Tarquin Magnet is an album by Tarquin Manek (F ingers, Tarcar, LST), his first full solo release for Blackest Ever Black, and a unique synthesis of time-dilating folk jazz romanticism, brittle chamber dub and plasmic post-techno electronics.
ambient
Damien Dubrovnik – Jealous God 09 [JEL009]
Danish Damien Dubrovnik duo have been releasing psyched-out noise and power electronics since 2009, and the majority of their work has been released through their own sublime Posh Isolation stable. This time, however, they jump start their machines and distortion pedals, and land on the Jealous God imprint; the label is run by a rather startling trio, the combined talents of Karl O’Connor aka Regis, Juan Mendez aka Silent Servant, and James Ruskin. It sounds like Damien Dubrovnik have all the respect they need, then! All four sound sculptures seem tailor made for the label, where glacial drones hint at something otherworldly or religious, and faint pulses can be heard in the background of the mix. It’s techno without techno, dance music without the dance.
Petre Inspirescu – Vin Ploile [MULEMUSIQ192]
Romanian minimal techno hero Petre Inspirescu releases a solo album on Japan’s Mule Musiq and what a moment in a brilliant career thus far. This guy is a true innovator and many are curious to hear what kind of journey into the deep and bizarre he can take us on. Starting out with the exotic bongo meditation of “Delir 1” and the breathtaking immersive ambience of “Delir 2” or the sinister and unsettling “Lumiere” things start to develop more movement later. Such as: on the deep hypnotic vibes of “Delir 4” or “Delir 6” which feature sombre string arrangements, emotive piano passages and some of the most expressive and restrained drums and percussion performances. All nine suspenseful compositions seduce with a deep melodic sensibility, harmonic adventures and an overall rhythmic ambiance of freshness and laidback enthusiasm. Together they represent a challenging auditory experience that will resonate in your mind long after the music has finished.
Bryce Hackford – Behind [MEA017]
Artist, producer and DJ Bryce Hackford presents the nine-track album Behind, his second full length since 2013’s Fair, and his first for Meakusma. Behind is an expansive collection for Hackford, who draws from experimental, process-oriented composition techniques to create sensorially engaging dance music. An ethos of presence, enrichment and dissociation pervades Behind – by stripping away the constructed-ness of so much dance music, Hackford allows himself to produce music that is as much a joy to create as it is to share. An ambassador of “ecstatic states” as he calls them, Hackford’s music suggests heightened temporal zones may be ubiquitous if you allow them to be. Behind is a proposition of such ecstatic states, its music pulsing vitally at opposite ends of the BPM spectrum. Distinctly unmotivated by polemic dialogues around dance music, Behind seeks a more soluble musical space for unmitigated engagement. It is music inspired by transitions, no less vital before sunset as it is after the curtain call.
Tropic of Cancer – Stop Suffering [BLACKEST049]
Blackest Ever Black have performed an interesting exercise in issuing this new 12″ from Tropic Of Cancer along with the Archive: The Downwards Singles collection; as it allows you to hear first-hand how Camella Lobo’s band has progressed musically in a few short years. This three track 12″ is her first new music since that excellent debut Tropic of Cancer LP, and finds Lobo working with Joshua Eustis of Telefon Tel Aviv.
Floating Points – Elaenia [PLUTO001]
For the past ten years, all roads Shepherd has followed have been slowly leading to ‘Elaenia’ – an album with roots deep in his formative years, and one that draws upon everything Shepherd has done so far. An album that provides context to the music that Shepherd has been making to date. Every DJ set he’s performed, every talent he has produced, every composition he has written are thought of as precursors to ‘Elaenia’ – a dazzling score which puts Shepherd in the spotlight as a composer who has produced an album that bridges the gap between his rapturous dance music and formative classical roots. Drawing inspiration from classical, jazz, electronic music, soul and even Brazilian popular music, ‘Elaenia’ – named after the bird of the same name – is the epitome of the forward-thinking Floating Points vision in 2015.
Varg – Story Of K [NE023]
Jonas Ronnberg aka Varg with a mini album themed around dominance and glamour. This is the statement of Penthouse Electronics.
