Synth wizard, soundtrack composer, and Zombi member, Steve Moore expands further on his stark and drama filled cosmic sound with a new six track lp. These tracks call to mind to his early-L.I.E.S. releases, where Moore focused on cold arppegations and basic beat constructions to fuel his epic productions which center around pristine soaring synthscapes. A master of the genre, Moore gives us an equal mix of explosive, creepy home at the end of a dark street floor fodder as well as slower tempo cosmic headcrushers, all capable of getting your head or niteclub in a frenzy.
Florian Kupfer presents a new Ambient mini LP caller Way Home. Kupfer says “Piercing thru the ever more present turmoil and dissonances in our daily life i am trying to find refuge in these sounds. This release offers a refined auditory experience, perfect for deep introspection and reflection.” All proceeds from this mini LP will support Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah’s Children’s fund. The purpose of this Fund is to treat injured children, rebuild the destroyed medical infrastructure, and establish a sponsorship program for 20,000+ orphans from the conflict.
‘The Double Face of the Zero’ revolves around the progressive crumbling of the human condition, trapped in a Babel of toxic languages, hypnotised by seductive as much as false myths. The traversed architectures are empty or abandoned; inside, only faint echoes of mechanical rhythms reminiscent/incubus of models destined for passive consumption and the reproduction of consensus. Babbling, bare syllables are all that remains of a one-way communication. The new alphabets of communication systems do not need expressive space but consensus time. This journey is closed, however, by a text that is, in its own way, full of hope and that, like a compass, indicates a possible escape route from this mortal spiral of spectacular-media-political consensus. The sound sources from which the work originates are multiple. All electronically processed so as not to show their origin, in order to place themselves in an “other” space. All this not out of sonic sadism but out of a desire to elaborate a sound palette that is as personal as possible. A palette of sounds that tries to place itself outside the fences and categories that delimit even the area of research music, which instead, by definition, should be as model-free as possible.
Identity Theft is the solo electronic music of Michael Buchanan, commencing in 2011 with the album Night Workers. Rooted in Düsseldorf-school electro with strong leanings towards the more abstract Krautrock origins of the genre, “Omnia Vanitas” presents the listener with a narrative arc moving beyond the ‘modern problems’ which previous Identity Theft work was concerned with (e.g. themes of surveillance and paranoia).
Introducing Yarrow Ballet’s V.A. (Volume 01) featuring 10 beautiful tracks. The essence of this compilation its best describes as a listening experience that aligns perfectly with Yarrow Ballet’s musical aesthetic. It captures a balance of darkness and softness, all underscored by a sense of melancholic beauty. The V.A. also embodies a sense of community, similar to that of a close-knit family.
Konduku returns for the fifth and final installment on his Nous’klaer Audio K-series. A diverse four tracker embodying Konduku’s signature style of poly grooves and vibrant euphonies. A flow from dark to light that marks the end of this special series of releases.
The fledgling Detach label continues to show it means business with a new 12″ in a lovely screen-printed sleeve. Romanian artist Dyl is the one in charge and has been serving up consistently excellent and innovative sounds now for serval years. All of these cuts mix up great sound design with languid rhythms – the first is eerie, with watery droplets and glassy tinkles hanging in the air, while ‘Glasshouse 2’ has a percolating rhythm down low. ‘Glasshouse 3’ gets a little more dynamic with a shimmering low end and freaky abstract life forms and ‘Glasshouse 4’ layers in more intense and ever-shifting synth lines while the closer sounds like it’s roaming through a deserted factory long after it shut down.
In 1994, UK ambient pioneers O Yuki Conjugate recorded their landmark Equator album. To mark the 30th anniversary of this musical milestone, many of the same personnel – Roger Horberry (co-founder of O Yuki Conjugate), Dan Mudford (ex-Sons of Silence and co-creator of the Shaun of the Dead soundtrack), Joe Lamb (ex-Sons of Silence) and Malcolm McGeorge – came together to make New Meridian, reflecting the range of influences they’ve picked up over the intervening years. Generously described as “almost like normal music”, the eight tracks of New Meridian feature instrumentation ranging from classic analogue to actual wooden logs. The result takes you on a rain-drenched, open-top ride from Electronica Avenue to the drone caverns of Uranus, with various Fourth World ambi-dub diversions along the way.
