Versalife Live @ Harvey (Copenhagen) 12.12.2014
boris bunnik
Conforce Interview
Versalife – Collision With The Past I [FR029]
Sometimes people from different environmental backgrounds cross paths with one another through similar interests, and they notice that they have more in common then a certain taste in music alone. Boris Bunnik (aka Conforce) is hailing from the small scenic Dutch island Terschelling, that can be seen as the complete opposite environmental background as the dirty streets of Rotterdams South Side that drew the first guidelines for Frustrated Funk’s watchword: Mad Drama From Everyday Life. Although the background is opposite, the drama and struggle of daily life seem to have more similarities then one would expect. Struggling creative minds searching for correct paths, fighting to keep focused with daily routines, burning ships, moving forward, trying to bend negativity into something positive, writing music as an outlet for their compulsive need to create. This is our game. No hits, no hype, no bullshit, just the real deal, bringing timeless techno from the heart that will always stay untouched. So here’s FR029, experimental techno from the young master mind thats Versalife.
Vernon Felicity – Superficial Pleasures EP [MID004]
Number four will be born to the floor. Melomanic mastermind Vernon Felicty is the freshest residential of the harbour city and we had to trouble up faster then Bonny & Clyde’s motorbike. Here’s what happened… Get ready for a fix of Rotterdam’s danger!
Conforce – Depth Over Distance [107DSR]
One of the most busy and consistently excellent producers in all of electronic music is Boris Bunnik, and now he is back under his most loved alias, Conforce, on his most regular home, Delsin. The Dutchman is best known for his serious deep and underwater tracks that are part dub, part ambient and part techno.
Conforce @ Six D.O.G.S. (Athens) 14.03.2014
Conforce Interview
Vernon Felicity – Non Harmonic [C#SOS05]
Conforce @ Boiler Room, ADE (Amsterdam) 19.10.2013
Conforce – Kinetic Image [102DSR]
Boris Bunnik has finished his third full-length album as Conforce. Entitled ‘Kinetic Image’, the ten-track album is the sound of Conforce producing without the dancefloor in mind. It’s the sound of him moving away from the past and into the present. The album has very much been designed to be heard in one sitting, as a complete experience that moves away from regimented 4/4 beats and into slower, more surreptitious tempos. The result is an all consuming sonic journey of intriguing and inspiring sounds that range from full on cerebral excursions into vast open spaces that throb invitingly (Scientific Trajectory) to underwater daydreams that suspend you deep in an ocean as various mycobacterial details float by. There’s also more industrial sounding fair that depicts a desolate warehouse in perennial decay (Semantic Field) and mysterious echo chambers that spread out all around you as celestial light beams and haunting melodic ripples gently float by as per the excellent Temporary Reversals.
Hexagon – Blue Hour EP [TRSD002]
Having made a name for himself as a heavyweight ambient, electro and techno producer as Conforce and Versalife, Boris Bunnik is now ready to release his second release on his Transcendent imprint. The label started to expand his musical vision, and is focusing on deep and abstract mental sound excursions, also by future talents from the local scene in Holland. After stepping out of his own on the Red Shift EP, the producer delves even deeper into the unknown, into a world of filmic soundscapes, evocative sonic imagery and spacious abstract worlds. Forever keen to harness his studio technology, Bunnik comes up with a coherent but versatile mini-novel under his Hexagon moniker. Cold, but with a soul shimmering through the carefully crafted synthetic sounds.
Versalife @ BFC Canvas (Amsterdam) 30.04.2013
Conforce @ Linke Soto (Maastricht ) 27.04.2013
Vernon Felicity – Dawning EP [MOS019]
The unstoppable Boris Bunnik is back once again, this time as Vernon Felicity with a four track EP for MOS Recordings. The tracks see him explore his usual analogue heavy sound, but there is a little more space in his arrangements, a more rueful mood. The title track ‘Dawning’ is slow and purposeful, with acid pricks and twitches peppering a churning groove. Next, ‘Breaking Silence’ is more kinetic, with claps, hits and squiggly melodies all bouncing off each other as pronounced basslines strike a melancholic note below. On the flip, ‘Wrong Notion’ has plenty of height to it, again with eco systems of analogue lines and acid belches all weaving their way around each other and the raw, splintered beats below, before last track ‘3’ explores wide open cosmic synth spaces with lingering pads, mournful Blade Runner style synth lines and gently churning rhythms all soothing your brain and body in equal measure.
