Belgrade’s infamous club night delivers again. Yes sophomore release brings us a 6-track EP by label’s founder Stevie Whisper including collabs with Andria, 33.10.3402, Wilson and Mystee. Nofield music with some spoken-word-shoegaze. Belgrade all in.
Rotterdam is miserably cold and rainy. Plagued by gentrification and technological unemployment, the harbor city is slowly turning into a desolate, mechanized metropolis. Secretly tucked away on the outskirts, if you know where to look, there are a few remaining military bunkers. This is where the city’s youth go sporadically to relieve their anger and grief. During these nights, they tirelessly rage to the dystopian sound of Gamma Intel’s slow-burning electro and hypno-acid, before returning to the struggles of their daily lives.
Jensen Interceptor & Assembler Code team up for Dance Trax Vol.19 – 4 tracks of high octane electro nuttiness!
Alessandro Adriani has become a trusted source for all kinds of beyond-the-grave minimal synth, industrial and coldwave delights. Aside from his work in releasing forgotten gems and up to the minute synth incantations, Adriani has also been quietly issuing out his own music as well. Originally released in 2016, ‘Montagne Trasparenti’ is now repressed on Mannequin Records with a full new graphic design.
Innershades with his signature mixture of electro, house and techno hybrids on Time Passages.
Lisière Collectif returns on their own label with LSR No. 03 EP, a collection of two original tracks and a reinterpretation by Vlad Caia and Cristi Cons, formerly known as Sideways Invisibility Theory or simply – SIT.
Jason Letkiewicz has always swum against the musical tides, flitting between different solo pseudonyms (including Steve Summers, Death Commando and Alan Hurst) and collaborative projects (most notably Mutant Beat Dance) in order to explore different aspects of his leftfield inspirations. With his latest release, a first full-length outing for Artificial Dance entitled ‘Mirage Information’, the Chicago-based artist is operating under an alias that celebrates this approach: Opposing Currents. It’s an alias he’s used once before – for a track featured on Chronditic Sound’s 2015 cassette compilation Non-Christian Referent – but ‘Mirage Information’ sounds like an artistic rebirth. Densely layered, mind-altering and often intense, the album’s seven tracks update the Cold War paranoia and pulsating electronics of EBM and industrial music for today’s complex and chaotic political climate. Throughout, Letkiewicz smothers off-kilter drum machine rhythms and throbbing, body-jacking synthesizer basslines in untold layers of hazy audio detail, creating a dystopian sound soup out of which alien electronic melodies, psychedelic acid lines and barely audible vocals emerge. At times, such as on angry opener ‘Lying Awake’, the extra-terrestrial ‘Dissolve’ and foreboding ‘Shallow Grave’, we’re invited to dance in the darkness in celebration of impending doom. On other occasions, such as the poignant and melancholic closing cut ‘It Awaits’, Letkiewicz simply seems exasperated at the chaos that is life in the 21st century. It makes for a genuinely arresting and thought-provoking listen.
Rat Life Records presents Various Rats. A compilation of ultimate Party Hits for the downfall of society. Happy Doomsday everyone. If there is a rat there is life.
Emotional Rescue announces an EP with two (un)classic songs from Thomas Leer, remastered, reappraised and reinterpreted with new versions by Bullion. The release starts with ‘Saving Grace’, a long famous cosmic classic, it’s mid-tempo, spacey, lifting repetition is the perfect soundtrack for trips straight to the stars. This is backed with ‘Tight As A Drum’, a quintessential Leer production, where Teutonic drums is overlaid with sequencers and synth tones to elevate the song to some kind of disorientating outer-dimensional dub, while his lucid, spoken word vocals instill degradation and reinvention. Bullion is offering his own take on these two songs. A revered artist in his own time, the warmth and depth of his versions takes the originals to his own inner world.
New release on Notte Brigante, the label, radio and party from Lyon, run by HLM38 aka Julien Viallet. This is the second release from the label and comes with a track by Julien’s new project General P.D.C, with a remix from Beesmunt Soundsystem one the B-side. It’s about dubby/tribal vibes, with some 90’s UK breakbeat in it.
Plant43 aka Emile Facey, one of CPU’s originators delivers his fourth album ‘Three Dimensions’. Eight tracks of crystalline electro with his signature epic pads and Blade Runner-esque melodies. Facey is one of the most respected electro artists of today and this album galvanises this reputation. DJs will find several weapons amongst this package of beautiful electronic music that rewards both headphone listeners as much as a big room.
Rotterdam’s finest new analogue electro technicians Animistic Beliefs start 2019 running with a full EP on Cultivated Electronics. Four tracks of pure machine funk electro with a remix from Solar One head honcho and CE regular The Exaltics.
Sometime FTP contributor Sansibar is the latest experimentalist to make his bow on Natural Sciences, a label that we reckon is amongst the most vital and interesting around right now. Spat out of Helsinki’s underground punk and metal scene of the Lepakkomies institute, Sansibar steps up with his debut vinyl release of chronic electronic plague pulled from winters of darkness, new beat and discarded political manifestos.
The Hipodrome Of Music 