Ekman – Doomsday Argument EP [CR1295]

Creme Organization returns in July with four searing electro cuts from Dutchman Ekman. Mixing up West Coast electro with tougher, more textured techno styles in recent releases for Berceuse Heroique and Bedouin Record, this artist is as much about the past as the future and proves that across this new and impressive set of tracks. Doomsday Argument is not as dark as you would expect form the name: its a lithe and slippery electro affair with crisp snares and gurgling bass all topped off by a freaky top line. The Great Filter mixes up distorted bass with rippling glass synths and sounds both spooky and cosmic, then Post Singularity Day picks up the pace with a quick and urgent Drexcyian style that is restless, dynamic and busy. Last of all Antifragile is a wild acid workout with rocking beats and ripping 303s that twitch every nerve in your body.

listen

Ekman – Doomsday Argument EP [CR1295]

Dmitry Distant / Natural Magic – Dark Leader 003 [DL003]

Dark Leader 003 featuring Riga’s Dmitry Distant and Portland’s own Natural Magic. Side A begins with “Tukšums” a driving acid jam by Dmitry Distant that brings the energy level up to 11. Natural Magic’s “Most High” polishes off side A with a triumphantly positive romp that puts the love icing right on the cake. Side B opens with “Artificial Joy” a breaky acid track by Dmitry Distant that will engross the dance floor with groovy sinister funk. This release concludes with Natural Magic’s “Dude Can Dance” a drummy piece of hypnotic dance music that dabbles in experimentalism.

listen

Dmitry Distant / Natural Magic – Dark Leader 003 [DL003]

Indoor Plants – Udacha 15 [UDACHA015]

Udacha just gets better and better with every release, branching out into ever more exciting shapes and styles beyond their house and techno foundations. On this album from Vyacheslav Shutov aka Indoor Plants, wild fourth world visions collide with hardware processes in a dazzling display of transcendental music for those who like their thought-provoking tunes to pack a punch. The likes of “Targitaus” deconstruct club music conventions in a quest for new rhythmic purpose, and yet the soundsystem pressure is expertly sculpted out of the daring shape of the music. Elsewhere there’s surrealism in abundance, as on the wonderfully weird “Hunch”, and that’s just scratching the surface of this truly essential LP.

listen

Indoor Plants – Udacha 15 [UDACHA015]

Mick Clarke – Play Time [FRV025]

CLARKE, Mike - Play Time

Frigio Records is going back in time for its latest release, some 38 years into the past. Back then a young Newcastle man was experimenting with early electronic instruments and synths. Mick Clarke is his name and nearly forty years later he is still at it. Two tracks have been borrowed from Clarke’s seminal Games LP, each given a bit of modern boot polish from MinimalRome’s Heinrich Dressel and Frigio father Juanpablo. “Walls of the Night” is a blissed out work of ambient prog rock abstraction. Think rumbling horror score and soaring guitar strings. Heinrich Dressel offers a giallo dipped remix. The building bars of the original are maintained, beats added for ballast and darkened organ keys for a remake etched with murderous intent. The flip is introduced by the dreamy “Time Is Now.” Slender synthlines intertwine with gentle strings in a cerebral work. Juanpablo tweaks the 1979 material. Syrupy acid lines swim in meandering currents, a thick beat keeping time in murky waters of modulations and undulations.

listen

Mick Clarke – Play Time [FRV025]

VA – Plaza 001 [PLAZA001]

Plaza’s first physical release features 4 tracks from an all local lineup of Atripat, Consulate, Lanngman and Mike Midnight. This one comes from a special place, a place where raw electronic excursions go head to head with heavy machine fuelled jams. Conceived in the North Western Coast and commemorated from the depths of the City.

listen

VA – Plaza 001 [PLAZA001]

Ekman – Sturm Und Drang [SHIP051]

Roel Dijcks, better known as Ekman, is no stranger to Shipwrec. Following his Heimwee EP and Synaptic Feedback Loops comes a two tracker of serious proportions. “Sturm un Drang” gets the ball rolling. A rasping beat cuts into thick bass. A pool of liquified notes shimmers as an isolated world unfolds, a tactile world of arcing strings and clean complexity. If “Sturm un Drang” is a glimpse into an alien realm, “First Mover” is surely the beast that inhabits it. Bulbous bars trudge through a swamp of static, distortion drips from cymbals leaving melodies buried in the marshland.

listen

Ekman – Sturm Und Drang [SHIP051]

Outermost – Intruder EP [EVR025]

