Producer, drummer and sound engineer in all forms Stiletti-Ana aka Ilari Larjosto is known for his wide output in the world of cosmic, techno, leftfield, disco and ambient music. Stiletti-Ana keeps the main focus rather on timeless quality releases than searching for the hype. His new solo album “Ab Ovo” is the first full length Stiletti-Ana LP and represents his discoveries in the world of heavenly cinematic arpeggios, conga driven ambient and physical 3D drone compositions.
Luca Venezia, aka Curses, has with his Carcassonne-Mini LP, written and produced a cold wave dream filtered through how all the sci-fi movie soundtracks of the eighties should have sounded like; picture The Cure on a study visit in John Carpenters studio in 1983. This six-track Mini LP is his first release on Hoga Nord Rekords and features eighties influenced dark and expensive sounding electronic music. Luca Venezia also solves the task of putting vocal elements in the tracks with sharpness and precision; the heavy processed reverberating overdubs float in and out on a tastefully low level in the mix.
Minami Deutsch crushes negativity, sorrow, and depressive energy on their new Hoga Nord Rekords release, ‘Can’t get there’, a five-track EP. The Japanese psych-scene is being kept vital by picking up all the best influences from all the best psychedelic music and mixing that with a delicate touch of Japanese music tradition. On this EP, you hear all that you love and miss from the 70’s krautrock bands plus a cover on cult band Index’s song ‘Israeli blues’ from 1968. Also on this record are two remixes of the title track by HNR household names Jamie Paton and Mythologen. Listening to this, you get the feeling of leaving half your brain in a Volkswagen down an endless Autobahn in 1972 and one-half lost in the astral plane as boundless light, above space and time.
Hoga Nord Rekords have had the opportunity to work with Al Lover twice before during the last four years and now it’s time for the next step in the relationship between them, this time with the 7” single ‘Dark Matter Discotheque / Mark E. Moon’. In these tracks, Lover’s influences mainly stems from a decadent eighties New York or Paris and you can almost smell the heavy perfume mixed with indoors smoking get the feeling of sitting in a room with mirror walls.
Pete ‘Bassman’ Bain, one of the founding members of the UK cult psych rock band Spacemen 3, formed Alpha Stone after Spacemen 3 and his other band The Darkside split up in the mid-nineties. In 1996 the band recorded the album ‘Stereophonic Pop Art Music’ and it was released on Bomp! Records on Compact Disc. The album hasn’t had a ‘proper’ vinyl release until now, 2018, when Hoga Nord Rekords continues their collaboration with Pete Bassman by releasing the album. You can clearly hear that Pete Bassman was the driving force behind Alpha Stone; fuzz, synthesiser -sweeps, programmed drums and processed vocals are the cornerstones in Alpha Stone’s sound. Raga-like mantras, heard in Farmer C, lies track to track with more percussion driven grooves and psychedelic pop oriented songs. The album’s sound has obviously survived the 20+ years shelved in obscurity and proves the ‘Drugby’ sound still vital! It’s always hard to sum up a bands particular sound in a few words, but you could say that if you put guitar and bass, synthesisers, a drum machine, and Julian Copes record collection in the hands of an alien, you’ve got Alpha Stone.
Jamie Paton makes music that could be described as ‘Leftfield techno’ or ‘Slowmotion house’. ‘Disk Memories’, his second release on Hoga Nord Rekords, is barren electronic music for the Brexit generation. Paton has established a dystopic electronic sound that aims straight at your frontal lobe, burns in your bones, and projects a lost Europe’s anxiety on the grey London skies. The music breathes of the cold 1980’s, a time of crisis in England’s history and a vibe to be recognize in today’s society: right-wing winds once again blows hard over the British Isles and Jamie Paton’s music catches the insecurity the wind carries with it.
