Typically outstanding, cultured, listenable techno by the co-founder of this excellent Finnish label, adroitly traversing dub and ambient. Nothing lunky or domineering, dystopian or Gothic, this debut LP generates senses of immediate, natural being out of field recordings (Waiting Halls, Winners, Temple) and the foibles and hiccups of the music-making process itself (New to the System, Sloth, A Small Flood).
Advance 12″ of the upcoming Oscar Mulero album ‘Perfect Peace’, SEMANTICA 70 with some deep electronix.
Silent Season tap up Antenes for a rare 12″, building on the sizable impact her last and only release on L.I.E.S. had back in 2015. Here we get three trips into dark, evocative techno territory as you would expect to find on Silent Season, leading in with the doom-laden march of “Dream Uncreates The Land”. “Take Me To The Birds (For A)” ditches the drums and heads straight into the most delicate and stirring of ambient pieces, while “Metra Train Chicago 1000x” makes use of field recordings and processed static to make for an even more immersive listening experience. This is a daring release that eschews the need for functionality to take the listener somewhere else entirely.
The Silent Season 10 Year Anniversary collection celebrates a decade of deeper electronic music. The vinyl series features artists whose music continues to inspire the Silent Season journey. Having only made spotted appearances in the past, icy ambient techno artist Winter In June makes a fine first outing on vinyl with a press of his formerly digi-only EP Eternal Lovers. It’s prime Silent Season material, using massive slabs of reverb and a foreboding sense of space as his main weapons while rolling out bleak machine matter that sounds as though it were blown across the tundra. “About Life & Death” is particularly moving with its heart monitor bleeps and forlorn strings, while “The Party Is Elsewhere” is a telling trip into the coldest of coldwave.
Seven years into its celebrated journey, Life and Death assembles its third and most adventurous compilation to date – Displaced Soundtracks. For the first instalment in a new series, DJ Tennis has given free rein to some of his most trusted contemporaries, enabling many of today’s most respected dance music producers to display their hidden talents as composers. Gathering music from a long-aborted film, the collection stands as another bastion of Life and Death’s perpetual evolution. Duncan Gray embraces dissonance, Black Merlin, Appleblim and Artefakt go interstellar and Fango channels post-punk squat music. Hades Rocket showcases the expertly-sequenced synth work that has graced Simian Mobile Disco’s illustrious career, while Redshape revisits all the right sides of 80’s Wave and Library music. Danny Daze and synth-savant KINK embrace non-standard tempi with great success, while Axel Boman delivers sitar-laced gospelhouse without a bass drum. Elsewhere, your favourite producer’s favourite producer, Stimming, team’s up with pianist Lambert and the pair learn to fly. Inspired and challenging, Life and Death ventures into their eighth year confidently, constantly evolving without compromise.
Samuel van Dijk is an electronic music producer, sound designer and media artist from the Netherlands releasing deep electronic music as VC-118A, Mohlao, and Multicast Dynamics. Drawing inspiration from technology, nature, film, and fiction, his productions and live sets embody a dynamic musical framework. Since the Dutchman surfaced as Mohlao for labels like Meanwhile, Field and Other Heights at the turn of the decade, van Dijks music has found a firm position; the ethereal electro VC-118A project, deep ambient techno as Mohlao, and subterranean ambient as Multicast Dynamics.
Time To Express marks its 30th release, presented by label founder Peter Van Hoesen. The Belgian producer takes up the opportunity to expand upon his previous work on the Coast To Coast EP. No longer exclusively restricted to straight 4/4 rhythms, Van Hoesen’s music investigates hybrid, broken grooves infused with a clear sense of spatial sonic awareness. This is made clear with the first two tracks, Towards Manifestation and Shapeshifting. On the second half of the EP Van Hoesen launches two solid techno cuts, shifting from dense bassline work (Concrete Variation) to percussive, shuffling grooves (Fox Tactics).
Introducing the fourth release from Southern Lights, dedicated to releasing high-end modern techno. Our fourth release is a journey into magnetic realms and cosmic orbits from Modern Heads with the ‘Elementi Comptabili’ EP. Modern Heads is the production brainchild of Dino Sabatini and Gianluca Meloni, who together have pioneered their version of timeless techno, always capturing their vision of the future in the present. Elementi Compatibili comprises of four elements. Elemento A and C are both beautifully crafted ambient excursions, both softly navigating their way along celestial paths. Elemento B and D move from ambient bliss to more sharper, moving sequences.The hypnotism is more pronounced and a signature style of Modern Heads.
For the 101 release Semantica comes with a special triple album packed with talented techno producers dropping some deep trippy techno knowledge right here.
J.C aka Jose Cabrera and Kastil collaborate and come with the exciting results. A fresh blend of fierce techno, ambience, industrial, noise and found sounds recordings. A full length captivating album that pushes and pulls you through an edgy and engaging world of sound. Part 1 mixes up trance-inducing deep techno with punishing drum programming. Synths have a life of their own as they whip and snap about and bring a post apocalyptic sense of foreboding. Some tracks are abstract modular gurgles and others are lo-fi, heavily textured affairs that are beguiling beautiful. The use of modular synths lends the whole thing an unpredictable and analogue feel that makes is bristle and brim with life throughout. Part 2 focuses on more suspensory ambient sounds. It means tracks zone you out and get you thinking, with distant melodies drifting next to warm solar winds. When drums do appear they are deep down below and dubbed out affairs that unfold slowly.