When the derangement has reached the limitless limits. Like the sound of a light-beam reaching the immense gravitational waves of a black hole. Is there sound in nothingness This is your Outermost reality.

listen

Outermost – Intruder EP [EVR025]

Cardopusher – Nothing Left To Believe In EP [ZONE029]

Zone Records welcomes Cardopusher for their next EP, a five track affair that is arresting from the off. Venezuelan born Cardopusher is now based in Barcelona and co-founded the Classicworks label. His diverse and experimental sound takes him from techno to electro to acid to rave to house, all with his own singular perspective. Kicking things off is the raw and raucous ‘Nothing Left to Believe In.’ It is a macho tune with fractured vocals, wild synths and slap funk drums all sounding industrial and tortured. Then comes ‘Blast Cut’, a more dynamic and stripped back electro groove with a corrugated bassline and metallic synth stabs all sounding informed by the past but looking to a distant future.

listen

Cardopusher – Nothing Left To Believe In EP [ZONE029]

Timothy J. Fairplay – Mindfighter EP [HNRUK004]

Timothy J. Fairplay is revisiting Hoga Nord Rekords to release the 12inch EP Mindfighter: photosensitive electronic music from one of the pillars of the modern meaningful dance music scene. Together with Scott Frasier, T.J.F. is running the record label ‘Crimes Of The Future’ and he is also known as one half of The Asphodells together with Andrew Weatherall. This is his second release on Hoga Nord Rekords and his first EP on the label.

listen

Timothy J. Fairplay – Mindfighter EP [HNRUK004]

Mor Elian – Cymatic Ring [FAM001]

Fever AM comes from a Berlin connection between a pair of artists with roots on either side of the Mediterranean Sea and on both sides of the Atlantic. Label founders Mor Elian and Rhyw (one half of Cassegrain) share many musical reference points reaching back to early childhood right up to the present including the deeper, darker reaches of electronic music. The label is the pair s rawest and truest realisation of these influences. The first EP will be from Elian, a sublime 4 tracker that has matured after a winter in the studio and is now ready for club play – from heating up peak time dance floors to trippier after hours moments. Sprinkling her trademark stripped back sound with electro and breakbeats the release sets out the label s stall to release vibrant, challenging dance floor music.

listen

Mor Elian – Cymatic Ring [FAM001]

Annanan & Maroje T. – The Brooklyn Sessions [PNKMN020]

The Brooklyn Sessions bring together old and new Pinkman friends. Annanan returns, this time with Maroje T, for three pieces of NY darkness. Acid tainted torment opens the 12″, pain and rejection catalogued in the barren “Confrontations in Terms of Sexuality.” “I Saw You” maintains that cold edge. Militaristic percussion is dipped in industrial grease, lost samples circling in a haze of distortion. The pair explore reduction with tracks being boiled down to leave only distilled dread behind. The breathy vocals of “I Am” close, drum patterns looped into machine groan and the aching abyss.

listen

Annanan & Maroje T. – The Brooklyn Sessions [PNKMN020]

VA – Selectors 003 [DKMNTLSLCTRS003]

DETTMANN, Marcel/VARIOUS - Selectors 003

Dekmantel’s Selectors series now continues with an edition curated by Marcel Dettmann. Although he’s now known as one of the world’s most celebrated techno artists, even Marcel Dettmann had to start somewhere. Long before he ever held court at Berghain (or its predecessor, Ostgut), he was just another young boy in Eastern Germany, one whose earliest encounters with capitalism involved spending every penny he could scrape together down at the local record shop. In those days, it wasn’t techno that got him excited, but new wave, post-punk, industrial and EBM acts like Front 242 and Depeche Mode. Get back to his roots right here.

vinyl / CD

VA – Selectors 003 [DKMNTLSLCTRS003]

Sterac Electronics – Things To Think About [VDLP001]

Some things are just too good to be hidden from view. That’s certainly the case with Things To Think About, the first album from Dutch electronic music legend Steve Rachmad’s lesser-known Sterac Electronics project. It’s a while, though, since the public has been treated to a heavy dose of Sterac Electronics material. He first established the alias at the turn of the millennium, primarily as an outlet for hardware-driven electro music shot through with funk and soul. Recently, Rachmad and Tom Trago decided to revisit the Sterac Electronics archive, discovering a killer collection of cuts created at different points over the course of the last 15 years. Now 9 of those spellbinding hardware jams have been gathered together for the first time on Things To Think About, a warm, rich and evocative collection of electro-fuelled workouts that giddily pay tribute to the music of Rachmad’s youth.

listen

Sterac Electronics – Things To Think About [VDLP001]