Robert Johnson resident Chinaski makes his Omnidisc debut with 4 power cuts on the Polyester Series sub-label. Including a remix by Shokh.
disco
Traxx @ SmartBar (Chicago) 25.02.2018
Khidja – Plot [MT0016]
2018 is going to see the bond between Khidja & Malka Tuti strengthen, with the Romanian duo bringing forward their eclectic, cross-genre approach to electronic music. ‘Plot’ and ‘Am I Really Here’ are two dance-floor bangers, not hiding behind fashions and hype, the duo is pushing forward on both tracks, each with its own idea and story to tell.
VA – Hunchin’ All Night [RHMC001]
Hunee presents a collection of his favorite dance floor cuts from the 70ties till modern times. Going from afro to disco to techno, ”Hunchin’ All Night” holds a wide spectrum of songs, tracks by the wonderful Boncana Maïga, Pat Thomas, Black Beat Niks, Kenny Larkin, Larry Heard, Mappa Mundi and many more. Hunee, aka Hun Choi, is a Korean Berliner who has been drawn in music since a very young age. After working in record stores and studying musicology he resided in Amsterdam, where he released his debut album Hunch Music. As a DJ he has always followed ‘a hunch’, which gave him wings to communicate the music he loves with crowds all over the world. With Hunchin’ All Night, Hunee expresses his relationship with the dance floor.
Arp Frique – Welcome To The Colorful World of Arp Frique [CW001]
The Colorful World of Arp Frique is the exotic and super funky debut album of Niels Nieuborg. After his surprising, very well received debut release on Rush Hour, Arp Frique continues collaborating with Orlando Julius, Ed Motta, Americo Brito, Ronald Snijders and more. On this surprise debut album, he continues the same approach, delivering a scintillating set of tracks that gleefully join the dots between Afro-disco, jazz-funk, boogie, Caribbean reggae-disco, bossa-soul and the kind of up-tempo, synth-laden madness that defies easy categorization. Throughout, the presence of live drums, vocals and instrumentation gives the album a loose and fluid feel, as if what we’re listening to is not a fresh album, but rather a long lost African rarity from the turn of the ’80s.
Nu Guinea – Nuova Napoli [NG01]
After touring the world looking for sounds suitable for their vibrations, Nu Guinea decided to go back to square one, Napoli, where Massimo Di Lena and Lucio Aquilina were born and raised. They watched their city from a distance reconstructing its energy from their studio in Berlin, calibrating the synths on the meridian of Vesuvius, the volcano that has always protected and threatened Napoli. ‘Nuova Napoli’ is the result of a long musical research that has become a historical investigation on the sound that shaped Napoli during the ‘70s and ‘80s, starting from the contamination of genres (disco, jazz-funk, African rhythms) which ended up in Nu Guinea’s DNA. In this album the synthesizers fill the spaces between the past and the future, tightening in a single body acoustic instruments, electronics and voices in Neapolitan dialect. It is the first time that the duo has worked with such a large group of musicians, some of whom are exponents of the contemporary Neapolitan scene.
Elena Colombi – BIS Radio Show #934
VA – Selectors 005 [DKMNTL-SLCTRS005]
Lena Willikens is the kind of artist who’s only capable of following one path – her own. In many ways, she’s the archetypal selector, an unpredictable DJ who often eschews all notions of genre in favor of what she describes as “different temperatures, different time zones, different moods and a healthy portion of chaos.” Although her methods have certainly proven effective on the dancefloor, Willikens also refuses to be bound by its traditional limitations.
Max Abysmal – Sutekh’s Mirage / Donna, Don’t Stop [ST008]
Hysteric – In The Moonlight [SZABO9]
Khidja – BIS Radio Show #932
Alexander Arpeggio – Streng Geheim EP [BAU007]
Streng Geheim EP is Alexander Arpeggio’s first ever solo 12″. Coming out on Vienna’s admirable Neubau label, the EP is druggy, trippy and strangely alluring, featuring impressive use of psychedelic electronics and exotic, Middle Eastern melodies. Check, for example, the foreboding chords, gently pulsing drum machine beats and distortion-drenched Middle Eastern motifs of “Streng Geheim”, which is also given a weirder and even more hallucinogenic flavour on the acid-flecked Geier Aus Stahl Remix. Bonus cut “Du Hast Kein Gesicht”, an unusual but superb combination of muscular EBM grooves, whistling melodies and glassy-eyed house riffs, is also well worth a listen.
International Music System – Nonline [MD31804]
Mr Assister – Mambala / Bebny [BEAM03]
After the uneventful resolution of a labour dispute at Assistance HQ, the resident pencil-pushers turn their tempo dial to a leisurely 105bpm, at long last serving up lukewarm plates of BEAM-03 to the more sluggish peak-time massive. In ‘Mambala’, the now-obligatory bongo jostles with squelchy synths, whilst echoed claps and ominous bells should see even the most hesitant rabbit dragged down the hole. ‘Bebny’ experiments with low pH levels, metallic clutter, and some surprise horn cameos.
