Eduardo De La Calle is back with his debut album and it comes through the young Badance label. The Intellinet Prophecy is a techno album with audible influences of jazz and the supremely scientific, where tracks like “Call From Beyond” or “Faith Necessary” go way beyond the dancefloor and land somewhere in outer space, a place on which genres don’t seem to exist and the passage of time is swamped in beats and melodies.
Boris Bunnik is back with a brand new album under his Conforce guise. Entitled Presentism, is his fourth under this alias and proves once that this most prolific talent is still very much an evolving producer. Presentism is more organic and less dystopian and mechanical than before, with a light hearted sense of joy and vivid musical patterns lingering long in the airwaves, and as such harks back to earlier full lengths like Machine Conspiracy, which leaned more on Detroit rooted techno. It is a collection of diverse musical compositions that leans more on musical structures than technical obsessions, and where his last effort Kinetic Image was a tightly programmed conceptual thing, this LP is a much warmer, more organic and aquatic bit of floating modern techno. As such, you get the sense Conforce is back and having fun with his music making once more, free from any rules and instead just crafting what he feels inside.
The expertly designed sounds of this album float and drift in subtly uplifting ways, right from the off. It is a diverse collection sounds with a fine sense of mood through, and that is what ensures it makes sense as a greater whole. At the same time it retains that signature Conforce sense of rhythm, underwater atmosphere and vivid seascaping that really takes you away from the world in which you live. Some tracks like ‘Realtime’ are slow and moody, others like ‘Erased Connections With The Past’ are more propulsive and physical and those such as ‘Monomorphic’ are heady, hypnotic affairs that make for beautiful electronic soundtracks
Since his emergence onto the scene in 2012, Acronym has carved a bold name for himself within the burgeoning sphere of techno championed by his Northern Electronics compatriots, with releases on Semantica as well as his own Dimensional Explorations imprint. ‘June’ continues to affirm the young producer’s reputation as a skilled craftsman of densely woven, atmospheric electronic music, whilst serving as a substantial contribution to the Northern Electronics catalogue.
French men-of-mystery Polar Inertia describe themselves as a “blurry techno entity”. They’re at their shape-shifting best on Kinematic Optics, a double vinyl excursion that contains their first original material since 2012. They set their stall out with the foreboding, cinematic ambience of the title track (built, incidentally, around an extensive spoken word vocal), before delivering an epic chunk of rolling industrial techno (“Floating Away Fire”). There’s a mournful, melancholic feel to the deep techno throbber “Vertical Ice”, while “Hell Frozen Over” is fittingly dark and murky. The second 12″ contains a recording of previous live performance “Can We See Well Enough To Move On?” in its entirety, with droning textures and glacial electronics guaranteeing a spine-chilling mood.
While music in its definitive nature fills both space and time, creating environments in which we live and breathe, these miniature dramaturgies string together to become the screenplay to ones existence. Sometimes chosen, and often times forced, these sounds influence the subconscious and designate emotions. Purposely flowing fluently through a spectrum ranging from theatrical to rapturous tensions that mingle through the night. Cio D’Or’s cinematic compilation for Semantica explores another side of techno, a niche home to Cio where each intricate sound takes a risk for the sake of progression.
The second 12inch from the burgeoning Proto Sites imprint comes from Hungarian deconstructivist S Olbricht. ‘Trancess’ plunges into hazy ambient techno and distorted house depths, exploring the gritty themes present in his recent cut for Lobster Theremin and the consistent body of work for the likes of Opal Tapes, Gang of Ducks, SicSic or his own Farbwechsel imprint.
Vester Koza returns with a new project – PRISN. The titles of the tracks are in reference to/or adaptations of permissions/commands used by the apple and google android operating systems. Smoked out ambient techno.
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.
