L.F.T – Hell Was Boring LP [MNQ170LP]

Between 2023 and 2025, L.F.T. split his time between Hamburg and Berlin, slowly piecing together what would become his most ambitious work to date. The result is ‘Hell Was Boring’ a double album that plays like a fever dream, unfolding as a dark, mythical tale about life, death, and the strange spaces in between. L.F.T. – the alias of German producer and multi-instrumentalist Johannes Haas – has always thrived on tension: between punk urgency and electronic precision, between raw emotion and mechanical repetition. On Hell Was Boring, those tensions are amplified. Drawing on the spectral drama of Bauhaus, the melancholic minimalism of Linear Movement, the futuristic romanticism of Gary Numan, and even the sly swagger of Falco, the album feels at once deeply personal and part of a much older musical lineage. The sound is stripped down to its bones: drums snap and rattle from a Roland TR-808, TR-707 and Korg KR-55; basslines growl from a Roland SH-101 and Korg MS-20; shards of guitar cut through clouds of tape hiss. Everything was tracked to a Teac Tascam 80-8 reel-to-reel, giving each track a lived-in, imperfect warmth. Nothing is overpolished – L.F.T. wanted the listener to hear the edges, the grit, the moments when the music almost comes apart. Along the way, he invited friends and long-time collaborators into the fold – Das Kinn, Rosaceae, Felix Kubin, Children Of Leir, and Konstantin Unwohl – each leaving their own fingerprints on the record’s world of shadows and static.

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L.F.T – Hell Was Boring LP [MNQ170LP]

Felix Kubin – Teenage Tapes [MW037]

Minimal Wave is proud to present Teenage Tapes, an LP of selections from the early tape archives of Felix Kubin. Six of the twelve tracks on this album have never been released before. The recordings span his adolescent years, when he was between 11 and 15 years old. He actually began playing music at 8 years old, when he studied piano, organ, and glockenspiel. In 1980, he acquired a Korg MS-20 synthesizer and his recordings took off from there. He began experimenting and recording a variety of tracks, adding his own bizarre lyrics to them. Although Alfred Hilsberg of the notorious ZickZack label (Palais Schaumburg, Die Toedliche Doris, Einstuerzende Neubauten) had planned to release Felix Kubin’s early music in 1985, it took another 20 years until the French label SKIPP and the German label A-Musik put out a selection of tracks for the first time. These days, Felix Kubin is still very active, recording new music, writing and producing radio plays and running his label Gagarin Records.

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Felix Kubin – Teenage Tapes [MW037]

VA – The Minimal Wave Tapes: J Rocc Edits Vol 2 [STH2295]

J ROCC/FELIX KUBIN/OHAMA/MARK LANE/DEUX - The Minimal Wave Tapes: J Rocc Edits Vol 2

J Rocc steps up for the second and final installment of his Minimal Wave Tapes Edits, once again appearing on weighty vinyl and offering solitude for those DJs out there whose attempts to drop the likes of Ohama and Deux are frustrated by the inherent lack of quantized drum programming. J Rocc’s edit of Felix Kubin’s “Japan Japan” is a case in point, originally featuring on the recent second volume of The Minimal Wave Tapes, the rolling 4×4 electro groove that filled the opening bars soon mutated rhythmically into bastard vocoder pop. J Rocc wisely extends this opening loop before switching into the madness and then smoothing back into that groove. From here, J Rocc adds some extra weight to the titular elements of Ohama’s “The Drum”, teases out the inner uneasy primal techno workings of “Who’s Really Listening?” from Mark Lane and f*cks about with Deux’s “Game & Performance” brilliantly.

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VA – The Minimal Wave Tapes: J Rocc Edits Vol 2 [STH2295]

VA – The Minimal Wave Tapes Vol. 2 [STH2281]

VARIOUS - Minimal Wave Tapes Volume Two

This is the second volume of The Minimal Wave Tapes series, a collection of rare electronic music compiled from bands around the world.  Most of the songs were recorded in the 1980s and originally released on limited edition cassettes or vinyl by the artists themselves, and only a handful of people knew about them.  Now they’ve been remastered from their analog source tapes, brought to you by Veronica Vasicka and Peanut Butter Wolf.

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Veronica Vasicka interview

VA – The Minimal Wave Tapes Vol. 2 [STH2281]