Worst Records heat back with a greatest hits compilation. Tracks from the like of A Strange Wedding, Beesmunt Soundsystem, Black Seed, Itako, Gil.Barte and others.
experimental
Marius Georgescu @ Red Light Radio x Control Club Bucharest 15.06.2019
Cosmin TRG – Fractal Poetry MIX 03
Constantine – Hades [BDNLP003V]
The expression of two years’ field recording on the Greek islands of Kalymnos and Lesbos — deep inside a network of caves, and in the teeth of torrential winter storms — with added strings, grand piano, live drumming and orchestral percussion, in its confluence of ‘modern classical, metallic drone, dark ambient, and fuzz’. Guided by Steve Reich, Mika Vainio and Henri Bergson, haunted and spurred by the refugee crisis.
Daniel Holt – EKT-PODC-008
VA – The Best Of NYH [NYH191/NYH192]
New York Haunted is now 5 years old. Ignored by many, loved by as many more. NYH aims to be a home for the true underground in electronic music and releases diverse and stubborn producers that live for their music. Compiled by the NYH artists, this is part 1 of a 2 part collection that shows of the diversity and width of the label and, dare we say, the current underground in electronic music today.
Jorge Velez – The Saturn Star [UTTER4]
Utter presents ‘The Saturn Star’, a score to an imaginary film by music producer and visual artist Jorge Velez. Inspired by The Third Ear Band, late-period Coil, Carlos Peron’s lurid soundtracks and European folk music, Velez’s score accompanies the evocative tale of a 16th-century physician-alchemist hunted down by The Inquisition in western Europe. Velez purposefully limited the amount of equipment he used to create a cohesive sonic environment, this time restricting himself to a Korg MonoPoly and Prophet 6. The music flowed quickly, with the entire project recorded and mixed within two weeks. The resulting work veers from moments of unsettling intensity to blissful beauty, underpinned by a lingering sense of mystery and paranoia.
Borusiade LIVE @ arkaoda (Berlin) 05.12.2019
Claro Intelecto – In Vitro [141DSR/142DSR]
Delsin are pleased to gather together some of the highlights from the rich and varied catalogue of Manchester-based producer Claro Intelecto. From his earliest works on Ai Records through a prolific run on Modern Love to his more recent outings on Delsin, Mark Stewart has continually presented a vision of electronic music that uses the Detroit blueprint as a launch pad for his own distinctive strain of techno. Moving from elegant beauty to rabid intensity while grounded by a firm sense of rhythm, his catalogue runs deep and wide. The second volume in this expansive compilation series filters out select highlights from across his discography, and reframes them as a compelling overview of a truly distinctive voice in modern electronic music.
NonZero! – Matrix Equation [TB036]
Touchin Bass is backfilling missing catalog number TB036 with the multitalented guitarist and drummer, mathematician and multidisciplinary improviser Maria Gamboa Perez. Under the NonZero! moniker, Perez brings ‘Matrix Equation’ to the fore; a heavy 8 track EP with electro aesthetics from none other than Carl Finlow. Perez combines elements of rage, chaos, tension and anguish to form a visceral style. Her musical terrain and talent is shaped by dissonance and NO art. Splintered beats and a foreboding sense of tension give way to a more DJ friendly logic of instinctive introductions and codas of gradual builds and breakdowns as Finlow further reworks the results to great effect.
VA – A Short Illness From Which He Never Recovered [BLACKEST077]
There’s no denying that Blackest Ever Black has released some stellar music over the last decade, so it’s rather fitting that the London imprint’s final release is arguably one of its strongest for some time. To say goodbye, label boss Kiran Sande has put together a superb collection of poignant explorations of ambient, electronica and lo-fi pop that includes a swathe of label debuts. A compilation of new and recent music, either previously unreleased or until now unavailable on vinyl, by Bridget Hayden, Carla dal Forno, Lightning In A Twilight Hour, Scythe, Jam Money, Ian Martin, Unchained, The Fulmars, Hypnotic Sleep and Brainman.
Gavilán Rayna Russom – The Envoy [ELP047]
Transdisciplinary NYC artist Gavilán Rayna Russom beautifully comes into her own with a distinguished solo debut album statement including the voice of Cosey Fanni Tutti and brass arrangements by downtown legend Peter Zummo. After decades exploring her sonic personality in various projects inspired by her deep immersion in NYC’s club and avant-garde scenes, Rayna uses ‘The Envoy’ as a vessel to firm up and convey her personal conclusions on intersections of gender and electronic music.