Well renowned bass player extraordinaire, Osynlige Mann from Gothenburg releases long awaited new solo material on Hoga Nord Rekords. This 7inch contains high voltage material; ‘Airports’ and ‘Exodus’ brings tense seventies synth and early eighties electro to the table. The A-side ‘Airports’ is a Kraftwerk inspired elegy over the lumpenproletariat of the machines – aeroplanes. ‘No sleep for the big machines, no rest for the sad machines’. The B-side, ‘Exodus’ carries more obvious characteristics from Osynlige Mann’s other electronic projects.
Last years (2017) edition of Convenanza festival featured Swedish band Fontan, who have released material on Hoga Nord Rekords, and that set the ground for a collaboration between the record label and one of the most interesting festivals around. The joint forces has resulted in the compilation album ‘Convenanza 2018’ containing this years (2018) acts. The contributors are: electro oozing duo The Woodleigh Research Facility, consisting of Andrew Weatherall and Nina Walsh, etno-minimalists Komodo Kolektif from Glasgow with, among others, Gordon Mackinnon who’s running the top quality label Invisible Inc. The more rock oriented side of ‘Convenanza 2018’ contains Berlin based Die Wilde Jagd, whose sound can be defined as some sort of post punk where strong chorus drenched basslines float upon a smooth electronic soundscape with both live drums and drum machines as the back bone to the beat. Wild Woman & The Savages could best be described as the result of an orgy between PIL and The Birthday Party! The Liminanas, with special guest Anton Newcombe, contribute to the collection a garage psych rock track suited for long hot drives through the dessert.
On Ultra Satan’s second 7inch release on Höga Nord Rekords, the band is developing a new genre and concept. Ultra Satan is like a space being, living alone in an enormously big and empty space station, orbiting our planet. With mathematical precision this genius creates music that effects us earthlings on a transcendental plane and shakes the foundation we lead or lives upon.
Timothy J. Fairplay is revisiting Hoga Nord Rekords to release the 12inch EP Mindfighter: photosensitive electronic music from one of the pillars of the modern meaningful dance music scene. Together with Scott Frasier, T.J.F. is running the record label ‘Crimes Of The Future’ and he is also known as one half of The Asphodells together with Andrew Weatherall. This is his second release on Hoga Nord Rekords and his first EP on the label.
There are many ways for a band or an artist to compile an album: some make it in a week and some let the process go on longer. The latter approach does often mean that that the record will not be better than had it been recorded and mixed within a short amount of time, rather the contrary. However, there are those albums that just could not be made within in a week or a month, those compilation of songs that needed the time to melt together to form an album. Fontän’s third album titled ‘Fontän’, released on Hoga Nord Rekords is that kind of an album. Put the opening track ‘Mangsebung’ on, then stay with the record until the closer ‘Shadows’ rings out and you will go clear, sharp, and mildly messed up by the listening experience because this is an extremely well directed trip in mind-altering music! This album needed time to reach such heights. With Johan Melin’s and Jesper Jarold’s love for music and non-sentimental creative approach, this album proves that the band never gets hung up on trying to sound like the past masters, but to develop what they once started.
Jamie Paton, one half of the duo Cage and Aviary has in interviews expressed his thoughts about if ‘Slouchy techno’ can be viewed as an own genre. The answer lies in this 7” – ‘Telefuture / Blind Summit’ – released on Hoga Nord Rekords, on which the label above is highly appropriate to sum up the sound. The tracks contain elements from your techno favorites dating three decades back, but the tempo and the production creates a slouchy (in the words most positive sense) feeling clearly influenced by the slow motion house of Cage and Aviary.
Born to Trinidadian and Finnish parents in Sweden, Jean-Louis Huhta took an early interest in percussion Punk, African, Disco, Dub, Detroit Techno and Chicago Acid were all early sonic influences. Couple these genres with an interest in percussion, drums, synthesizers and skateboarding and you are half-way into describing the sound of Dungeon Acid.
The Hipodrome Of Music 