experimental
Sneaker – Serial Experiments Layer #63
VA – Ideas Of Reference & The Luna Sea [LSD014]
Light Sounds Dark’s steady plummet into the 5th dimension continues in earnest as the label reach their 14th release. A rather special unit, certain to dissipate as cleanly and as smoothly as a 150mics dose of Sandoz’ finest; best to pay the admission and take the trip now if you want in. Fortune favours the brave and fearless exploration is surely required. Gone are the boogie, cosmic and Balearic coloured fractals, replaced now by dark industrial menace, no-wave bleakness and post-punk tribal space music. Painstakingly sequenced and arranged over three discs to give you a truly immersive journey; fasten those seatbelts and take a trip on the rainbow super highway.
Night Court – Law & Order [NNF313LP]
The origins of these enigmatic VHS-scrambled prog-techno explorations are so true and tripped they’re worth quoting in full from co-chairman Christopher Hontos: “Night Court was recorded in July two summers ago (’13) in a remote cabin on Lake Namekagan (located on national forest grounds in northern Wisconsin). We usually do these ball-busting weeklong recording sessions up there with a good group of folks and a grip of mushrooms. For this one we had this idea of setting up our synths on the deck and doing a trippy somnabulistic overnight open-air recording sesh that would be called “Night Court.” However when the time came and the crew got together we interpreted the name literally and ended up jamming out an album of legal system-themed tracks. We recorded the entire album in one day every song in one take and with very little post-production. Track after track flowed and we never drifted from the theme nor spent time diverting our focus (with the exception of Farstad being vetoed after trying to start up a footwork-style track). After the session we were all so burnt-out and fried we thought little of the recordings. But as time passed we went back to them and realized we had struck gold. Italics ours – this is rare ore. A freaked fusion vision, flowing cold city collectivist synths interlaid with executioner guitar, ambulance/TV samples, alley haze, and flashing sirens sax. Insane music for insane times. Its meanings are manifold: political (a sweeping overview of the nothing-specific nature of humanity via the American legal system), metaphoric (tongue-in-cheek turns to fist-in-air, and we realize that life imitates fiction less than fiction imitates life), realistic (at the time of recording none of us had ever seen an entire episode Law & Order).”
VA – Acido 20 [ACIDO020]
Never a label to be afraid of bucking expectations, the 20th Acido releases sees founder Dynamo Dreesen collaborating with regular colluder SVN and, surprisingly, Dave ‘A Made Up Sound’ Huismans. Of the three untitled tracks, it’s the A side where the production touch of A Made Up Sound is most discernible, thanks to the skipping, stripped back rhythmic kicks that propel the cut forwards. You can totally see Ben UFO getting plenty of mileage out of this one. It is the B side where the abstract inclinations of SVN and Dreesen come to the fore, with “Track 2” sinking meandering drums in a thick, foggy soup of sonics and delayed modular bleeps whilst the final track is jittering, minimal electronics at its most paranoid.
VA – Stollwerck Sampler [ERC026]
Emotional Rescue returns to the post war music of West Germany and the work of Dominik Von Senger and his cohorts based around the Dunkelziffer project. This special “Sampler” EP of recordings was produced as their part in Cologne’s Stollwerck art complex, that acted as a home and inspiration to their musical experiments. Based within the disused industrial warehouses spaces of Stollwerck, a mix of post-hippies, punks and anarchists created a community within that fed off each other’s artistic endeavours.
Magas – Heads Plus [MW002]
Midwich Productions presents James Marlon Magas’ Heads Plus. For the past several years, Magas has been concentrating on instrumental production, eschewing vocal histrionics of previous work, in favor of moodier, more open-ended composition. This focus has resulted in the bombastic and hallucinatory Heads Plus, an all-instrumental wallop that fuses howling ARP Odyssey, capricious Juno funk and fuzzed Rhodes anchored to the ever-present throb of the Roland TR-808 drum machine. Freed from vocal constraints, Heads Plus conjures a cinematic ambience where light and dark wrangle for dominance in a dystopian post-techno near-future.
Leonardo Martelli – Menti Singole [ATN021]
Antinote introduce Leonardo Martelli who’s Menti Singole 12″ again proves what a vital and interesting label the Paris concern has become under the tutelage of Quentin Vandewalle. Leonardo Martelli is a relative newcomer from Foligno in Italy, with just one prior cassette behind him, which appeared on Drvg Cvltvre’s New York Haunted label. There is a distinct electro flavour hovering over Martelli’s Antinote debut. Of course there is still plenty of room for the kind of leftfield meandering that Antinote has made its name on, but with a more forthright club purpose beating at its heart.
VA – KHCC001 [KHCC001]
Knekelhuis presents a cassette featuring a selection of six industrial/EBM tracks from Beau Wanzer, Parrish Smith, Maekkot, Sige Bythos and Volition Immanent. The tapes are housed in a black library case clear front black back.
