The Munich born sound architect, Cio D’or, comes with the her second release for Talrae. “OFF” describes a biotope in which two different poles gently collide. Rooms of reverb meet orchestral sounds meet acoustic clicks, in a process of an ongoing motion, where there is no beginning and no end. The flip side highlights “AND ON” and shows white horses amongst waves of sounds. This track could be an electronic soundtrack to a day at an isolated beach in the Indian ocean.
Sophomore album from Jonas Ronnberg aka Varg with icey electronics live recorded. Ursviken is, unsurprisingly, a largely icy and atmospheric affair, with occasional bursts of throbbing, techno-influenced intensity (see the relentless loops and murky textures of “Vitberge”, and industrial freakiness of “Guldstaten”) punctuating the otherwise downbeat, largely ambient mood. As usual, there’s much to admire, from the bleak, dubbed-out oddness of “Raggarsvin” and overwhelmingly dreamy “Ohn”, to the understated grooves and spaced-out chords of “Skaeliptom”.
Kevin Arnemann is beginning a new chapter in his career with his own record label, Taped Artifact. The first release will come from Kevin Arnemann himself featuring three excursions in the deeper side of techno.
Here are times when the ocean is not the ocean – not blue, not even water, but some violent explosion of energy and danger: ferocity on a scale only gods can summon. It hurls itself at the island, sending spray right over the top of the lighthouse, biting pieces off the cliff. And the sound is a roaring of a beast whose anger knows no limits. Those are the nights the light is needed most.
Collision With The Past, part II… the drama continues. A set of immersive and moving experimental techno outbursts by our man Boris Bunnik aka Conforce. Conceived to reach beyond your emotion circuits, send shivers down your spine and make your neurotransmitters shake. True beauty doesn’t come from the unavoidable music industry promotion cosmetics. Real music should reach your soul, and can only be explored through direct transmitted waveforms. From our frustrated minds to yours…
The Aula Magna Records team is proud to present Cinética, Seph‘s new album. This is a project that takes his characteristic IDM-driven techno sound to the next step: just as it explicitly reveals Seph‘s intimate relationship with a fresh noise-textured sound palette it also makes evident that the artist‘s rhythmic engagement has pushed him to more complex beat programming than on his previous music.
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.
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.
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.
Osaka-based Ryo Murakamiis coming with two new tracks on Meakusma, combining the forward momentum of his previous work with his new-found experimental approach. Both tracks play with atmosphere and impact, are essentially slow burners that through Murakami’s subtle play with dynamics and change become incredibly moving and abstracted studies into groove and ambient sound. Cherry on the cake is the Porter Ricks remix, a hazy glow that is as revealing as it is mystifying covers the track, whilst the basis of it is, in the best Porter Ricks tradition, a surprisingly funky twist on the rhythm and bass of the original track.
The Invariants is a brand new label and production project from Amsterdam. The first release contains four tracks recorded in the fall of 2012. The opening track of the debut EP is a wide-open bit of ambient soundscaping. Distant muffled voices, lush pads that stretch and smear in soothing, cerebral ways and sombre synths all make it a magical opener. The A2 is similar in its smooth textures but is underpinned by a warm, rubbery, thudding kick drum that propels things along at an inviting pace. The pads are just as emotive and serene, though, initially sounding insular and sorry for themselves before a little light and optimism does come in in the latter stages. On the flip, B1 is a much slower and lazier affair: crisp but icy hi hats are as far apart as the drums. Rippling chords roll in the foreground and a slowly emerging sense of groove gets fleshed out with richly reverbing claps and rising pads. Seriously moody stuff, the EP gets finished in real style by the deep, whacked out and mid tempo electro groove of the B2. Humid but run through with frazzled synths, there is plenty of pain as well as hopefulness in the tracks The Invariants create. On this evidence, this is a project that knows just how much is enough to really stimulate mind, body and soul.
