Legowelt – Unconditional Contours [OUS023]

October 4, 2020October 1, 2020 hipodrome-ous, album, ambient, danny wolfers, electro, experimental, legoweltLeave a comment

LEGOWELT - Unconditional Contours

Legowelt has been a key figure in the Dutch electronic music scene since the early nineties, steadily releasing timeless music that merges the pioneering sounds of Detroit and Chicago with idiosyncratic sci-fi fascinations. “Unconditional Contours” captures Legowelt’s stint at the Swiss Museum for Electronic Music Instruments (SMEM), after he was invited to be the first artist in residence at the institution’s “Playroom” project. Legowelt visited SMEM in Fribourg, Switzerland, in early 2019 to explore the collection and record music. Possessing an extensive collection of synthesizers himself, he used hand-picked synthesizers from the museum’s archive: the rare Farfisa Synthorchestra, the EVS-1 Evolution, the “shittiest rompler ever made”, amongst many others. The 10-track album “Unconditional Contours” is both a probe into the vast collection of SMEM, and a display of Legowelt’s well established compositional qualities. Leaving ample space for new sounds to unfold, Legowelt invokes gentle trips, brooding excursions, bleep heavy soundscapes, and reimagined elements of dance music classicism. SMEM and -OUS are launching the “smem+ous” series to document the “Playroom” residencies. A limited edition of this album was already sent out to early supporters of the “Playroom”. Founded in 2016 and based on a collection of more than 5000 synthesizers, organs, drum machines and effects that had been collected over a 35 year period by Klemens Niklaus Trenkle, SMEM offers residencies, studio sessions, talks and workshops.
“When I first saw this collection, I was truly flabbergasted. Endless rows of synthesisers – some so obscure I had not ever seen nor heard of them. This place will probably turn into the world’s most magical place for synths.” – Legowelt

KMRU – Peel [EMEGO289V]

October 4, 2020September 30, 2020 hipodromealbum, ambient, drone, editions mego, experimental, joseph kamaru, kmruLeave a comment

KMRU - Peel

KMRU is the moniker of Joseph Kamaru, a sound artist, and producer based in Nairobi. One of the leading exponents of the burgeoning experimental music scene in Nairobi and beyond he was listed by Resident Advisor as one of ’15 East African Artists You Need To Hear’ in 2018 and is a regular performer at the fabled Nyegenyege Festival having also presented live performances at CTM festival and Gamma Festival. Peel is KMRU’s first release for Editions Mego. exquisite mix of field recordings and electronics unravelling at a repetitive and leisurely pace to expose a rich tapestry of sound that has been revered for it’s ability to cross borders with the sheer undertow of emotional content. The subtle calming atmosphere within Peel belies the compositional prowess as layers of delicate sounds wrap around each other creating a hybrid new form ambient musics both captivating through it’s textural depth and kaleidoscopic patterns. The track titles lend themselves to the themes and mood set within: Why are you here, Well, Solace, Klang, Insubstantial and the title track. This is a deep heartfelt journey with a new strong voice being expressed through the means of organically presented electronic ambient sounds, one which reveals further layers on repeat listens.

Muslimgauze – Sadaam’s Children [ARCHIVEFIFTYFIVE]

October 4, 2020September 30, 2020 hipodromealbum, ambient, arabic, bryn jones, experimental, muslimgauze, staalplaatLeave a comment

MUSLIMGAUZE - Sadaam's Children

Long-time Muslimgauze fans with keen eyes and/or photographic memories may immediately notice something about the newly unearthed Sadaams Children album; with some slight orthographic differences, it just about shares a name with a short track from the classic Narcotic (Staalplaat, 1997; the similarity and the difference is pretty much expected from someone who both liked to reuse names and didn’t care for consistency in spelling as Bryn Jones did). While none of the four lengthy tracks found on Sadaams Children actually sound like sparse, clean string sounds of Narcotic’s ”Saddams Children”, three of them never previously heard extended versions of tracks previously found on that release – well, one is both an extended and truncated version, but such are the idiosyncrasies and joys of the ever-complex Muslimgauze oeuvre.

