After a longer break Mainakustik is back with a release by the labelowner himself, Matt Star. He delivered two melodic oldskool flavoured technotracks called ‘Casionation pt.1 + pt.2’. Its also the teaser to Matt’s upcoming LP which will be released in spring 2013. The EP comes around with a Unbroken Dub remix.
On Luxury Problems, Mancunian producer Andy Stott builds on the knackered house and techno sound showcased in last year’s brace of brilliance, Passed Me By and We Stay Together. The album will contain eight tracks recorded in the last 12 months, with five of the songs featuring vocals from his old piano teacher who Stott hadn’t seen since he was a teenager in 1996, with the opening track “Numb” seeing her looped and layered vocals exuding a cinematic quality. The paranoid, dense, slow-moving qualities that Stott has made his signature remain, but they’ve been toyed with and manipulated, and the vocal elements feel like a calculated gamble – one that has truly paid off. Modern Love go all out on presentation too, with Luxury Problems arriving in a superb gatefold sleeve.
The inspirational Rod Modell aka Deepchord follows up Sommer, his second album on Soma, with two exclusive tracks perfectly laid down in only the way he can, giving us ‘Tonality of Night’. Both tracks clock in over the 10 minute mark as Deepchord takes us on yet another journey through the unfathomable depths of his unmistakable production.
Four deadly cuts of timeless, jackin’ house and deep techno professionalism. OCH returns to his Autoreply home with a new series of split 12”s inviting a diverse group of producers to share a slab of wax. For the A Side he opens with “Deltic” which sets the mood with tough yet soulful chicago vibes. OCH’s second contribution is “Freeze-Thaw” showcasing a deep, hypnotic groove alongside powerful sub-bass, lush female vox with dreamy analogue pads that bridge the gap between artistic creativity and memorable club versatility. On the flip side it’s Romanian all-rounder, The Model. Here he delivers two ultra-phat workouts in the form of “Dungeon Man”, an infectious chord driven floor-burner and “Stancuto” a stripped back, percussive take on the same theme demonstrating his emerging new warehouse sound.
The oldskool hero A Guy Called Gerald with his first release on Bosconi Records. The release randomly arrives in coincidence with the definitive closing of another legend, the place in Berlin that has been a symbol for years of the cultural renaissance of the german capital after the wall, the Tacheles. When Gerald just moved to Berlin, he got his house and his studio inside that very inspiring and artistic place, and as a tribute and homage to his legendary figure, some mysterious writer draw G’s face on the right side of that building with the shamanic enigma above that giant mural “How Long Is Now”. A1 gives the title to the EP and it’s subliminal dark and psychedelic after-hours dope session, while on B1 there’s the shady and sexy atmosphere of “Groove of the Ghetto”, a driving and funky house tune sustained by an ultra fat synth bass and enriched by soulful vocals and deep pads, while on B2 the EP ends wih the brutal Uk bass bonus beats monster entitled “202”. In memory of Tacheles and the good old days.
The new bomb on Echocord Colour comes from Nick Höppner and Scott Monteith aka Deadbeat. Höppner only releases sporadically, but whether it’s solo or alongside Lee Jones as MyMy, his records are always remarkable. The 2 tracks for this release are both peaktime tracks. Deadbeat did the remix.
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.
The second of Answer Code Request’s two 12″s for Marcel Dettmann’s MDR imprint sees three more rough techno cuts with 90s influences. A-side track “The Host” has echoes of Shed in its hypnotic metallic snares and looping, malfunctioning synth line. On the flip, the producer clearly indulges his tendencies for 90s IDM with “Thu”, a combination of ambient Aphex style melody and minimal D&B rhythms, while “Mikro” combines a heavily panned line of kosmische-style arpeggio, deep sub-bass and skittering breakbeats.
Although Patrick Graser has been producing since 2008, it’s as Answer Code Request that he’s arguably made the biggest impact. Now he finds himself on Marcel Dettmann’s MDR imprint for the first of two 12″s; A-side track “Main Mode” is perhaps a straighter cut than we’ve come to expect from the producer, as peak time chord stabs combine with a rolling 4/4 beat with subtle 90s breakbeat influences. On the flip, he takes things in a more experimental direction, as “Biokinetik” combines processed chopped up percussion with a sludgy bass that heaves under its own weight, and “Untitled” throws crisp 2-step snares together with ambient pads.