Saab Knutson – Electronic Music From The Faroe Islands 1993 [NW005]
The second tape on Legowelt’s Nightwind Records Cassette series. Through his remote viewing powers Danny Wolfers channeled the music of Saab Knutson of Faroe Islands circa 1993. 60 Minutes of Nordic Ambient with a disturbing undertone of dark melancholia with vague notions of distant happiness. Saab Knutson is a man with many issues, but on the Faroe Islands there is no time for issues. To stay of sound mind, Saab plays his synthesizers in the few spare hours he manages to find, unmistakenly influenced by Faroe’s spellbinding landscapes and grim climate. Though Danny has never been to the Islands he has a definite puzzling calling to them, a ‘luring’ force, so to speak. Hopefully he will sell enough Saab Knutson albums so he can fund an expedition and find out more about this mysterious destiny… Played on Yamaha DX100, Roland JX3P, Alpha Juno 2, EMU 16 bit digital sampling keyboard. Ruby metallic cassette tape in luxurious faux plastic case.
RA.490 Florian Kupfer
Heinrich Dressel – Digital Tsunami 083
ADMX-71 – Coherent Abstractions [LIES067]
Adam X is back with his third album release under his industrial guise, ADMX-71. Adam returns to the L.I.E.S. front with Coherent Abstractions, a brand new album of singular experiments that pull from every corner of electronic music’s landscape into a comprehensive and propulsive full-length. Coherent Abstractions pulsates with fractured rhythms, vacillating melodies and mesmerizing compositions that showcase Adam’s impressive history working in all aspects of the underbelly of electronic music. Noise and industrial elements seep into the album’s 11 songs, churning the cold and abrasive into feverish new territory. Though Coherent Abstractions operates primarily in sounds of solitude, guest vocalist Janina joins Bound and Broken for a rare vocal collaboration on an ADMX-71 track.
Refracted – Through The Spirit Realm [SSV008]
Through The Spirit Realm is Refracted’s first LP to date, and it comes Canada’s excellent Silent Season. “Enter The Jungle” quickly gives a picture of what’s to come thanks to the track’s abstract blend of animal sounds, a myriad of noises which is swallowed up the warm and dubby swings of “The Jungle Is Thick”. The whole LP follows a similar string of thought, one that binds stripped back techno together with deep ambience and slow-moving plates of drone; “The Ritual Begins” is simply hypnotic and we could keep it on for hours on loop. It’s tribalism at its most cutting-edge, and an altogether fantastic debut performance from this growing techno personality.
Imre Kiss – Midnight Wave [LT013]
Imre Kiss finally lands back on the Lobster Theremin mothership, this time with a reissue of his seminal tape album Midnight Wave. A seminal, bold and instantly nostalgic LP, Midnight Wave showcases Imre’s immense ability to craft vivid landscapes of ethereal sound, infused with layers and years of emotional content. Culled from live-to-tape synth sessions in his once London abode, these tracks are the result of melancholic and restricted surroundings and trappings. What has emerged is a body of crackling, warm ambient and techno with a vast, cinematic scope. A sonic portrait of an alienated moment in London, told using industrial visceral tools and visualised through the cutting figure of a lonely individual boarding the 5am night bus home.
Voices from the Lake – Live at MAXXI [EMEGO209LP]
‘Italian techno masterminds Donato Dozzy and Neel are returning as the duo Voices From The Lake with a release on the mother label Editions Mego: Live @ MAXXI is a marvellous organic live-set of hypnotic ambient techno, proofing the outstanding and elegant craftsmanship of their sonic sculpturing, that they both are famous for. As was to be expected they stay true to their polyphonic topography of liquid scapes: aquatic sceneries are embedded in soaking dense atmospheres, gently gyrating us into trance. Sometimes soft echoes of sirenic voices are heard – the only remnants of human traces in these spaces that have suspended time, where smooth silky textures are being channeled into fractal structures that induce a state of transcendence. The haptic quality of their sound is adding up to a sonic matrix of metaphysic imaginary that is provoked by gentle glides and dynamic beat patterns of almost tribalistic quality. Dunked in a bath of dark fluid, sometimes washed away at the shores of Kosmische – VFTL’s tunes are not scared to seduce us into a condition of haziness, culminating in a cover of Paolo Conte’s ,Max’ which is turned into a dazzling sample of sweet, dreamy melancholia.