Weber – Zwei [HOLGER007]
On his second installment for Holger, Philipp Weber further expands the sounds and themes introduced on his debut Eins on Holger. Combining influences from early krautrock and minimal music to contemporary dance sounds.
Beau Wanzer – Untitled [BW002]
The next installment from Beau Wanzer on his self-titled imprint, more electro-wave induced tracks for the freaks. Sure to get the floors shaking and everything else along with it.
Celestial Terrestrial – Death Metal Disco Club #076
Trevor Jackson – Format [FV113.16]
Trevor Jackson releases a collected triple LP edition via The Vinyl Factory featuring 13 tracks including an exclusive bonus cut not available on any of the initial releases. Curated from an archive of over 150 tracks Trevor had built up over the past 2 decades, the inspiration for Jackson’s music, has come from “the times and places where genres weren’t quite formed.” While his synth and beatbox workouts might touch on proto-house, on new wave, on Italo and techno, on ambient and psychedelia, they are at the same time none of these things. Musically, Format explores Jackson’s usual obsessions – industrial, new wave, EBM, electro, post-punk disco and techno, in particular – with great gusto.
Charles Cohen – Brother I Prove You Wrong [DOSER026]
Composer, improviser, and Buchla Music Easel master Charles Cohen returns to Morphine with a suite of new material. In keeping with the timbre spectrum of his semi-modular system, Brother I Prove You Wrong is built around pointillist analog tones—Cohen’s cosmic “beeps and boops”—that swarm and scatter in mesmeric patterns across four sides. Moving through surrealistic textural overlays and industrial miasma, the album’s nine tracks reveal a more introspective and personal side of the artist, following from a retrospective LP trilogy released via Morphine in 2013. Those assembled works, dating back to the late ’70s, quickly became essential listening and brought Cohen—at the time largely unknown outside Philadelphia’s experimental circuit—to critical renown.
Jahiliyya Fields – Chance Life Moon Dance [LIES060LP]
Brooklyn-based experimentalist Jahiliyya Fields presents his second album on L.I.E.S. On Chance Life, Jahiliyya Fields changes track a little with the 11 tracks a tad closer to the dancefloor. While there are still out-there moments (including a bizarre spoken word cut), for the most part the album pairs his throbbing synthesizers and crusty electronics with dense techno grooves, psychedelic tribal rhythms and humid box jams.
Vester Koza – PRISN [PRISN001]
Vester Koza returns with a new project – PRISN. The titles of the tracks are in reference to/or adaptations of permissions/commands used by the apple and google android operating systems. Smoked out ambient techno.
Madteo – Raveyard Shifts EP [LTNC005]
Given the quality of his eccentric, left-of-center productions, it’s rather surprising that this 12″ is Madteo’s first release since 2013. Predictably he’s in fine form for this Latency debut, dropping a trio of tracks that largely eschew dancefloor thrills in favour of crackly textures, woozy chords, experimental electronics and minimal-goes-leftfield rhythms. A-side “Irreconcilable Differences” sets the tone, layering fuzzy guitar touches and hushed melodies over a quietly pulsing rhythm track. “Hoodshedding” is crackly, hypnotic and out-there, sounding not unlike early Nicholas Jaar with a Madteo twist. Arguably best of all, though, is EP closer “Discomfort Zone”, which manages to be both dreamy and wholly unsettling in it’s’ pursuit of smacked-out IDM thrills.
Patrice Scott – Euphonium: The album [SISLP001]
Patrice Scott presents his first full length artist album: Euphonium, The Album. Encapsulating the essence of the Sistrum sound, Euphonium, The Album sees Patrice offering up 9 tracks cut from the same cloth as his previous work for the label – sublime and evolved with depth and authenticity as only he can convey. Without a doubt, it is the modern sound of deepest Detroit.
Eecee – Cosmic Trigger [DBA017X] FREE DOWNLOAD
Don’t Be Afraid have released the latest album from US based artist Eecee(a.k.a. Doubt), called Cosmic Trigger. The album has been released as a cassette and free download via Don’t Be Afraid’s Bandcamp page and as expected, it’s an experimental leaning affair and a beautiful, mostly ambient journey through mesmerising textures and atmospheres.
Varg – Ursviken [NE019]
Sophomore album from Jonas Ronnberg aka Varg with icey electronics live recorded. Ursviken is, unsurprisingly, a largely icy and atmospheric affair, with occasional bursts of throbbing, techno-influenced intensity (see the relentless loops and murky textures of “Vitberge”, and industrial freakiness of “Guldstaten”) punctuating the otherwise downbeat, largely ambient mood. As usual, there’s much to admire, from the bleak, dubbed-out oddness of “Raggarsvin” and overwhelmingly dreamy “Ohn”, to the understated grooves and spaced-out chords of “Skaeliptom”.
The Hipodrome Of Music 