VA – Form is Vision LP [GFTDCVLTR004]
Form is Vision is a collection of music unified by the same vision but not by the same form. It’s the vision making the form, without being influenced by the form itself. Here, visionary electronic artists as Afrikan Sciences and Juju & Jordash meet cross over jazz bands like Hobby Horse and Where is Mr. R?!. The music was compiled by Autre & Two Thou, whose productions here form a bridge across different moods. The result is a synergistic leap away from genre-bound music.
Function – Existenz [TRESOR315]
For his new album Existenz, Function marks a clear step away from the corporeal techno of his recent releases. Pivoting around themes of religion, sexuality, trauma and healing, it is a work expansive and celebratory, a clear liberation from a deeply internalized past. Formed from a collection of recordings made in a period from late 2016 to mid 2019, Existenz takes the form of a creative outburst in reaction to a number of traumas – recent, childhood and throughout Function’s life. Life partner Stefanie Parnow assisted the production process in its entirety, providing inspiration, spiritual healing and featuring vocal contributions.
Konduku – White Heron [NOUSLP003]
In 2018 Konduku took everyone by surprise with his debut called Kiran. It doesn’t happen all too often a new artist emerges with such a developed and distinctive sound, delivering an album as debut. Now, a year and three EPs later, Nous’klaer Audio is thrilled to present his followup: White Heron. His singular sound of odd-groove based techno has aged into a sound that’s more mature yet still very playful. Konduku further refined his sound of snappy polyrhythmic blips by using a controlled sound palette focusing on the tensions in-between. Starting with the mesmerizing depth of Kenar to the stripped down halfstepper Hermitage, and from the synthetic beat patterns of Kobalt to the colorful dream fields of Belki – White Heron is an album designed to listen from start to finish, but more than anything else meant for the club.
Bartosz Kruczynski – Selected Media 2016-2018 [ERS040]
Emotional Response presents a special project, a collection of music from Bartosz Kruczynski, recorded for “Selected Media” and presented here as a time-piece of his continuing works. Kruczynski returns to the ambient and ethereal – plus a touch of dub techno – to showcase his expansive collaborative work with Polish studio, TVP Culture. Given free artistic license, the 15 ‘short form’ recordings included here were for programming, in the main, on modern Polish Art including the likes of Magdalena Abakanowicz, Miroslaw Balka and Tadeusz Kantor, as well as some international aspects for Enrico Prampolini, Ai Weiwei and Monica Bonvicini.
Dissemblance – Over The Sand LP [MNQ136]
Exploring the balances between pop song writing structures, 80s cold wave bedroom style electronic production, and dreary gloom rock, Paris based Mathilde Mallen aka Dissemblance presents her debut lp “Over the Sand” for Mannequin Records. Over the ten tracks Dissemblance treads the fringes of a blurred dream world, using her bass guitar, voice, and drum machine as the backbone to create haunting yet soothing pop atmospheres in her songs.
Rabih Beaini @ Dekmantel Selectors 2019
Andy Stott – It Should Be Us [LOVE114]
Andy Stott’s first release since 2016 and first EP since 2011, ‘It Should Be Us’ is a double EP of slow and raw productions for the club, recorded this year and following a series of EP’s that started with ‘Passed Me By’ and ‘We Stay Together’ early this decade. Recorded fast and loose over the summer, these 8 tracks harness a pure and bare-boned energy, melodies subsumed by drum machines and synths; slow, rugged hedonism. It’s all about rhythmic heat and disorientation, pure dance and DJ specials rendered at an unsteady pace, from percolated house and percussive rituals to moody tripped-out burners.
Donato Dozzy – 12H [P036]
12H is a two hours long summa of the very best material produced for the eponymous sound installation, specifically designed by Donato for the Music Bridge – Armando Trovajoli in Rome under the curation of MAXXI Director Bartolomeo Pietromarchi. The original piece translated in music the architecture of the bridge and its surrounding life, layering samples and field recordings in the language Donato knows best: the repetition, rhythm and harmony of different building blocks. The work was originally reproduced by 24 speakers spread along the bridge colonnade, escorting the visitor through different musical places in their crossing. It now takes its final stereo form in this continuous mix version: a dense, enthralling flow akin to Tiber’s murky waters. The original installation was set up by sound engineer Giuseppe Tillieci / Neel, a frequent collaborator of Dozzy in the “Voices from the Lake” project, with Funktion One support.
The Hipodrome Of Music 