Sensory Memory’ marks the second installment on Echovolt’s brand new series of mini-albums that has opened them up to more experimental fare. Kane Ikin is an experimental musician from Melbourne. Drawing from an isolated upbringing on the south coast of Western Australia, he creates music influenced by science fiction, broken synthesizers and endless horizons. Equal parts narcotic and kinetic, “Sensory Memory’ is built as an exploration in the genres and sounds formative to Kane’s sound.
Dark minimal elektronix by Russian based LVRIN on Broken Dreams, the white label series of Pinkman Records.
Veteran Lyonnais producer, Umwelt, has a new album to launch the LP focused sub-label of Killekill – Boidae. “Days Of Dissent” is a polished 8-tracker loaded with bold electro stabs, acid riffs, epic, subtle melodies, drama and funk. “It is emotional, it tells a story, it is easily recognizable and it is not interchangeable”. The talented producer is one of a kind as he produces without computers in a single take, without any edits or mixing and cut to dubplates directly in his home which he uses to play out during his sets, conjuring up a insanely vast backlog of productions. Umwelt predominantly releases on his own imprints, however recently made appearances on legendary electro label Shipwrec and Helena Hauff’s Return to Disorder imprint.
UK wave funk veteran DMX Krew returns to Abstract Forms with his latest double album project. Escape-MCP features 13 tracks of synth drenched electro and elastic techno grooves drawing inspiration from a 1983 computer game where the player is trapped inside a computer by a rogue processor. Fortunately DMX Krew isn’t trapped inside a computer and is still with us making killer grooves.
Alpha 606 is Hialeah born, Miami dwelling Armando Martinez, who offers an intoxicating concoction in the form of his unique take on electro. Taking the genre’s classic sci-fi synthetic aesthetics and coding them with his own Cuban musical heritage, there’s a real funk and spirit in Armando’s machines. The carnivalian drum frenzy of “Afriba”, the tipped humanized elements of “Shake”, the hypnotic house headnods of “Black Mermaid” the roomy reverberations and lean make-up of “Whale Memory” and plenty more comprise a unique melting pot that references all points past and future.
Dynarec is one of those who is capable to impress each and every time that he delivers a release. Dynarec improves on even the most advanced experimental electro as no one did before, giving it depth, awareness and knowledge, making it more rigid and linear. A journey into those post Drexciya atmospheres which reach some of the highest moments in a new. Romantic and complex, rich in detail and unlikely to be imitated or surpassed by others on the contemporary new electro scene. Drexciyan kind of Electro with The Exaltics and Voiski on remix duty.
Betonkust and Palmbomen II are back with their second collaborative effort. This time on the Dutch Pinkman label. Six brand new tracks that seem a lot darker than their previous work. Somewhere between Belgian new beat from 1988 and the West Coast Sound Of Holland. A lo-fi nightmare that turns out to be reality. Pounding drums, paranoid acid patterns and angsty out of control synth choirs.
Andrea Pellegrinelli and Davide Brugola are two men born and bred in the traditions of italo and electro disco. The duo, as Forklift & Saw, release their debut 12″, Regression, as they melt past influences into the present. Meandering hooks, emotion soaked keys and snapping rhythms are at the centre of this Milan partnership’s music. Across four tracks the pair delivers crashing snares, starlit synths and rumbling arpeggiators. Infectious full bodied funk oozes from this fledgling outfit, crisp percussion supporting their night gazing melodies.
Giallo Disco returns from hiding all summer, taking comfort in the encroaching darkness with a very special EP from Ali Renault. ‘Keeper Of The Seven Keys’ includes three tracks of cosmified aphex bliss, where pan pipes are the sound of death whistles and hats scatter like falling shells. The sky is falling and it sounds amazing. Closing up the EP is a italo-tech remix by Antoni Maiovvi.