Munich label Ilian Tape has another entry in its fine ITX Series here called ‘Biospore Farmers’ from Fields of Mist, describing it as “Sunrise Beams Through Orbital Mist.” In less abstract terms, it is a gorgeously hazy and lo-fi electro-exploration. The first two cuts are slow, doleful and reflective with grainy pads and deep space ambiance swirling around nice rough-edged broken beats. The B-side picks up the pace with the brilliantly kinetic bounce of ‘Astral Projection Spores’ and then the skittish and celestial trip that is ‘Orbital Mist’.
Since 2019, Amsterdam-based curator Pieter Jansen has used his yeyeh label as a vehicle for carefully considered (and sometimes unlikely) ‘first time’ collaborations between different experimental and avant-garde artists. The idea of getting saxophonist/composer/producer Jerzy Maczyński in the studio with Chicagoan DJ/producer Hieroglyphic Being was the genesis of this record, the debut album by Universal Harmonies & Frequencies. In June 2022, Hieroglyphic Being flew to Amsterdam to spend five days improvising with Maczyński in a rented studio beneath Volkshotel, under the watchful eye of recording and mix engineer Rein De Sauvage Nolting, better known in electronic music circles for his work as RDS. During those sessions, 26 long, improvised compositions were recorded, with Maczyński contributing saxophones and electronic tools, and Hieroglyphic Being laying down synthesizer parts and vocals. These sessions were captured on film by VLF (Katarzyna Debska), who later created the artwork and visual language for this record release. Some days after the recording sessions, Sauvage Nolting – who had delivered artistic input during the improvisations – sat down with Jansen to select 13 pieces to put forward for the album and a loose conceptual framework. It was then that the hard work began. While a decision was taken to present some improvisations in full, most of what you will hear on Tune IN, as the album is titled, is based on fragments of improvisation. The resultant pieces were reconfigured, re-worked and re-produced by Maczyński and Sauvage Nolting over many months, and in discussion with Hieroglyphic Being. Maczyński added more layers of instrumentation, creating a “whole digital band of reed instruments” – a method he previously utilized on Sariani. What you hear when you play the record defies categorization. It is rooted in a specific moment in time and the spontaneity of musical improvisation – both Maczyński and Hieroglyphic Being are experienced improvisers, albeit with different musical instruments and tools – but also the product of extensive post-production and reflective re-shaping. It is not free-jazz, ambient, electronica, rhythmic cubism (as Hieroglyphic Being’s distinctive sound has previously been called), or avant-garde experimentalism, but something that combines all these musical approaches and more, with a sprinkling of far-sighted futurism mixed in. It is a magical and mystical meeting of musical minds that will pass the test of time in decades to come.
Third episode of whispers of an ancient world. In these new interludes, the artist DMX Krew realizes his personal vision of the well-known story by Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel. Borges takes as a starting point to explain the universe two realities that are essential for the world of libraries: the library, as a physical space, as a continent, which also contains the greatest wealth that can be conceived as it is the compendium and sum of everything. human knowledge and understanding. But this place, this library is not a silent, uninhabited, inert space, but rather something alive, full of activity, guarded by librarians and used by all men, in turn librarians in search of giving meaning to their nature, to what that surrounds him, to the past, present and future of humanity. And here we have the other reality: librarians. Borges interprets that each man is a librarian, someone who inhabits and explores the infinite hexagons of the Library, in search of his particular interpretation of the world. Although it also establishes the figure of the librarian as custodian of books, of knowledge, as an interpreter who knows how to decipher all the mysteries that the Library contains inside, an official who has unraveled the content of the infinite Library that requires subjects who know how to keep it. and at the same time help men, all of them librarians, to find meaning in everything.