C.P.I. – Alianza [HVNLP02]

October 4, 2020September 30, 2020 hipodromealbum, ambient, c.p.i., experimental, hivern discs, hugo capablanca, marc pinolLeave a comment

C.P.I. - Alianza

Introducing C.P.I. an almost forgotten project from Capablanca & Marc Piñol granted a full album release via John Talabot’s Hivern Discs. Emerging in 2014 with a rare 7″ release, Alianza follows a brace of EPs spread across a four year peroid, with this album diving deep into the submersive ambient realms of analogue, machine made music. Full of tension, lo-fi industrialisms and atmospheres that play with themes of giallo italo (“Osera”), and winds of the new age in “Islaalsl”, find spiritual spoken word in both “Rasa” and “Epileg”, with the latter drifting unnoticed into a haunted cathedral of choirs. For lovers of ambient 4th world music, dub techno noise-floor, crackle and pop (“I/O”) and epic space western drone (“Sol”), C.P.I. have arrived.

Boris Divider – Generative Operations 2 [DCOM017]

October 4, 2020October 4, 2020 hipodromeambient, boris divider, drivecom records, electro, experimentalLeave a comment

DIVIDER, Boris - Generative Operations 2

Following the first episode, Drivecom presents the second part of the Generative Operations series. It continues with the dark, technical and minimal concept of music mixed together with contemporary, cinematic elements and experimental sounds and textures. The vision and workflow keeps up the same vibe as with the first ep and you will find more synth lines involved into a generative structure from complex and massive modular patches. The sequencing is always different each time every track is being played back giving us a unique listening. About the sound design all the tracks have a cinematic vibe as in the first 12”. Always looking for a situation where cinema meets electronic music as being planned as a film sound track.

Further Reductions – Array [KH031]

September 17, 2020September 10, 2020 hipodromeelectronics, experimental, further reductions, katie rose, knekelhuis, shawn o'sullivan, synth popLeave a comment

FURTHER REDUCTIONS - Array

Old friends Katie Rose and Shawn O’Sullivan, aka Further Reductions, collaborate again with the label. This time the Brooklyn NY two-piece brings a more lo-fi, moody, and outstretched collection of tracks to the table. Each track an instance of their ongoing exploration of new sounds, the defining characteristic of their work. This material evokes the spirit of mellow 90s, acid-era, Psychic TV-ish, lucid dreaminess. Soothing, monotonous, yet disrupted by a feast of kicks reminiscent of Gary Numan drum parties. Summer darkness.

Potter Natalizia Zen – Magari [ELP054]

September 12, 2020September 11, 2020 hipodromeabstract, album, alessio natalizia, ambient, colin potter, ecstatic recordings, experimental, guido zen, potter natalizia zen, synth waveLeave a comment

POTTER NATALIZIA ZEN - Magari

Master synthesists Colin Potter (NWW), Alessio Natalizia (Not Waving) and Guido Zen reprise their supergroup for Ecstatic with a seductively serpentine follow-up to their superb debut from a couple of years ago. PNZ’s pulsing, twanging, expansive ‘Magari’ was recorded between 2018-2020 in the slipstream of ’Shut Your Eyes On The Way Out’, which is surely one of the strongest new kosmiche-related albums of recent years. Where that album refreshed classic styles of European synth music for modern ears, ‘Magari’ – meaning “I Wish” in Italian – adapts their style to the unique Afro-Latin lilt of Brazilian music with central use of the Berimbau; a single-stringed percussion instrument commonly associated with the elegant martial art/dance of Capoeira, which the band’s Guido Zen brought home from his travels in South America. Combined with their juicy, almost fleshly arps and Guitar pedal-generated computer voice, the results are wonderfully wide-eyed, embracing bouts of motorik rhythm beside vertiginous noise wormholes and mystic tone poems that speak to a cumulative experience spanning decades spent hunting for life between the wires.
Like their first LP, much of the recording took place remotely or in pairs, and rarely with all three present, before the parts were mixed down at Colin’s studio in Leytonstone. In its journey between the intricate meters and perpendicular vectors of ‘Too Much Traffic’, and their mesh of curdled tones with their phone recordings of a manic preacher in Camberwell on ‘Saved’, they variously recall Craig Leon’s alien invocations of Dogon folk tales as much as the heady dissonance of Alessandro Cortini; producing outstanding pieces of tangibly haptic substance in ‘Sergio’ and infectiously tip-of-tongue Berimbau twang on ‘Gennaio’, and for good measure, something like Phil Collins gently losing the plot after healthy dose of Ayahuasca in ‘Fill’, while ‘Ancora’ sounds like Basic Channel scoring Herzog’s Aguirre.