Giegling is back with a killer deep dusty techno release by the Prince Of Denmark Tracks that slowly rise above the layers of swampy dubby sounds and brighten up like a beautiful autumn morning. Gentle seductive sounds coming in a variation of soft colours.
Siberian producer Unbroken Dub makes his debut on Delsin Records. The three track Checkpoint EP kicks off with ‘I Want To Make This Louder’, a widescreen, gently undulating soundscape with scraping percussion and thick, smeared synths. Cutting through the dense dub fug are sharp edged percussive ticks, driving the track forwards gently as more and more analogue textures unfold and unfurl. ‘Det Special’ is less smooth and more choppy, rising up and down as abrasive white noise swirls add caustic surfaces to the hopping wood block hits and buried deep in the mix bassline. Again, it’s seriously analogue and as cerebral as it is physical. Closer ‘Insane’ is a much brighter cut, instead of sounding introverted and melancholic it offers some hope thanks to the buoyant hi hat ringlets, up right kick drums and glassy, tinkling echo of percussion. Contrasting heavy bass with light percussion as he does, this young producer continues to find new life in the ancient form of dub.
Rotary Cocktail Records presents the remixes of Marko Fürstenberg´s album ‘Gesamtlaufzeit’, with reworks of Reference, Rhauder, Pattern Repeat and Rita Hess.
“Alpha Centauri, known as Rigil Kentaurus, Rigil Kent, or Toliman, is the brightest star in the southern constellation of Centaurus. Although it appears to the unaided eye as a single object, Alpha Centauri is actually a binary star system (designated Alpha Centauri AB or α Cen AB) whose combined visual magnitude of –0.27 would qualify it as the third single brightest star in the night sky after the –1.46 magnitude Sirius and the –0.72 magnitude Canopus.”This second release of the Grey Series is dedicated to the above mentioned star ‘Alpha Centauri’. Ness uses all his skills and experience to create a soundtrack to describe the atmosphere of three important stages. Drones and metallic sounds that move through space and a mystical universe. Three tracks where you can feel the depth and experience the fear of the unknown.
Dino Sabatini is not just a Prologue artist having the first 12” release in our catalogue, he is also one of the most authentic Prologue artists who is responsible for providing the well known Prologue sound aesthetic. Dino´s productions always deliver exactly our vision of music; deep, hypnotic, atmospheric and mind-driven. It’s no surprise that we are more than proud to announce the third Prologue album this year, which comes from our high respected mate from Berlin. The album is called “Shaman’s Paths” and it is more than just an album for all of us. Dino´s Shaman’s Paths is his personal interpretation of the sounds of Africa, which provides since decades the basis of trance in order to loose your mind in sounds and drum arrangements and it is his personal interpretation of the Prologue sound aesthetic. The Album is planned for October 2012 and will be distributed over “WordandSound”. One part will be a CD mixed with all tracks, which simply is the Shaman’s Paths to follow. Further we will also have one 12” Vinyl which will contain the most club oriented hypnotic tracks from the Album and a complete digital album with all separate tracks. Dino is now available for bookings and his album tour.
Ambient and Dub Techno dramas from Hamburg’s Edoardo Zerbinati. ‘Forest Echo’ is his debut album and scopes deep, rolling, atmospheric Techno scenery summoning the mystical aura of mid-late ’90s electronica. This 12” sampler of the full length, 10-track CD album, includes also a remix by Adbullah Rashim.
Neurotron presents the fourth release on their out label, featuring two pure, deep and dubby detroit underground dub house/techno cuts.
The 12″ starts off with Anisa, dedicated to Marco’s lady in mind and partner in wine. The eastern influences from his hood aren’t easy to ignore, and if u listen very carefully u can feel and smell the shisha dust inside the Landwehr street. In a city like Munich it’s hard to rent an extra room for a studio due the extremely high prices, so we all have bedroom studios with the advantage that we can do music whenever we feel to. However our Stressin turkish Neighbour behaves like the pain in the ass of the whole neighbourhood. But we all have a Vision and the Night gives us the support we need to create our own space and our own time within our own spirit on 180 g vinyl from now on with a vinyl only cut on every 12″.
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 