experimental

Oscar Mulero – Perfect Peace [SEM070LP]

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Oscar Mulero presents: ‘Perfect Peace’. Don’t expect dancefloor burners here, this time the spanish techno master goes deep and low, exploring sonic textures, low BPM grooves and the intelligent side of electronic music. Melodies, pads, drones and grooves collide in this soulful collection, conceived to be listened as a soundtrack. Oscar is not new to this sounds, in his Grey Fades To Green or Muscle and Mind albums he showcased his abilities in this field as well as with his Av projects Biolive and Monochrome. A new step in Oscar Mulero’s ever growing career, showing his studio skills and music taste, far beyond his role as a fundamental techno dj.

vinyl / CD

Oscar Mulero – Perfect Peace [SEM070LP]

DsorDNE – È Un Sole LP [DE206]

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DsorDNE (pronounced Disordine) is a project from Torino, Italy that evolved as group out of the electronic experimental post punk project Novostj in 1987. At the core of DsorDNE is Marco Milanesio, musical engineer and co-founder of the HAX record label, joined by a revolving cast of musicians. Their spectrum ranged from experimental to structured electro-poetry and Soundtrack like instrumental electronic music. In 1987 they released their first track on a split-single with The Legendary Pink Dots. Between 1987 and 1994 they released 6 full length albums, 3 split-EPs and appeared on various cassette compilations. Ã Un Sole (Itâs a Sun) was the groupâs only vinyl full length originally released in 1990 on HAX. Itâs 8 tracks of electro-beat poetry and experimentation recorded between July 1989 and January 1990 by Marco Milanesio (music) and Roberta Ongaro (vocals) with guests Claudio Burdese (guitar), Danilo Beltrame (guitar) and Cristiana Bauducco (vocals). The album is broken up into two distinct halves. Side A contains four chunks of hard hitting, percussive patterns and rushing bass sequences. Dark, moody female vocals force their monologues through the machinery in their native Italian tongue. The traditional song structure is carefully avoided by giving lyrics equal opportunities be they recited, half-sung, whispered or spoken. Side B displays moodier moments, less savage attacks and subtler sensuality, veering towards the more melodic and existential.

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DsorDNE – È Un Sole LP [DE206]

Eva Geist – Desfan LP [MMLP909]

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Andrea Noce aka Eva Geist is back with his second album to date, and what clearly makes for a magical companion to 2016’s comparatively murkier Aquator System cassette. Noce returns via Sascha Mambo’s Macadam Mambo imprint, unleashing a flurry of outsider sonics and no-wave vibes thanks to this new Desfan LP. The nine tracks glide with pace and style, ranging form the docile bleeps and pseudo beats of tunes like “Electronic Tribalism” to relatively more ‘dance-friendly’ tunes like “Prologo” or “Nigredo”. It’s hard to put our finger on what makes Noce’s music so singular, but it must have something to do with the artist’s fascination with the Levant – a distant yet perceptible vibe that seeps through all of these tunes.

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Eva Geist – Desfan LP [MMLP909]

VA – Trame Due [MROME031]

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“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.

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VA – Trame Due [MROME031]

Hieroglyphic Being – The Red Notes [SJRLP394]

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For the first time since 2016, Jamal Moss has pitched up on Soul Jazz with a typically eccentric and mind-altering full-length excursion. As you’d expect, The Red Room is another triumph – an inspirational collection of otherworldly and melodious cuts that effortlessly combine elements from Moss’s many major inspirations. One minute, you’re wigging out to his jacking, piano-heavy fusion of gospel house and synth-jazz (“The Seduction Syndrome”), the next he’s laying down a chunk of deep space ambient with Terry Riley synthesizer cycles (“Awake and Energize”).

vinyl / CD

Hieroglyphic Being – The Red Notes [SJRLP394]

Black Meteoric Star – No More White Presidents [MOM011]

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Gavin Rayna Russom palms out a loose and wiry jag for Barcelona’s Modern Obscure Music, leaning heavily on a knackered acid bent (and seemingly many of the buttons in her keyboard at once) for the soundtrack to a self-made film about transition in a broader context of capitalism and death.