Thessa Torsing / Tammo Hesselink- Zeekasteel / Ballet Mecanique [OEMOEMENOE4]

September 12, 2020April 21, 2023 hipodromealbum, ambient, experimental, nous'klaer audio, re:vive, tammo hesselink, thessa torsingLeave a comment

TORSING, Thessa/TAMMO HESSELINK - Zeekasteel

Nous’klaer & RE:VIVE present two scores by Thessa Torsing (upsammy) and Tammo Hesselink. Torsing’s is a 27-minute piece, composed for a collage of archival footage of the Dutch ship MS Oranje. The short film explores the lifecycle of the ship, from production to usage and to the fire that ultimately destroyed it. Hesselink’s is a 17-minute piece for the pioneering short film, Ballet Mecanique (1924), a rigid composition of sharp notes and twisted drum patterns that hypnotically evolve accompanying the film’s staccato rhythm.

Locust – The Plaintive [SUCTION053LP]

September 6, 2020September 3, 2020 hipodromealbum, ambient, experimental, locust, mark van hoen, suction recordsLeave a comment

Suction Records presents the first new album since 2014 by the legendary, and somewhat underrated electronic project of Mark Van Hoen, Locust. The album is called “The Plaintive”. Earlier this year, Locust released “The Plaintive” as a 15-track CD/digital album, part of Touched Music’s “Touched By Silence” boxset, and the CD was sold out in a matter of hours. Having heard Locust’s contribution to the set, the Suction crew was immediately smitten with the material, which sounded very much unlike the Locust of old, yet absolutely complimentary to Van Hoen’s murky, analog-synth past. Produced intermittently over a 5-year period, the tracks were created with a largely-digital eurorack modular system, alongside a selection of analog synthesizers, notably a newly-acquired Prophet 12 polysynth. While tracks like “If You Knew” and “Out Here” are reminiscent of classic Locust, much of “The Plaintive” shows us a new side to Locust – melodic, playful, and melancholic, with clear nods to the melodic electronic sounds of early pioneers like Cluster, early-Kraftwerk, or even OMD’s late-70s output.

VA – Upward at 33 1/3 Degrees – Höga Nord Rekords Singles Collection Vol.3 [HNRBOX003]

September 3, 2020September 2, 2020 hipodromeal lover, compilation, druk 11000, dungeon acid, electro, experimental, golden bug, hoga nord rekords, max von sydow, osynlige mann, pardon moi, the idealist, ultra satan, vastlankenLeave a comment

The Mothership has come! It has arrived in the form of the strictly limited collection box “Upwards at 33 1/3 Degrees” (50 copies), containing all singles released on the label between 2017 and 2020. The Höga Nord – galaxy resounds of all good between strict electro and loose jams, fluffy krautrock and moist world music to underwater techno and space funk. Although, what it is that defines the Höga Nord sound is not genres, instead it is, to cite Mathias Nilsson, founder of and boss for the label, music “strongly connected to fantasy, to the creative world.” The collection is an overview on Gothenburg’s underground music and on an international scene that breathes similar air as the local Swedish acts that Höga Nord Rekords has chosen to highlight.

