Tanz Ohne Muzik aka Dan Serbanescu is back with “The Whip”, four psychedelic shoegaze tracks.
electronics
Vatican Shadow – September Cell [NAILS001]
New 12″from Vatican Shadow on Dominick Fernow’s own, newly minted Bed of Nails imprint. Operating from his recently consecrated L.A. compound – the label will focus on his reorientation towards industrial dancefloor rhythms and seductively isolated electronics. Fernow christens the label with ‘September Cell’, a four track 12″ loaded with some of his most direct dancefloor assaults to date. The A-side breaks down into two parts: ‘September Cell (The Storm)’ pistons a martial machine coda, all hollowed Industrial percussion and gloaming synths shot through with visceral traces of his power electronics; while ‘September Cell (The Punishment)’ realigns the rhythm with a rigid swing and insurgent, caustic swipes of noise timed with exacting accuracy. On the flip, ‘Cairo Is A Haunted City’ opens with a nightvision panorama of furtive pads before rapid-fire steppers’ rhythms find formation under cover of pitch blackness. ‘One Day He Heard The Call’ resolves the label’s first session with a bleakly evocative vision polluted by Vangelis-like synth-brass flares and toxic synths…
Symmetry – Themes For An Imaginary Film [IDIB037CD]
Three years in the making, Symmetry – the project that began as a conceptual tangent between Glass Candy, Chromatics, Mirage, & Desire’s more abstract sides – finally sees its release this month. “Themes For An Imaginary Film” is two hours of claustrophobic cinematic bliss compiled for Painters, Writers, Photographers, Designers, Cruisers, Night Walkers, & Dreamers. Adrenaline drips thick like syrup across a horizon where memories become blurred scenes behind the windshield & yesterday’s faces fade as the road strobes to aggressive rhythms. Romantic melodies linger in the rearview mirror as chimera bells saturate the electric fog that’s slowly rolling in. Over the span of thirty-seven tracks, Symmetry embraces the elegance of European noir, cut with a lean & violent American razor. Directly in your face & breathing down your neck one minute, & escaping beyond the night sky the next. The attention given to color & detail on these recordings is more graphic than musical. More visual than aural. With no flashy virtuosity to clutter the mood, the album’s pulse thrives on the empty pockets of space left in the wake of throbbing bass & the faint flicker of electro candlelight. Minimal, strict, & always in motion, there’s an oppressive overtone throughout the record that winds itself tight as a clock. Johnny Jewel & Nat Walker (Chromatics & Desire) give us propulsive moments that are more rhythm based than Pop, & less reliant on a lyrical presence than their other projects. We hear elements through the veil & color of analog synthesizers & rhythm machines from the early 1970s, resulting in the suspenseful & patient territory pioneered by the hands of John Carpenter, Claudio Simonetti, Wendy Carlos, Klaus Schulze, & Krzysztof Komeda. Symmetry is not Pop. Stripped to its most primitive & visceral core, this is music written for picture. Your life is the film & this is the soundtrack.
Freund der Familie – Porentief EP [FDF006]
Veronica Vasicka – Dazed x Sonos: Mixtape Competition
VA – Les Annees Folles [GOOILAND01/ET016]
This record is a soundtrack for excentric nightlife, bringing back to life images of wild parties at artists workspaces in Paris in the 1920’s, early mornings in Belgian nightclubs in the late 1980’s and driving classic Italian sports cars during long hot summer nights.
Traxx @ Moog Club (Barcelona) *Independence Day 2012*
Gareth Williams & Mary Currie – Flaming Tunes [BLACKEST009]
Blackest Ever Black is releasing the first ever vinyl edition of Gareth Williams and Mary Currie’s Flaming Tunes. This remarkable album was recorded at DDM and Cold Storage in London after Williams had left This Heat and returned from the first of several trips to India. It was officially released on cassette in 1985, before being bootlegged on CD more than a decade later. The bootleg in question, the Japan-issued After The Heat, described the Flaming Tunes pieces as ”This Heat’s final demo recordings”, much to Gareth’s understandable dismay – after all, the album marked a conscious attempt to create a music with a different mood and texture to that of This Heat, one which would allow the full expression of his eclectic and distinctive tastes. In 2009, twenty-four years after the original cassette release and eight after Williams’ death, aged 48, from cancer, Life & Living Records – an independent label operated by his close friends – released the first and definitive CD edition of Flaming Tunes. Where possible, L&L went back to the original master tapes to achieve the best possible sound quality. The album – is one of the most unique, poignant and poetic ever to emerge from the British underground, its visionary power matched only by its playfulness and intimacy – has never had a life on vinyl.
Tanz Ohne Musik – Hidden Songs
“Hidden songs” stands as a collection of previously unreleased electronic ambient/drone tracks, composed and recorded between 2011 and 2012. After a long period of fragmented construction and deconstruction, they have finally found their unifying frame and achieved physical form through this EP.
VA – The Power of Movement in Plants EP [ELER001]
Italy’s webzine Electronique.it has decided to enjoy the joys and sorrows of being a record label and prepares its first release featuring three artists. “Soils” by Commodity Place is an ordinary ambient piece and “Is This For Real?” by passEnger keeps tranquil mood while adding some casual beats. Last track, Cosmic Metal Mother – “The Unreleased Techno Mixes Series (comunicazione uno)”, which is destined to move the feet and flirts with Detroit and Belgium anno 1992.