Continue reading “Ali Renault – Keeper Of The Seven Keys [GD019]”
Ahead of his third release for Rush Hour’s ‘No Label’ and following his Alien Jam’s ‘International Journey of Synthetic Emotion’, Design A Wave’s debut on Subsubtropics ‘International Journey of Applied Music’ conveys another lush excursion into his ever colourful and deep-seated sonic realms.
Subtle music, radically strange and unafraid of the deep, but with a killer understanding of rhythm. Lush drum-machine nocturnes, gnarly electronica and glorious flowerings of zoned-out dubspace: an evolutionary music, continuously engaged with experimentation both in the studio and the club.
Nocta Numerica sixth instalment comes courtesy of French duo Glass Figure, putting on display six cuts that set old-school breaks and hectic electro grooves against an ebullient retro-futuristic backdrop. Vocoder blazing and synth arpeggios glancing off, the Drexciyan title-track – which you can now stream in full via our channels, whizzes at mega light speed like a space-traveling vessel flashes across fields of asteroids, in search for a new planet to colonise.
Following his stunning ‘Everything Is Nothing’ EP, which kicked off the Hubble Telescope Series for Solar One Music in 2015, Luxus Varta (aka Emeric Di Paolo) is back with a new four track EP for French label, Intramuros. The EP opens with the wonderfully shimmering ‘Wenn’ before Luxus Varta makes striking use of his background as a drummer on ‘Lizzy’. ‘Losquato’ is a playful addition with stripped back rhythms under Paris’ story telling that bemoans a man’s work frustrations and resulting mental state (‘I gave up therapy about a month ago. My therapist jumped out of a window’), while closer ‘Tempsun’ is almost melancholy in its measured minimalism.
Part 2 of Bio Rhythm’s Pleasure Box. Enter the second circle – the realm of lust & perversity. This time the pleasure is brought by MB, Joe Lentini & Shitcluster, delivering some sh*t hot contemporary jacking blackmagic braindance jams for all you carnal sinners.
Baby Whale doses a cross between classic Chicago house and E2-E4 with a no-prisoners boogie bassline and piano chords glistering in from Rimini. JV’s signature spaced-out production assures a head-turning dancefloor banger for the 4am crew. Adam & Eve is an intriguing mix of exotica and Arthur Russell. ‘The sound of Matisse,’ says the label.
It’s a first for Pinkman and Lux Rec. Yet the two labels have so much in common that it isn’t surprising they have been drawn towards each other. And The Rosa Luxembourg Files is the result of this collaboration. Rotterdam and Zurich, Ian Martin and Barbir & Nicola Kazimir, exploring different shades of the same black, wandering at the fringes, plunging into obscurity and machines talk. There’s no rest and no comfort, but manic fixation.
Synths Versus Me is a prolific duo formed by Vanessa Asbert and Nico Cabañas. This 12” EP includes two brand new tracks and two exclusive remixes. The original version of 1987” is an atomic bomb of pure vintage EBM in the vein of Signal Aout 42 and Front 242. The remix done by Dirk Da Davo from The Neon Judgement keeps the feeling of the track but adding some drums, guitar samplers and sequences trademarked by this Belgian legend. On the b-side there is the original mix of Aimless Device”, an electro-pop tune with catchy melodies, analogic bass lines and female voices. The remix prepared for this track by the new american sensation Boy Harsher is a surefire dancefloor full of hypnotic beats and dark atmospheres.
Berlin’s Nat Fowler renders his meticulous Novoline project to Not Waving’s Ecstatic with an inimitable marriage of automated electronic process and live improvisation on his 2nd album, Movements, continuing a lifelong quest for esoteric knowledge and a love of archaic computer hardware. Modelled with mis-used software, run on two separate Atari ST’s using only era-consistent hardware Yamaha FM synthesis via MIDI, pitch tuned to a pure 3:2 ratio Pythagorean scale centred on 432hz, Movements is the compelling, awkward result of obtuse production techniques and painstaking trial and error; basically experimentation at the service of discovering a sound he is genuinely warranted to call his own.