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Black Meteoric Star – No More White Presidents [MOM011]

Borusiade – A Body [COMEME043]

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Cómeme starts 2018 by proving again to be a safe haven and a sanctuary for sensitive plants and unique characters devoted to music – just like Miruna Boruzescu aka Borusiade – from Bucharest. This is the first album of Borusiade, in which she takes her music to a new level, finding her very own expression, that is making us first shiver then sweat, then chill and finally melt. Her visions unfold through 8 pieces of music that follow a dreamlike narrative of associations and transformations. Somber synthetic atmospheres, sparse and spatial rhythmical arrangements, strangely seductive melodies and lysergic ally pulsating bass lines lead us away from a dystopian present towards a sensorial experience we long to repeat as soon as it’s over. ‘A Body’ is a deeply poetic work in which again and again you will hear Borusiade’s voice, sometimes dissolving and recreating meanings in mantra-like repetitions, sometimes layering itself to pagan choirs of smooth ecstasy. Then again you will also hear that voice close to you, singing, sharing an experience or a thought. It is always soft, effortless and unpretentious, but always strong, clear and precise, like the voice that speaks to you in an altered state of consciousness. It seems to come from the same person that is holding your hand, when everything else seems to fade into uncertainty while wandering through strange times and places.

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Borusiade – A Body [COMEME043]

VA – The Bedroom Tapes: A Compilation of Minimal Wave From Around The World 1980-1991 [MW066]

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A Compilation of Minimal Wave From Around The World (1980-1991), The Bedroom Tapes features rare, unreleased, and licensed tracks all the way from Belgium to Australia to Japan. The Bedroom Tapes excitedly marks Minimal Wave’s 66th release and is a follow up in the series to The Lost Tapes, The Found Tapes, The Hidden Tapes and of course The Minimal Wave Tapes. The twelve artists on this compilation mostly recorded their music onto 4-track tape in their bedroom studios. The sounds on this record range from German new wave to experimental electronic, to early industrial body music from the Swedish countryside, to dreary melodic minimal synth. The theme is music recorded in the bedroom for listening in the bedroom. The Bedroom Tapes presents songs from Pink Elln, Karen Marks, Disque Omo, Vorgruppe, Iham/Echo, Perfect Mother, Arvid Tuba, Subject, Denial, Unovidual, Aural indifference, and Autumn all lovingly remastered.

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VA – The Bedroom Tapes: A Compilation of Minimal Wave From Around The World 1980-1991 [MW066]

Anthony Linell – A Sense Of Order [NE50]

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Having tamed last year’s havoc and disparity into the damaged rapture of ‘Layers of Reality,’ Anthony Linell is opening a new calendar with the sheared isolation of his latest album, ‘A Sense of Order.’ Linell has put his toolkit for summoning euphoria aside here, instead sculpting a glowing, diaphanous fog that swells into pensive melodies and arpeggiated whispers. Graceful for the way in which it makes the bleak hospitable, the charm of coldness invites us toward the empty and the beautiful, and away from the miserable.

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Anthony Linell – A Sense Of Order [NE50]

Jonny Nash / Lindsay Todd – Fauna Mapping [IOTG003]

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Jonny Nash (Guissian Curve / Melody is Truth) and Firecracker’s Lindsay Todd get barefoot and turn out a stunner of an LP. Over the course of twelve compositions we find the pair utilising their recordings in a whole host of ways, avoiding the well-trodden cliches of the “exotic” and instead attempting to achieve a personal interpretation of the flora, fauna and climate of the island. Spending time amidst the insects, rice fields and scorching sun, the pair gathered a library of found sounds which were then taken back to a studio space to be stretched, mangled and manipulated alongside a variety of electronic and acoustic instruments. The outdoor studio itself became a living instrument, with the duo setting up multiple microphones for durations of up to 12 hours around the space, layering and processing the results in tracks such as “Fauna Mapping” and “A Series Of Small Frogs.

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Jonny Nash / Lindsay Todd – Fauna Mapping [IOTG003]

Potter Natalizia Zen – Shut Your Eyes On The Way Out [E034]

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Colin Potter, Alessio Natalizia and Guido Zen regroup along the percussive vectors of ‘Shut Your Eyes On The Way Out’ for the Ecstatic label. Three years in the making, taking cues from German synth rock, cosmic disco, abstract EBM and obscure library sounds, the trio head for seductive new horizons of pulsing rhythms and floating ambient dub tones. The six hands control the mission with masterful skill and sleight of hand, prompting routes for the user rather than signposting the way with cliché. Of course, it’s hard to escape some sense of homage or reverence for the original forms, but they do so with such sensitivity to the material and “the journey” that the results simply transcends that heritage, to arrive somewhere, timelessly, out there.