King Sporty & The Ex Tras – Rock Attack [ERC059]
The King Sporty reissue series continues with the lesser known, but no less worthy, Rock Attack. This first time release of the song under the King Sporty name – having previously only been released as by the vocalist in The Ex Tras, Johnny Griffin – brings in to focus the breadth of music, numerous alias and versions used by Noel Williams on his Konduko label. This is backed with another specially crated Discomix done in fine style by discoid duo, Faze Action.
Mr. Ho – Tales from Bao’An County [WRECKS017]
Klasse co-boss Mr. Ho steps up to the plate and knocks it out of the park with a new EP of brand new and original material. Inspired by listening to various library music and funk records found whilst digging in Asia, the Hong Kong based artist lays down three tracks of boogie-disco and funk inspired House music. Funky walking basslines, eerie 1980’s synthetics and spacey snares make for a total tip.
DJ Oil – Telephunk [DLM017]
The new release on Les Disques De La Mort is coming from DJ Oil aka Lionel Corsini. ‘Telephunk’ is nothing else than a monster breakbeat funk. If ‘Paresseis’ its twin dark sister, locking electro in its black music roots whilst remaining strangely ‘European’, then ‘Fall’ is its downer baggy brother.
Ceephax – Camelot Arcade [WEME046]
Camelot Arcade is the new triple LP from Ceephax Acid Crew on WeMe Records. 13 tracks of Camelot goodness with all the feeling and melodies we’ve come to expect from Ceephax and his collection of classic electronic hardware. The tracks range from the easy listening sound of Phraxby to the baroque dancefloor pump of Camelot Escalator, to the trap-esque cyber feel of Yodecahedron and the Detroit moodiness of The Green Night. Creon Happy and Trusthouse Forte have an upbeat classical feel (backed up of course by Ceephax’s favourite Roland drum machines.) While Path to the None and Shadowphax Part I&II are more dark in spirit. A lot of the tracks such as Life Started Tomorrow and The Great Greatsby were born randomly of quick jams with live keyboard playing and the album has an organic feel to it which a lot of the more formulaic electronic music lacks. All in all Camelot Arcade is a wonderful breath of fresh air and is sure to go down in history as one of Ceephax’s best.
Sordid Sound System – Psychedelic Dungeon Disco Vol. IV [INVINC18]
Having recently relocated to the remote redwood forests of Northern California in order to set up a satellite mixing studio for his old stomping ground, Glasgow’s Green Door Studio, Sordid Sound System returns to Invisible Inc with 4 cuts of Psychedelic Dungeon Disco. The EP opens with his most blissed out track to date ‘Die Ewige Nacht’, an eight and a half minute inverted sun ritual based around shimmering cascades of dubbed up electronic percussion and an overdriven tintinnabulated FM arp. Hi-NRG meets 80s B-Boy electro on ‘Crescent City’ with a careering off-road excursion into tripped out mutant carnival cavalcade territory. Dia De Muertos’s offbeat eerie percussion and driving low frequencies are met with spectral buzzing melodic refrains from the furthermost reaches of a decaying Oaxacan cemetery. The acid drenched ambient lullaby ‘You & Me’ brings proceedings to a fittingly fucked up close. Sordid Sound System’s last release on Invisible Inc, 2017’s ‘Fear Eats The Soul’, received plays and praise from the likes of Manfredas, Trevor Jackson, Sascha Funke, Optimo’s JD Twitch and Thomas Von Party.
WLDV – A Dying Feast [BAP117]
For years Nathan Church or Gionata Ecclesia has been cutting up floors in his native Bilbao. Recently the Basque man’s attention has turned from the Dj booth to the studio. Under his WLDV (We Love Dolce Vita) this Iberian electronic inspiration has cast long shadows and brightened rooms with his blend of horror score intensity and disco exuberance. WLDV arrives at the Bordello with a four tracker of serious intent. Sepulchral and sinister synthlines characterise A Dying Feast, nowhere more than in the haunting samples and clean drums of ‘A Bucket of Blood’. Cold chords gleam with icy menace while crisp claps punctuate the entrancing funk of ‘Danza Macabra’. Ecclesia toys with set parameters, exploring what lurks in the twilight between terror and titillation. This flirtation with the divine and the profane is plain to hear in the uneasy elegance and uplifting elation of ‘Far, Far Away’, a work of steady kicks, unsettling extracts and soaring strings. This Feast ends on a delectable note. Keys dance and spiral in the intoxicating ‘Laying Down On Cosmic Dust’, an enthralling end to and enthralling EP.
The Hipodrome Of Music 