RA.740 KMRU

August 16, 2020September 30, 2020 hipodromeambient, drone, experimental, interview, joseph kamaru, kmruLeave a comment

Continue reading “RA.740 KMRU” →

Exhausted Modern – Year of the Rat [ENDILLP02]

August 11, 2020November 10, 2022 hipodromealbum, electro, endless illusion, exhausted modern, experimental, ladislav zensor, layup, minimal synth, nvstLeave a comment

EXHAUSTED MODERN - Year Of The Rat

Exhausted Modern’s debut full-length titled The Year of the Rat is a proof of the thought-provocation that author’s name generates. Released on his own Endless Illusion imprint, the album doesn’t have all the answers, it simply offers Exhausted Modern’s perception of the modern times and also the energy to do something with them. The title, borrowed from the Chinese zodiac calendar, doesn’t slip to mere esoteric prognosis, it fittingly and provocatively comments on broken mechanics of society, capitalistic hierarchisation and emotional frustration of its victims. Despite the dystopian character of Exhausted Modern’s sound, which ranges from fast melancholia through suspicious calmness to slowly bubbling rage, it doesn’t feel like the end of the world. It’s critical artistic statement of a person who despite seeing all the darkness, also sees the way out of it.

Kassel Jaeger – Swamps/Things [SP119]

August 1, 2020July 30, 2020 hipodromeambient, drone, experimental, françois j. bonnet, kassel jaeger, shelter pressLeave a comment

JAEGER, Kassel - Swamps/Things

Over the last decade, Kassel Jaeger, the moniker of the Paris-based composer, writer / theorist, producer, and director of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM), François Bonnet, has meticulously sculpted a body of multidisciplinary work that rests at the forefront contemporary electronic and electroacoustic practice. This is his new album ‘Swamp/Things’ on Shelter-Press. Sound is abstract. When the source is elusive, narrative and meaning shift between the concrete and obscure. With his first solo LP with Shelter Press, Swamps/Things, Kassel Jaeger wades into this foggy, conceptual realm. From memory and metaphor – sliding fluidly through the imagistic and emotive – emerges an immersive, cavernous world that rethinks electroacoustic music on organic terms. ‘Swamps/Things’ was conceived as an opera without distinct characters or text. It draws Kassel Jaeger into his own history, experiences, and the unlikely double of the swamp, a landscape that has held literal and metaphorical sway over him since childhood. Merging 8 works as a total environment, abstaining from distinct shape or discrete articulation, across the album’s breadth, sound becomes a shifting mirror for the bubbling, ordered chaos of organic life.

Siegmar Fricke – Time Compression EP [ILG005]

July 28, 2020April 11, 2024 hipodromedisco, experimental, industrial, infoline, les points, new beat, siegmar fricke, technoLeave a comment

FRICKE, Siegmar - Time Compression EP

Siegmar Fricke has made a name for himself in the tape culture since 1981 – with a mixture of Musique-Concrète and Post-Industrial. As a former label owner of “Bestattungsinstitut” he released numerous works that went beyond EBM, Electro, Techno and Ambient. In the heyday of the netlabels he focused mainly on his own productions, which he then made available as free downloads. Since 2002 Siegmar has been active with clinical sound experiments under the pseudonym “Pharmakustik”. In 2005 he started his collaboration with Maurizio Bianchi from Milan, who has dedicated himself to “industrial decomposition” since 1979. For his Time Compression EP on Infoline, Siegmar Fricke has unearthed compositions from the period 1992-1994 and curated them anew. A phase in which he listened to the radio day and night and connected his sampler to the stereo to record material around the clock. He listened to many radio shows from England or Holland, which often broadcasted techno, trance and acid. At that time those sounds were new territory for him. He recorded inspiring sequences at first go, edited them and then let them flow into his own productions. The result was “future-pop collages mixed with sequencer-controlled trance and sampled voices”, to put it in the words of Siegmar Fricke.

Alastair Galbraith – Seconds Mark III [ACOLOUR028]

July 26, 2020July 20, 2020 hipodromea colourful storm, alastair galbraith, album, experimental, indie rock, rockLeave a comment

Alastair Galbraith is considered nothing less than a genius around these parts. A New Zealand underground legend active since the ’80s, his solo works have seen release on Siltbreeze, MIE, Emperor Jones and Grapefruit Records while his own labels, Xpressway and Next Best Way have released the likes of The Dead C and Damo Suzuki. His list of collaborators reads like a who’s who of freeform musicianship: Peter Jefferies, Bruce Russell, Robert Scott (The Clean; Flying Nun) and Maxine Funke to name but a few. Seconds Mark III is Galbraith’s first solo album since Mass (2010) and is a collage of pensive, longing and almost forgotten pieces stitched in his inimitable style. A thrilling addition to A Colourful Storm’s ever-expansive catalogue. 21-track LP

