Never Been is the first collaborative release by Loradeniz and Interstellar Funk, who produced the EP at a Volkshotel artist residency in Amsterdam, in 2021. The record examines the interplay of synthetic melodies and Loradeniz’s vocals, which are underpinned by meticulously crafted rhythms. Steeped in melancholy, many of the tracks on Never Been evoke the essence of departure, complex emotions and fading memories.
Artificial Dance founder Interstellar Funk releases Live At The Rest Is Noise – Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ. Limited to 150 cassettes, the recording documents Interstellar Funk’s performance at Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw concert hall in October 2021. The 45-minute set ebbs and pulses, leaving behind Interstellar Funk’s penchant for hardwearing club sounds in favour of melody and texture. Some passages mirror elements from the studio album Into The Echo (Dekmantel, 2022), but the live setting allows Interstellar Funk to expand and explore richly detailed sonic spaces that highlight his skills as a composer-performer.
For his debut album on Dekmantel, Interstellar Funk has crafted a raw, yet simultaneously hauntingly beautiful and endlessly intricate record. Layers of blended harmonies and melodies form the basis for jettisons into leftfield experimentation, heavily processed drums and oscillating frequencies. The result is as infectious as it is pensive; a transcendental journey into a synth-laden landscape. “Into the Echo” is daringly eclectic, combining sung-spoken iterations with hypnotic samples and machinic industrial.
“Over one hundred artists from all over the world and various disciplines joined forces to raise funds for Red Cross Ukraine and help the innocent. After three days of no sleep, we are proud to present you WhyPeopleWar Vol. 1 and 2. fundraisers with more than 100 tracks! We want to thank all artists who participated and the studios that helped us master the tracks in record time! Let this symbol be the message we send out there with this fundraising compilation. Let this music uplift the human condition and do its part in dragging us out of this situation. From Lithuania with love! Slava Ukraini, Heroyam Slava!
Absolutely all proceedings will be donated to redcross.org.ua/en“
Dekmantel once again teams up with RE:VIVE, the cultural initiative setup by the The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, to pair modern electronic talent with Dutch archival footage. The third EP in the Scores series sees Interstellar Funk and Italian producer Guenter Råler create innovative, modular soundscapes to the graceful visual arts unearthed from the EYE Filmmuseum archives.
Interstellar Funk & Robert Valera roll out a wealth of EBM, darkwave and acid leaning electronics in a new instalment for Olf van Elden’s (Interstellar Funk) label Artificial Dance. Devil’s Juice is a split twelve and the result of two analog recording sessions that took place in New York and Amsterdam in 2019. Van Elden and Valera met each other through mutual friends, sharing a love for deep and twisted bassline explorations, visceral melodies and analog machine funk. Robert Valera is a seasoned live performer but this will be his first release. Devil’s Juice is a testament of Van Elden’s and Varela’s fascination for analog instruments and how they are able to communicate in spontaneous and unpredictable ways.
Birthed at the turn of the ‘80s, synth and wave music has remained a constant force over the last four decades, with a recent spike in interest in the sound offering further proof of its’ timeless, out-of-this-world quality. It’s against this backdrop that Dutch DJ Interstellar Funk presents his celebration of the style, “Artificial Dancers – Waves of Synth”. A bumper compilation bristling with obscure and hard-to-find gems, the set sees the Artificial Dance label founder joining the dots between synthesizer and drum machine-driven tracks in a variety of subtly different styles. It’s the result of hundreds of hours spent digging through dusty old records, tapes, and the Bandcamp accounts of DIY musicians who have been active since the sound’s first boom in the early 1980s. The 11-track set draws on tracks made and released at different times over the last 40 years, with the earliest cut committed to tape in 1978 and the most recent in 2018. While the tracks date from the ‘80s, ‘90s, noughties and 2010s, the showcased cuts are united by a primitive but futuristic quality that makes dating them difficult. In many cases, it’s hard to tell which tracks were made in the early 1980s and which were conjured up in 21st century studios.
The Amsterdam based booking agency, Voyage Select, is launching it’s label. The first release is a digital compilation released on bandcamp and includes 14 tracks by artists from the agency’s rooster. Cover photo by Interstellar Funk, graphic design by Dazion. 100% of the profit will be divided equally among the artists.
2019 is coming to the end so it’s that time of the year when we look back and see what caught our attention the most. As the tradition is on our side, we look first at the preferences of our readers and this is a top 3 of the most appreciated albums, compilations, mixes and other stuff.
Dischi Autunno welcome Harold Boué to the fold for another full-strength cosmic expedition. Best known as Abstraxion – and, since last year, Lion’s Drums – Harold is the man behind the Biologic label and is renowned for his sprawling, hypnotising productions. As a deep as he is decorated, Abstraxion lives up to his name and rips you from the plugs of reality without safely disconnecting. Take this EP; the lead track ‘Black Vulture’ hurls you into a space on a Black Strobe rocket that tears through black holes like us mere humanoids drink black coffee while the breakbeat-driven ‘Deleuze Fight’ flips us 360 in the anti-gravity flow sending us spiralling into an ocean of lasers. For a heavier intergalactic trip head for ‘Remember Bourdieu’ where more and more turbulence kicks in on every bar, creating a driving hypnotic intensity that you’ll never forget. Finally we crash back into reality with the fittingly nihilistic ‘Nietzsche’s Future’; spiralling, cascading arpeggios with more than a mild touch of prang; it’s a poignant end to yet another unique trip from Jennifer Cardini & Noura & Labbani’s Dischi Autunno imprint and Abstraxion himself. And that’s before we even touch on the killer remix missions en route… Black Merlin cranks up the noir to mind-melting technoid levels on ‘Black Vulture’ while Interstellar Funk smelts ‘Deleuze Fight’ down to a deep dark acid swamp.
Dutch powerhouses Parrish Smith and Interstellar Funk team up for their debut collaboration on L.I.E.S. with a new four track EP. Striking up the perfect balance of both their signature styles, this record hits the sweet spot between metallic synthwave, slow beat industrial, and clanging EBM hybrids. The duo effortlessly weave together a sonic narrative with nods to the past but unmistakable emphasis on their ever expanding foward thinking future sound.
The Hipodrome Of Music 