Versalife – XLR8R Podcast 285
Conforce – Time Dilation EP [96DSR]
It’s increasingly hard to keep tabs on everything Boris Bunnik does these days, but one of his most loved aliases is Conforce. It is that identity he assumes here for a return to one of his most regular homes, Delsin, following the still excellent ‘Escapism’ album he served up at the end of 2011. This Time Dilation EP is designed for deeper dancefloors: ‘Nomad’ roams in dark and derelict spaces with the clatter of machines off in the distance and a sense of tension never far away. ‘Receiver’ is a more purposeful cut that rolls on vast techno kicks as glassy tinkles and ominous synths colour the backdrop before ‘Last Anthem’ bangs the hardest of the lot. It’s techno, but techno stuff with cinematism, techno that really traps you in the imagined alien world of Conforce from start to finish. Closing out the EP with ‘Embrace’, Bunnik brings you back to earth with a softening dub cushion that glides forwards through more huge open spaces that sound like underwater caves. Few design sounds as evocative as this man, despite the fact he does so on such a regular basis.
Versalife – Vantage Point [CWCS007]
Versalife aka Boris Bunnik returns to the Clone West Coast Series for more under sea level electro-techno. After his debut 12inch series Night Time Activities, here a full length album inspired by the horizons and emptyness of his home lands in Friesland. Accompanied by beautiful artwork of fellow Frisian, and one of Hollands most talented painters, Robert Zandvliet (who happens to have his atelier around the corner of the Clone Hq). His amazing painting ”Winter by Jouswier” (spread among the front and backside of the digipack) symbolizes perfectly the rhythm of the open spaces in Friesland. Especialy in the whitened more abstract and cold winter landscape thats almost synonym for Versalife’s abstract ice cold electro techno.
Hexagon – Red Shift EP [TRSD001]
Having made a name for himself as a heavyweight dub, ambient and techno producer as Conforce, Versalife and Silent Harbour, Boris Bunnik is now branching out into label ownership with a close friend. The imprint will be called Transcendent, will be vinyl only and aims to focus on “deep and abstract mental sound excursions.” The first release is a four track EP from Hexagon, a producer who first appeared with a bonus 12″ that accompanied the release of Conforce’s Escapism album. Now stepping out on his own, the producer delves even deeper into the unknown, into a world of filmic soundscapes, evocative sonic imagery and spacious abstract worlds. Opener ‘Red Shift’ is ripe with intrigue and mystery, like the intrepid explorations of a spacecraft into the deeply unfamiliar whilst ‘Interference’ takes us into the bowls of a spaceship where robots seem to be spinning drills, computers bleep under their work load and all the while a thin and occult drone lingers in the background. ‘Fractional Wavelength’ is a nebulous world of more machine mechanics, this time glued together with a rubbery bass boom every so often, before ‘Permutation’ is the sound of an alien lab in full flow.. liquid drips, glassy tinkles and metallic sparks all send your mind into overdrive as you try to fill in a visual picture of this very real sonic world.
Conforce – Smoke Machine Podcast 061
Silent Harbour – Silent Harbour [ECHOCORDCD012]
Dutchman Boris Bunnik already crafts deeper house and techno than most. Forever keen to experiment and push the boundaries, though, the man best known as Conforce has recently started a new moniker, Silent Harbour. To explain the roots of the project it’s best to go right inside the mind of Bunnik, where he himself has been lost recently, exploring notions of isolation, deep-sea submersion, aquatic environments and all the abstract ambiance such places entail. Silent Harbour is about exploring the deep unknown, about slowing tempos without losing focus on details, about sound tracking the everyday movie that plays out at the bottom of the deepest darkest oceans of which we know so little. Listening the ten tracks that make up the debut album on Echocord and the concept shines through immediately: right from the opening sound you’re lowered below the sea’s surface as all sorts of little sonic plankton float by. Sunrays occasionally beam down from above; sometimes you’re in warm water, other times it’s colder, but always is there a gentle lull back and forth like the most soothing deep-sea swell. Somehow Bunik even manages to soundtrack what seem like underwater wrecks… rusting metal, tinkling glass and swarms of predatory fish looking for a feed. There are even sections which speak of danger and peril, as if a storm is brewing miles above or as if a shark is on his way… on the other hand, though, there are also passages alive with a Spring-like optimism, where coral grows, aquatic plants flower and new ocean life is born. So evocative is this album you’ll hardly notice that it has very few beats, instead you’re mind is busy painting the pictures to go with the sounds.
The Hipodrome Of Music 