Anna vs June – Prosper Easter [YALANCHI003]

July 12, 2020July 12, 2020 hipodromeanna papaioannou, anna vs june, experimental, outernational, yalanchiLeave a comment

Anna Vs June is the alias of Anna Papaioannou a contemporary music composer from Greece. She captures the perfect balance between electronic and traditional sounds, representing her western and eastern musical influences. Having traveled extensively in rural areas around Greece, she has gathered diverse singing practices from a wide range of areas stretching from the island of Crete to the North East edges of Epirus. In the third release of the newcomer Yalanchi, Anna comes into the picture to share her musical interpretation of growing up in a country that is constantly experiencing an identity crisis. Encompassing her aforementioned research, all tracks on the record are based on traditional music from different parts of Greece, featuring the voices of Anna herself, in addition to guest performances by Stephanos Theodoropoulos from Nea Kios, Nikos Mais-Zogos from Lefkada and Alexis Voutouris with a violin performance.

Nordvest – Grøndal [SUCTION051]

July 11, 2020July 12, 2020 hipodromealbum, ambient techno, drone, experimental, nordvest, roger semsroth, suction recordsLeave a comment

Suction Records welcomes Roger Semsroth back to the label – having previously released 2 full-length albums with us under his retired electro-pop alias, Skanfrom. “Grøndal” is the debut vinyl release under a new alias, Nordvest. These days, Semsroth is best-known for his stark and minimalist techno project, Sleeparchive. The material on Grøndal – icy, melodic, and mostly beatless – is comprised of tracks that were originally released digitally as Sleeparchive, via Bandcamp. The releases were met with general disinterest from Sleeparchive fans, prompting Semsroth to re-brand them as Nordvest, before removing them from Bandcamp altogether. We’ve chosen 11 highlights from 3 of those digital albums, “Rooftops & Chaotic Streets”, “Scribbles”, and “Sleepless”, for a cohesive 11-track LP of austere, synthetic ambiance.

Shifted – The Dirt On Our Hands [AVNLP05]

July 11, 2020January 26, 2024 hipodromealbum, avian music, drone, experimental, guy brewer, shifted, technoLeave a comment

Shifted is back with a double LP called ”The Dirt On Our Hands”.

Crossed Wires – Crossed Wires [LSD032]

July 10, 2020March 29, 2022 hipodromealbum, compilation, crossed wires, electro, experimental, light sounds dark, minimal synthLeave a comment

Light Sounds Dark present ‘Crossed Wires’ an eponymous collection of music salvaged from a dusty cassette in the depths of the archives from the productions of an 80s psyche-experimentalist. Expect raw, unheard, previously unreleased music,. about as authentic as it gets.

Peter Graf York – Expedition Bahn [SONLP03]

July 5, 2020July 1, 2020 hipodromeambient, experimental, peter graf york, south of northLeave a comment

Welcome to the curious world of Peter Graf York: a world full of city centre safaris and epic train journeys, Soviet cosmonauts and Oakland rappers, filtered synths and plucked mbiras. It’s a wild ride inspired as much by Jamaican dub sorcery as by playful minimalism outta the Pacific Northwest. Many of these tracks were composed on the hoof – literally en route across sections of the ever-reliable Deutsche Bahn network. As such, there’s a certain travellin-without-moving dynamic across this collection, capturing that cinematic feel of window frames flickering past graffiti’d signal exchanges, morphing into rolling hills and green forests. Expedition Bahn is the sound of ideas being set in motion, each track heralding the arrival of an uncanny destination. Blazed beats give way to acid-fuelled electro, and dub rhythms step aside for 4th world meditations as readily as sleepers on a train track. We can leave the last word to heroic USSR cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, who spent the final moments of his fateful re-entry giving the administration an earful of righteous proportions (regarding the technical failures of the spacecraft). Taking his place as the first martyr of space travel, Komarov accepted the Soyuz mission despite safety concerns, in order to protect the other cosmonauts. It’s an attitude that echoes throughout PGY’s sonic universe – make the most of the trip you’re on… ‘cause you never know just which way it will go.