Donato Dozzy – The Loud Silence [FUR058LP]
In April of this year, Donato Dozzy took a set of mouth harps back to his parent’s house in the Italian countryside and set about exploring the possibilities of that most basic of instruments. The mouth harp had been calling to Dozzy ever since childhood, when he had discovered the “marranzano” on a holiday in Sicily with this parents at the tail end of the 1970s. Almost four decades later, Dozzy had begun to see in this peculiar, ancient sound, the roots of the music he’d been making and playing in clubs all these years. It was time to find out how far he could trace it all back. The Loud Silence is the result of those explorations, an accompanied deep-dive into childhood memory, social history and the roots of psychedelia. Recorded indoors and outdoors, half-way up mountains and on the edge of the Mediterranean sea, the record is meditative but also powerful. Dozzy has distilled his ideas into an incredibly intimate sound, one that invites an inverted sort of exploration, pushing you further and further into your own head. Each track maintains an inviolable central pulse, while delicate, fluttering sounds hint at vast spaces that might open up at any minute – they’re just waiting for you to connect with them. Field recordings hover below the resonating harps, adding to the mysterious atmosphere. Tracks like ‘The Loud Silence’ and ‘Downhill to the Sea’ are wrapped up in simple rhythms, their strict throb drawing you deeper and deeper into the primitive sound.
Jonas Reinhardt – Palace Savant [FUR097]
Helping listeners to escape reality—which has been known to grate, on occasion—has long been a noble aim of many musicians. One of the most effective ways to do that is to create imaginary soundtracks for impossible science-fiction films, the darker and more un-Hollywood-like, the better. Another method is to take inspiration from great works of architecture—which, as Goethe cogently noted, “is frozen music.” The latter route is used by Brooklyn producer Jonas Reinhardt (aka Jesse Reiner) on his sixth album, Palace Savant.
D’Marc Cantu – The Son Of Man [NYH018]
Established producer D’Marc Cantu has been crafting his own style of jakbeat since the late ’90s, but comes to New York Haunted with some dark and experimental techno and drones.
Vagon Brei – The Pleasure Of Finding Things Out [PF010]
Vagon Brei, aka Victor Ramos is back with a full length CD album on Photic Fields. A project inspired by and dedicated to Richard Feynman: the scientist, the teacher, the explorer, the visionary and the raconteur. His scientific curiosity, zest for life and eccentric personality were tried to be captured in music, produced by a true admirer of the man. A varied set of tracks, among the album you’ll find mystic waves, ambient moods, synth soundtracks and electro cuts. ‘It’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong’.
DJ Richard – Grind [DIAL033LP]
Debut Album by Dj Richard, Label Owner of White Material. With the launch of his White Material label in New York 2012, Dj Richard started releasing a line of the most stunning works by Galcher Lustwerk, Young Male, Morgan Louis and himself. Alongside a collaboration with Carsten Jost for the Lawrence ”Films And Windows Remixes” the Dial Records crew deeply fell in love with the works of Dj Richard and vice versa the request to release his debut album here caused enthusiastic encounter. After his contribution for Dial’s 15 Years compilation and almost two years of production, it is here: Dj Richard – Grind ! A tribute to what contemporary club music and enthusiastic sound experiments should be about: exaltation and addiction. This is what Dj Richard’s club sets feel like- an incredible sound seduction, another dimension- Grind might be the essence of it all.
Christoph De Babalon / Triames – Invocation Of The Demon Twin Vol.1 [GD013]
You wake from sleep, the door closes by itself and the walls run with slime and rain. A shadow moves, almost familiar, welcoming and simultaniously intimidating. The candle flickers and snuffs out. A noise. Your torch is dying. Something takes your hand. Long fingernails and old skin. You mark the floor, chant the incantation. Together. In the first of our split series we present two modern artists who’s imaginations know no limit. Abstract drones, anchient machinery, neon cities within the shadow of the overfiend.
