fiction. Gently unfolding and expanding in all directions, Savvaidis invites you to cut loose and get lost in your own mind. Some are tracks darker and more foreboding, some are airy and heavenly, but all together the EP acts as a movie lived out in the mind.
SSTROM – Fyren [SEMANTICA080]
Young Male – How To Disappear In America [WM009]
The debut album from White Material co founder Young Male. A collection of dark ambient and textured experimental songs created as a personal soundtrack for life in uncertain times. Paranoia, lust, virtual experience, and tension/release are themes explored in this tour through a dystopian American landscape.
Fluxion – Vibrant Forms III [SUBWAXFXCD002]
Konstantinos Soublis, aka Fluxion, and Subwax Bcn have decided to pick up the banner and release Vibrant Forms III. It contains everything anyone could hope for and more: The massive, booming basses, the clicks and hisses, the atmospheric thunderstorms, the opium smoke-scented streaks of reverb, dub echoes and the warmth. Yes, above all else the warmth: Sometimes moist and dripping as in “Safe Harbour”, sometimes blisteringly dry as in “Variant”. It’s no easy task, giving cold, dead machines warm breaths. And no-one quite does it like Fluxion.
VA – 15 Years With Echocord [ECHOCORD071]
After 15 years in the game, Kenneth Christensen’s Echocord mark that achievement with an exclusive ten track compilation spanning their broadest parameters, from a beatless panorama by STL thru mesmerising dub techno from Deadbeat. Along the way they present a clinical, squashed dub-stepper from Arovane, Struktur 1; the Detroit ghetto acid of Hoodmode by Luke Hess; purified dub suspension from Fluxion; and strangely enough, a vocal turn from Mike Dehnert in Track Providing Home.
Shifted – Appropriation Stories [HOS470]
How does one appropriate oneself? In the case of Guy Alexander Brewer, the situation is complicated by his various current projects in techno, noise and experimental electronics overlaying a once-hidden past in drum’n’bass. ‘Appropriation Stories’ tackles the matter head-on at length, the endpoint of the mounting inward focus already evident in his work as Shifted. For years shunning his previous work in Commix, more recently Brewer has learned to look back, even making sideways stabs into breakbeat territory with his Covered in Sand alias. The process grows more intricate and subtle on his new album for the Hospital Productions imprint helmed by Dominick Fernow (aka Prurient, Vatican Shadow, et al.). Here rigorous processing and studio treatments transform classic breaks into deeply hidden components that add new layers of character to his highly-developed techno sound.
Artefakt – The Mental Universe [DSR/C8]
After a fine first EP on the label in 2105, Dutch duo Artefakt are back on Delsin with The Mental Universe. This four track EP again finds Robin Koek and Nick Lapien showcasing their knack for spellbinding grooves of voodoo techno, absorbing ambient and frictionless drum programming after other outings on the likes of Prologue and Field Records.
Daniel Araya – Acid Ambient Vol. 1 [KMWL008]
What would it feel like to have your naked body slowly submerged in a pool of steaming acid? One would expect unbearable pain, of course – beyond the limits of our imagination – but with his Acid Ambient Vol. 1 on Kontra-Musik, Daniel Araya proves us wrong. The EMS Studio Engineer and producer adjusts the intricate PH levels of this corrosive bubblebath with infinity skilled hands, making the experience thoroughly pleasurable – on the verge of erotic even. Your skin melts away with a sweet sensation of laxity and your muscles and tendons dissolve sensually slow. At the end, nothing will remain below the surface but the pleasure center of your now diffused brain, pulsating with unrestrained satisfaction.
Louis Haiman – The Cosmic Memory EP [AERA017]
Louis Haiman returns to Indigo Aera with The Cosmic Memory EP, which features two originals as well as a remix by Berghain heavyweight Marcel Dettmann. His first single here is ‘How Free Am I’, and is eight delicate minutes of floating ambience and subtle, stripped back rhythm. It’s all in the bassline at first, after pixel thin synths float in like fireflies before static crackle and soft percussions flesh out the heavenly sound world. Soothing and absorbing throughout, it becomes a forceful and high pressure bit of techno in the hands of Marcel Detmann who layers in solid kicks and clacking hits to drive things along. ‘Hidden Knowledge’ is then a slithering bit of atmospheric electro with rumbling synths and pads suspending you in deep space. It rounds out a captivating EP.
DJ Ice Tits – Songs About Myrtle Avenue [DANG002]
A second utterance emerges from the tomb of DJ Ice Tits. Who was this ancient priest of Memphis whose sarcophagus lies entombed within the Metaphasic Pyramid, inscribed with the Analogue Hieroglyph? These five recently discovered FM transmissions from the underworld, entitled ”Songs about Myrtle Avenue,” may contain the key to this mystery.
Silent Harbour – Silent Harbour [TRSDLP001]
Originally released on Echocord on 27 August 2012. Transcendent Records finally releases this much wanted ambient techno album by Conforce aka Silent Harbour, completely remastered for vinyl. Boris Bunnik expresses “music for an imaginary deep mental abstract excursion” under the Silent Harbour moniker for Transcendent/Echocord. As his multifarious operations have shown, Boris is a dab hand in the studio, and Silent Harbour is the place to find those machine emissions which would never quite reach the ‘floor. Operating on the cusp of ambient Techno and electro-acoustic music, he shapes sheer scapes from elemental source material, rendering his sounds diffuse until we glimpse hallucinatory tones in the gloaming dissonance. 4/4 anchored rhythms are fractured, percussions sent to scout the perimeters while the vast space between becomes playground to radiant metallic timbres and strafing electronic apparitions. Music for Techno heads to fall into when the kicks are too much.
Simon Shreeve – Lust Product [LINO72]
Simon Shreeve appears again this year for Karl O’Connor’s esteemed imprint. The man also known as Mønic pushes the kind of highly-engineered modern industrial music on his own Osiris Musik label, so easily finds a welcome home here. On side A, harsh textural abrasions are contrasted by body bashing bass frequencies on the demonic “System Living” while the seething and slow burning breaks contrasted by eerie chimes and nefarious sound design on “Silver Sun” sounds like running through a nightmare in slow motion. The paranoid and immersive sound design of the title track (on the flip) is reminiscent of some of Trent Reznor’s soundtrack work, yet fantastic in its own right. Shreeve deconstructs the classic aesthetic of UK techstep, deconstructing it in a modern format.
Marco Shuttle – Flauto Synthetico [SPAZIO003]
Dozzy and Neel’s label Spazio Disponibile serves up a third release, with the latest one coming from Italian Marco Shuttle. The techno stylist and Eerie boss serves up three tracks that continue to mark out his heady and hypnotic aesthetic.
B12 – Brokenunbroken [FS001]
FireScope Records, the new sub label of the legendary B12 Record, is here to exist with the same ethos, quality music, quality packaging, without compromise and a product that will stand the test of time. The first release is by B12, the EP entitled BrokenUnBroken. A moody down tempo risky start for a first release on a new label, however its enigmatic beauty, sounds, artwork and themes make it the only natural choice.