Metasplice – Topographical Interference EP [DOSER012]
“Metasplice is a twisted debussy-esque of primal drums+chords over top of the chaos.
the sound of an atom splitting.
the sound of a nuclear explosion; the sound of the end of the world…
dialogue between an electronic experiment in nature and a synthesizer.”
Traxx (Nation, Chicago)
Tanz Ohne Musik – Red Cavity [RDCVT002]
New release from Romanian band Tanz Ohne Musik on their bandcamp page, including eight tracks with lush synths and haunting vocals.
Actress – R.I.P [HJRCD60]
South London producer Darren Cunningham’s new album, R.I.P, underlines Actress’s reputation as one of the most eloquent voices to emerge from the sub-bass nexus of London dance music. His intuitive and original grasp of beats, textures and rhythm puts him on a parallel path to dance music innovators such as Drexciya, T++, Aphex Twin, Autechre, Burial and Basic Channel. Absolutely essential release by one of the most exciting producers of the 21st century.
Gareth Clarke – Atheist In Foxhole EP [CF061] [FREE DOWNLOAD]
Gareth Clarke delivers his long awaited sophomore release, underlining his reputation as one of the brightest lights and best-kept secrets in electronic music today. Oozing elegance and sensory richness throughout; subtle, playful and visceral often in the same moment, somehow. GC has elicited the perfect pleasure amalgam for body and brain.
Mi Ami – Decade [SILK020]
Mi Ami is the five year old project of exotic punk-gone-House types Daniel Martin-McCormick (Ital) and Damon Palermo (Magic Touch). ‘Decade’ signifies a suitably decadent sea-change to their sound in keeping with respective solo projects. Basically they’ve ditched the guitars and drums for a hypnotic, electronic blend of Deep House and Disco filtered through their sly post-punk sensibilities, stretching their svelte, club-and-gig-toned laptop muscle over four extended groovers aimed squarely at the more misty, pie-eyed ends of the night. On ‘Horns’ Daniel’s snotty no-wave vox jar very nicely against cocoa-buttered Chicago simulations, while the luscious ‘Time Of Love’ coolly sidesteps their punk roots with smoothly tucked-in disco bass and a sense of debonaire, balearic Dub romance. Deeper yet, ‘Free Of life’ meditates on rippling congas and hyperreal reverbs looking for that Panorama Bar booking while ‘Bells’ sounds something like a long lost Virgo dub starring a cameo vocal from Zed off of the Police Academy films.
Morphosis – The Tepco Report [DOSER011]
Raw techno and dark wave craftsmen Morphosis is back with a new two tracker on his own Morphine imprint. A-side ‘Exposure’ hears an ambulance-like siren pan across a desolate landscape of buzzing and humming static. It’s bleak but somehow optimistic and sounds typically ‘live’, whilst ‘Postatomicpoetry’ has a heavy bottom end thudding deep down below as various machine noises and electric wires stretch out in all directions above. It’s chilly, hostile and heady, building in highly hypnotic layers like only Morphosis can.
Madteo – Bugler Gold Pt. 1 [HINF8672]
Coming from Workshop associate Madteo, the first release from Joy Orbison and Will Bankhead’s Hinge Finger doesn’t disappoint. Aesthetically, the grainy, Bankhead designed sleeve is typically beautiful, whilst sonically has all the appeal of the aforementioned German imprint, oozing the foggy atmosphere of Amber-era Autechre, filtered through the lens of Detroit beatdown.. On “Bugler Gold” for instance, a languorous bassline drips between a barely-there kickdrum; it couldn’t be more different than “(Biz R Us (Whore Powers Resolution)” which follows it, a clunking rhythmic machine that maintains a thunderous forward momentum despite its sharper edges being coated in a soporific blanket of Chloroformed cotton wool. The B-Side delivers a further surprise in the library music inspired oddity of “Scream Seq”. “Xtra Loose Change (2010 refix)” meanwhile, is the sort of relentlessly deep house that is held together with little more than rhythm and pure atmosphere, each percussive micro-element perfectly balanced with a bass which is almost beyond the limit of human hearing.
Hieroglyphic Being – The Human Experience [MATHPLUS008]
“The Human Experience EP” from Jamal Moss is the 8th 12″ from this highly coveted and limited imprint. “How Wet Is Your Box” starts with a great distorted & chaotic synth line & is followed by “Siddhartha (Part One)”. Flip it for “Long Live The Flesh (The Edit)” & the title track. Fresh raw basements tracks.
Container – LP [SP007]
Container is a recent moniker of Nashville, Tennessee resident Ren Schofield. The sounds on this release are a thick stew congealing new ideas and naive experiments, abstract and minimal in nature with time stopping tendencies. This music, by being so unruly and defiant of any kind of trend, has created a fresh and wierd fusion.
Forma – Forma [SP003]
Spectrum Spools present the debut album by Brooklyn’s minimal synth trio Forma. This is a self-styled tribute – and testament – to the enduring power of kosmische. Sumptuously melodic, with flights of improvisational fancy nicely anchored by taut, repetitive drum structures, it’s hard not to fall in love with this record. What really distinguishes Forma from the million devotees of German electronic music is their bold and often unorthodox use of rhythm, at times tending towards metronomic Kraftwerkian synth-pop, at others towards something even more viscous and otherworldly. kraut-influenced analogue electronics.
The Hipodrome Of Music 