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Potter Natalizia Zen – Shut Your Eyes On The Way Out [E034]

Vakula – Metaphors [LELEKA009]

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Immersive listening music from Vakula, created in the hidden depths of the Ukraine. ‘Metaphors’ is slightly different from some of his (admittedly eclectic) full-length excursions, focused as it is on the gently unfurling, head-in-the-clouds world of ambient music. Of course, much of the music is still gently rhythmic – check for example, the pulsating arpeggio lines and tumbling kalimba melodies of the strangely foreboding “Proem”, or the spaced-out, keyboard demo rhumba rhythms underpinning languid opener “Smooth Movement” – but the vibe remains thoroughly horizontal throughout. While the standard is high throughout, we’re particularly enjoying the two versions of “Tale of Eternal Thought”, with the weightless bliss of the “Different Version” standing out.

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Vakula – Metaphors [LELEKA009]

Quiet Dawn – Human Being: The Short Story Of A Reed [FW170]

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First Word kicks off 2018 with the welcome return of Quiet Dawn, and a new EP, ‘Human Being: The Short Story of The Reed’. A suitably ice-thawing six-track opus to compliment the change of seasons, dedicated to the winter blooming plant’s desire to be human. Parisian Will Galland first appeared on the label in late 2014, releasing his debut album ‘The First Day’ the following year. Collaborations on that album and subsequent mixes since have included offerings from Oddisee, Miles Bonny, Eric Lau, Bastien Keb, Sauce81 (Eglo), Mayaka McCraven and Sarah Williams White. Evolving his music from a palette accumulated over the years of Hip Hop, Broken Beat and House, he has expanded his talents for arranging and composing, and now drafted in a wealth of musicians for this sublime new EP, his most ambitious yet. Strings glide effervescently atop of Quiet Dawn’s assorted analogue synths, and an array of percussive organics combine to build the tale of The Reed. In-places, the set transcends into the kind of grooves that saunter somewhere between the land of Bonobo and Quantic, and the cinematic library record craft of Alan Hawkshaw et al.

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Quiet Dawn – Human Being: The Short Story Of A Reed [FW170]

Wolf Muller & Niklas Wandt – Instrumentalmusik Von Der Mitte Der Welt [GBR013]

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Growing Bin burst into 2018 with a bang, crash and symbol splash, uniting a premier pair of per-cussion obsessives for a supernatural mission into the heart of the rhythm. Dressed in the pitch black of Dusseldorf stands Wolf Muller, master of the tropical drums and seven time Salon Des Amateur breakdance champion. Repping Cologne and Berlin is Niklas Wandt, Germany’s funkiest drummer and a mixed musical artist as adept in experimental jazz as demen- ted Euro dance. Standing toe to toe in a no holds barred, no drum unstruck groove contest, these two titans will make you swing your pants like a Crash Bandicoot victory dance…so stretch out and step in to ‘Instrumentalmusik von der Mitte der World’.

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Wolf Muller & Niklas Wandt – Instrumentalmusik Von Der Mitte Der Welt [GBR013]

Giuseppe Leonardi – TBC [SC007]

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Returning with another debut release, Second Circle’s eighth record to date comes this time from young Viennese musician Giuseppe Leonardi. Performed on an array of synthesizers and experimenting with spoken word and vocals from various local singers, Giuseppe’s ‘TBC’ EP take us on a dance through the catacombs and out through the jungle floor with ritualistic rhythm and haunting song… Whilst at other moments Giuseppe’s horizontal ambient pieces leave us gazing out on the shores of a distant half-remembered planet.

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Giuseppe Leonardi – TBC [SC007]

Piska Power – Landung [PS005]

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The 5th installation of Power Station, this time from the unused tunnels of Berlin’s U-Bahn. A first time artist release for us as himself and vice versa – metaphorically but not limited to reality. German born, Stefan (wunder) Junge aka Piska Power is Med student by day and neurotic composer by night which is clearly examined and demonstrated with his 6 track ‘Landung’ EP.

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Piska Power – Landung [PS005]