A foray into deep, organic, cinematic dance music. Subterranean bass, intercepted alien transmissions, and stripped down dance-beats meld with sheets of sounds that roll over the listener like waves lapping up on the shore. Shimmering, watery, brain hemisphere synchronization tones caress and melt stress away. Dance floor friendly tracks that work equally well in one s private listening space. Immersive music with a distinctive aquatic quality. Inspired by Detroit & Berlin s dance genres, but tempered by more ambience / atmosphere than one would expect from those genres. Music without harshness or rough edges. Fuzzy, out-of-focus, soft-sounds that slip in and out of the listener’s consciousness. Uniquely melds current dance rhythms with lushness and spirituality. Synesthetic sounds that trigger sensory experiences in cognitive pathways other than hearing smells of perfumes, thoughts of colours, and altered perception of time and space. Psychoacoustic, cerebral, electronic listening music for those wanting a different experience than the current harsher, darker dance trends are offering. Responsibly made gentle music designed from the ground-up to have a positive effect on the nervous system and leave the listener invigorated and recharged. Chi-building sonic balm. Timeless, exotic dance tracks for a new school of electronic music enthusiasts who are searching for beautiful sounds, crafted with a higher purpose in mind.
Dutch producer and live act Conforce is back with ‘Autonomous’, a fifth artist album and the latest in his long relationship with Delsin Records. Conforce is Boris Bunnik, a producer who explores the deepest realms of dub, house, techno and electro under many different names. His Conforce alias is where his most club orientated material comes from and this new nine track album finds the Transcendent label boss producing dark syntheses inspired by his hometown and harbour city, Rotterdam, and its automated industries. A masterfully conceptual album that really paints a vivid picture of a harbour as heard from deep down in the depths.
This marks the first vinyl release from Echospace [Detroit] this year. An unreleased classic from the vaults emerges with beautiful reshapes by CV313 (recorded and reshaped from 2007-2016). This is where the sound of CV313 was realized, culled from cassette tapes recorded live (1995-2000).
Deepchord is back on Soma and drops the first single from forthcoming album, Auratones due in October. As is expected from the Detroit based sound designer, the Campfire EP is everything we have come to know and admire about his productions, from the spaced out, ambient sound fields to classic Dub Techno.
Amsterdam based artist nthng lands on Delsin with three tracks that touch on driving dub-techno and dreamy ambient. ‘Oralage’ opens with upbeat drum programming and gliding hits that make for a smooth flowing groove. Distant pads add some spacey atmospheres and the production is effortlessly warm and driving. ‘A Souls Search’ takes time out to drift in the cosmos, with waves of muted euphoria washing over you as you sink into clouds of ambient bliss. Lastly, ‘Turn To Gaia’ is a dubbed out techno roller, with long legged drums looping down low, reverberating chords adding weight and distant bell sounds charting the whole thing in a harmonic glow. It rounds out a super smooth and seductive EP.
On ‘World Of The Waking State’ Steffi stretches her wings, having created the album in a period when she found herself free from the past and more comfortable in her own skin. The shift in her mindset led to a new freedom of exploration in her creativity, enabling her to write more experimentally and logically resulting in this new album. Gone are the classic drum sounds and conspicuous melodies of her previous works. Instead, Steffi’s productions unify disparate molecular details to forge a greater whole, reflecting a serious commitment to abstract electronic composition that manifests itself here as a totally inimitable collection of tracks. World Of The Waking State is a confident and mature work of complex rhythms and refined melodies. The overall effect is as subtle, unique and thought provoking as the artist herself.
Lowercase Life returns with more melancholia out of machines made in the past. Detroit and 90’s UK vibes brought to present time in three originals and a killer electro remix by Orson Wells.
Field Records looks to L’estasi Dell’oro (Christopher Ernst, aka Penalune) for a new three-track EP for sound systems that once again takes us down the rabbit hole. Following on from his previous ‘I Look Upon Nature While I Live in a Steel City’ album in 2015, this is another masterfully drawn out and engaging affair. “Either to please or to educate” is the intended purpose of this EP release, utilizing guitar, tabla, and other electronic and acoustic instruments. The incessant movement of the metronomic tremors felt underneath our plains lay the rhythm. The threadbare dialogue we use to communicate frays slightly further. These spirals are given an explicit voice through Leader Annabelle Kuwe’s dispassioned public address to the remaining world at the Great Meeting of 2166, as recounted by Sadie LaPierre on closer ‘Achieve Ignition’.
New imprint Bogen Konzept Recordings first release comes from Todd Sines under his Cron alias. Two previously released cuts from 1994 and two immaculate productions from 2017 coded and compiled by this well known artist.
The Hipodrome Of Music 