Since nearly a decade now, Italian born artist Antonio Marini is going through a sonic adventure known as Healing Force Project. Discreetly building up his musical blueprint, he slowly reached a cult status as a visionary who is blending electronic music with free-jazz in an atypical, anarchic, spontaneous and original way. On ‘Sideral Escape’ the artist shows himself in his different facets ranging from ambient to jazz to techno.
‘Futuro’ is Not Waving’s sublime synth/ambient soundtrack to one of the world’s most intense art/theatre experiences: Sean Rogg’s radical immersive artwork ‘The Waldorf Project’ – fusing choreography, spatial design, music and performance into a cohesive experience.
“Eux sont de ceux qui trament en accordant desseins sur dessins.” MinimalRome is back with the second volume of Trame compilation. A full lenght 2xLP release gathering Legowelt (as Phalangius), Heinrich Dressel, Alessandro Adriani, Ian Martin, Teslasonic, Polysick, C-34, Iron Blue and David Kristian among others. Traveling through these eighteen ambient cosmic tracks from true heirs of library music, you’ll expand the surrounding space.
Powell loosens up and reaches out on the 2nd New Beta playground – a place to explore his more reflexive, emotive urges – with seven curious permutations that swerve from Æ-style abstraction to pointillist electro-acid and a brace of mutant diskotheek breakers. As with the first volume, he’s clearly still gassed off his new hardware, resulting in a nerve-jumping fizz and crack that sounds like he’s jamming with fingers directly in the jack ports, channelling his thoughts and feels practically unimpeded.
Masterful electronics and industrial tinged ambient workouts by expert and SEER head Ian Martin. Some of the darkest vibes this side of Lustmord, some of the wildest electronics this side of PAN…
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.
There are many ways for a band or an artist to compile an album: some make it in a week and some let the process go on longer. The latter approach does often mean that that the record will not be better than had it been recorded and mixed within a short amount of time, rather the contrary. However, there are those albums that just could not be made within in a week or a month, those compilation of songs that needed the time to melt together to form an album. Fontän’s third album titled ‘Fontän’, released on Hoga Nord Rekords is that kind of an album. Put the opening track ‘Mangsebung’ on, then stay with the record until the closer ‘Shadows’ rings out and you will go clear, sharp, and mildly messed up by the listening experience because this is an extremely well directed trip in mind-altering music! This album needed time to reach such heights. With Johan Melin’s and Jesper Jarold’s love for music and non-sentimental creative approach, this album proves that the band never gets hung up on trying to sound like the past masters, but to develop what they once started.
Far out trip as collaborative effort from Beatrice Dillon and Kassem Mosse. Dillon Wendel is a place for the two respected artists to explore soundscapes, aesthetics and synthesis in pastures aeons away from the dancefloors they’re most familiar with. Both compositions weighing in over 15 minutes, they’re experiences which challenge form and convention; “Pulse” ripples with its namesake, a texture that buzzes and drones in endless waves while “High” mutates a warmer, grainer tone with dizzying effect.
Forever a label willing to revisit previous tape-only wares if the demand is there, Sam Willis and Ale Natalizia’s Ecstatic turn their gaze to one of the latter’s earliest Not Waving documents. Originally issued on highly limited, gold cassette way back in 2012, Redacted was produced during Walls downtime by Natalizia and expanded on the “classified” themes of his Remote Viewing-inspired debut LP Umwelt. Fans of the most recent Diagonal-released Not Waving LP, Animals, should be thrilled to see how far Natalizia’s project has developed in just four years with the prevailing mood on Redacted a sort of murky and brutish EBM that is wholly satisfying.
While Jack Hamill’s Space Dimension Controller project is best known for mixing colourful electrofunk synths with intergalactic ambient, techno and hypnotic house influences, his earliest musical output trod a slightly different path. His long forgotten, digital-only debut album, 2009’s Unidentified Flying Oscillator, explored IDM and woozy electronica, and it’s these styles that come to the fore on Orange Melamine. Like that debut album, this set – his first for Ninja Tune – was recorded in his bedroom, aged 18, with a collection of “cheap, lo-fi” and “battered” kit. It largely takes its’ cues from the likes of Boards of Canada and ambient-era Aphex Twin, but retains that distinctive vibe and attention to detail that’s always marked out Hamill’s work.
Almost a year after his last outing, London-based Vester Koza is making a welcome return to the fray with a new EP entitled OTR. Featuring four atmospheric cuts, for the first time it finds him step away from his own Maslo label to join Houndstooth. Fusing elements of dub, ambient and IDM into moody sound worlds with you right at the centre, he has a subtle but seductive touch that has always marked him out. An on-going interest in security, technology and privacy characterizes his work, as does a passion for the vintage and modern gear he uses when producing. All of that is evident here in his most cerebral and conceptual release yet.
Benedikt Frey crafts a musical aesthetic that might only be seen in its true form from a birds-eye view—a whole greater than the sum of its parts. His playful indifference to genre specifics and pre-prescribed instrumentation or production techniques makes for a loose and refreshing collection of work, and this debut for the ESP Institute, The Lobbyist, serves up an incongruous three tracks so bewildering and narcotic we’re already impatiently fiending for more.
In interviews, Alessio Natalazia has freely stated his next album would be “very different” and “very intense”. That album, his first for Powell’s Diagonal stable, has finally arrived, and it’s as ballsy, robust and full-throttle as he promised. While it contains nods to the woozy, shoegaze and ambient influenced soundscapes that have been a feature of his previous full-length excursions, these are well hidden behind clandestine fusions of techno and industrial, surging EBM-influenced workouts, post punk-goes-post rock explorations and atmospheric analogue electronics. For those well versed in his back catalogue, Animals makes for arresting listening.
Death Waltz Recording Company are proud to bring you an all-new aural experience via the latest installment of the Death Waltz Originals imprint. Law Unit is a brand new creation by maestros Umberto and Antoni Maiovvi, an original concept that in the composers’ own words ”moves past the retro-futurist works of their individual solo releases to explore a world of early industrial and experimental music”. The resulting album is made up of ten dangerously cool and evocative cuts, the kind of tracks that put you in the mood for LA circa 2019, or the Detroit of 1987.
For the fifth installment in the Common Thread series we are launching our series of Various Artists EPs called *Knives Replace Air*. For the first effort in this series we have the likes of Chinaski, MangulicaFM, 33.10.3402 and Gitchell Moore cooking up stuff. Expect an odd mixture of genres all sharing a common thread in terms of feel. Maybe not the most dancefloor friendly record but definitely some kind of miniature soundtrack in its own right.
Helping listeners to escape reality—which has been known to grate, on occasion—has long been a noble aim of many musicians. One of the most effective ways to do that is to create imaginary soundtracks for impossible science-fiction films, the darker and more un-Hollywood-like, the better. Another method is to take inspiration from great works of architecture—which, as Goethe cogently noted, “is frozen music.” The latter route is used by Brooklyn producer Jonas Reinhardt (aka Jesse Reiner) on his sixth album, Palace Savant.