Ruhig debuts on Midgar with a deeply atmospheric EP. Crumbled beats, gloomy synths and meticulously crafted bass lines are the order of the day here, resulting in some incredible introspective techno! The Midgar imprint continues to explore the themes found in it’s first release whilst evolving to embrace a warmer, heated sound.
This latest record seems to mark Kobosil’s first self-released record. “Head” is an intriguing opener, eschewing rhythms for simmering modular pulses, which grow into the seasick metallic clutter of “1018818”. More conventional techno fare can be found on the finely tuned acid minimalism fo “A15” and the artificial marching sounds of “polyheme”, but even these are pleasingly strange in the manner we’ve come to expect from Kobosil.
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.
Rich sounding dark techno from this swedisch duo delivering their second album. Despite their impenetrable name and previous releases, SHXCXCHCXSH’s second album is strangely accessible. It seems that the Swedish duo has learnt the value of subtlety, but without losing their edge. From the eerie ambience of “Entering The S-Cloud” through the distorted, noisy electro of “Elo-cution”, the atmospheric techno sounds of “The Roots” and the snapping percussion and repetitive machine riffs of “Drain the Lord”, Linear S Decoded is one of 2014’s best techno albums.
Mixing opposites is always an interesting project, and that brings us to the present release from Kontra-Musik. On the one hand, we have Swedish National Treasure Andreas Tilliander and his already classic TM404-album. On the other hand we have Svreca, the dark prince of Semantica Records and the heir to Oscar Mulero. We thought it would be most interesting to blend these clearly diverse elements together. We where right. There is a very clear and constant division through the entire release. On one hand you have the warm, fuzzy analogue dubbiness of TM404, on the other hand you have the focused, trimmed and piercing techno from Svreca. Where TM404 brings out beams of acid sunlight from his silver boxes, Svreca conjures up a starless night with his relentless beats. It’s a bit like Saruman was given the permission to remix a Gandalf record. TM404 + Svreca. A piece of modern Alchemy, brought to you by Kontra-Musik.
Here’s something to excite those of an experimental techno bent: a collaborative set from veteran producer Function and drone/industrial sort Vatican Shadow. Given the qualities’ of both producers, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Games Have Rules is rather good. Like any good collaboration, it tempers the more outlandish aspects of each producer’s work, delivering a set bristling with icy textures, bittersweet ambience, dreamy atmospherics and, perhaps most pleasing of all, sprawling techno (see the brilliant “Bejewelled Body”). Highlights are naturally plentiful, from the crystalline mood of “A Year Has Passed” (reminiscent of Selected Ambient Works era Aphex Twin) to the murky textures and spooky electronics of “The Nemesis Flower”.
Returning to Delsin after 2013’s What I Feel EP, Italian producer Herva aka Herve Atse Corti is now serving up a double EP offering, Instant Broadcast. Instant Broadcast, the 12 tracks to be released on 2 x vinyl, proves that in spades, combing as it does intricate electronic stylings with an off kilter sampling style, organic instrumentals and plenty of rough hewn charm. The album kicks off with ‘And The Crunch Goes On’, a fractured, sample heavy track with sensuous piano notes floating above barrelling techno drums. It evolves through many different forms across its 6-minute duration and from there the kaleidoscopic journey really begins. ‘Slam The Laptop’ is deep and lo fi techno, ‘Pitch Business’ is glistening IDM and ’01 (Edit)’ is scuzzy dystopian ambiance of the sort LIES has become famous for. Elsewhere there is blissful and heavenly ambiance, sketchy sound collages that put dusty old soul vocals next to trilling melodies and pounding broken beat that is awash with spring like rays of sunshine. Sometimes dark, sometimes beautiful, but always unpredictable, Instant Broadcast is a refreshingly original, sketchy album that shuns the usual Chicago and Detroit reference points and instead conjures up a truly idiosyncratic style that puts Herva in a class of his own.
The Hipodrome Of Music 