New release from the mysterious Body Habitat project, allegedly associated with the equally elusive German Army project, this is a 15 track tape full of broken industrial rhythms and seething sonic soundscapes, unrelenting California desert music.
YE GODS returns to L.I.E.S. with a new fill length, “No Albion”. Seven tracks of haunting ritualistic electronics, coming from the darkest realm of your psyche. Chilling ambience, voices from your nitemares, wishing to escape this world.
AI-36 comes from Ear to Ear – the debut collaboration between label regular Samuel van Dijk (VC-118A, Multicast Dynamics) and Ukrainian artist Yevgen Chebotarenko. Taken from a series of live recording sessions, the album explores in four parts a markedly darker realm of soundscape music. A cornucopia of abstract morphing scenes and heady synesthesia, the album brims with rich sonic detail and evocative gestures. Deftly blending organic sound textures with an experimental austerity, ‘Live Recordings’ displays potent and accomplished storytelling.
Absolutely killer darkside mutations from Tradecraft, aka Carrier aka Shifted, a stunning hour-long session of dank, highly atmospheric technoid alchemy that plays from the Pan Sonic/Vainio/T++/Actress songbook. Key technoid shapeshifter Guy Brewer chases a trio of aces under his Carrier alias with the murky arrival of his Tradecraft project, forging heaving downtempo slugs and vapours from a signature palette of iridescent electronics deployed somewhere along the line between Actress, Burial and Mika Vainio, on a cybergoth bent.
Musica Per Immagini it will release a series of albums of contemporary and electronic music often “inspired by” different sources, both sonic, if not literary and cinematographic. Heinrich Dressel’s “Polarlys” is the first album of unreleased tracks published by Musica Per Immagini, or a soundtrack for a imaginary noir film set in the icy waters of northern Europe, inspired by the book “The Mystery of the Polarlys” by Georges Simenon. Drones and ethereal atmospheres are paired with a cinematic background in order to describe the frost of the northern seas and the restlessness of the journey: beyond the classic analog sounds, a specific use of additive and vector synthesis particularly in vogue during the Nineties and typical of vintage synthesizers.
Confused Machines unleashes it’s first release for 2024 and it’s a mesmerizing journey led by Ruggero Lambo aka Taru, utilizing minimal synths, squeezing beats into tiny fractures and exploring syncopations to a certain visionary degree where the tension between self-consciousness and unconsciousness arouse, a vague memory of a near future becomes present.
Juan Manuel Cidrón, hailing from Almeria (Andalusia), is a legendary Spanish synthesist who embarked on his musical journey in 1976. A veteran of analog electronic sounds, his early influences come from the Berlin School of the seventies (Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, etc.) and American Minimal music. ‘SLG3’ is a long-awaited double album with four lengthy tracks (one per side). It’s the first release exclusively on vinyl in over a decade, considering that Cidrón has mainly released his recent works on CD.
Alpenmarmot – Unheimliche Landschaftsgestaltung (translates as ‘eerie landscaping’) is my new power electronics industrial acid ambient noise project, Recorded at 1500 meters above sea level on the slopes of the Wildhorn mountain in Switzerland. Unfussy sewer-synths mixed with field recordings of the local Alpine nature and infrastructure. We hear mangled rusty cable cars, crumbling mountains, unknown nocturnal creatures and ofcourse the ever so cute Alpen Marmot.
‘Permanent Rain’ is introspective listening. Lean back and let your ears catch a source that moves, breaths, resonates and rises, until a quiet truth swells upon us. XIII captures truth in all its honesty. Sometimes it feels so physical, it’s as if time and elements of nature are peeled of layer after layer. This record combines songwriting with sonic hypnosis. A rhythmic, esoteric oasis, containing currents of mysticism, yet accompanied by contemporary electronics. Its elements translate to a brew of mutant raga, neofolk and tripped out celtic fantasies.
The Hipodrome Of Music 