Nico Nightingale, aka Neud Photo, is no stranger to collaborations. The New Yorker’s latest sees him teaming up with Cristiano F. Grimaldi to form INTRZN, a partnership meshing a free style approach to melodies with cold rhythms. Their “Zone” quartet is a twilight of fluctuating moods. Percussion is bare, allowing bright bars to shine and darker moments to fester. Music which in one breath is elated and uplifting and, the next, dejected and downtrodden.
Emotional Rescue delves deep in to the past with the release of the first ever recordings by UK post-industrial, ambient pioneers O Yuki Conjugate (OYC). Recorded in Nottingham in 1983, the EP’s four tracks showcase OYC’s early sound: a beat-driven, lo-fi that places them alongside the early British electronic pioneers.
Bad Penny from NYC with her magnificent debut. Bright melody lines undercut by harsh and heavy bass analog synths and minimal rhythms. Low vocal timbre with punk-influenced growls. Lyrics fueled by the anxiety and harshness of American city life.
Artificial Dance is a new record label from Amsterdam curated by Interstellar Funk. This is the imprint’s debut release and it is the first ever from young Dutch DJ/producer Job Sifre. “Worries” offers an extended glimpse at Sifre’s unique musical vision. It is one that draws heavily on vintage electronic music for inspiration, but also feels fresh and futurist in tone. In turns dark, industrial, hypnotic and mind-altering, the six-track EP bristles with impactful moments of magic.
Arma Records returns with a rare treat from legendary DJ, Mick Wills. Mick has been active in the seedier corners of electronic music for more than 30 years. A life spent digging in the undergrowth for deviant dance music has given him the edge that makes a truly gifted spinner, without riding on hype. For this release on Arma, Mick has given us two edits that speak to his distinctive style as a DJ – the original tracks are cult choices re-moulded into deadly, subversive club weapons. The brooding darkwave of ‘Himmelfahrt 89’ is enough to turn the most indifferent bar crowd into swaying, baying denizens of the night, while ‘Stay Silent’ pummels out a relentless electro motif that teeters on the edge of destruction for 11 thrilling minutes. These aren’t crowd-pleasing DJ tools, and neither are they slick and easy edits of obvious classics. This is a peek into the inner workings of a man with decades of experience working masses of flesh into a sweaty fever pitch using sounds you’ve never heard before.
Featuring a wide range of artists (Das Ding, Plus Instruments, De Fabriek for a start!) from the Amsterdam Fetisj scene and cities such as Rotterdam, Utrecht, The Hague, and Zwolle. It gives a glimpse into the artistic DIY music movement that was growing extensively outside of mainstream circles. The beautifully printed record sleeve was designed by Steele Bonus. It includes liner notes (in English and Dutch) that paint a great picture of the context where these bands and artists lived and breathed. It is compiled by Mark van de Maat and mastered by Rude 66.
Dark Entries present the deluxe 2xLP reissue of ‘Come Visit The Big Bigot’ by Severed Heads, one of the longest surviving bands to emerge from the Australian post-punk independent music scene. They began in Sydney in 1979, incorporating elements of ‘industrial’ noise-generation, tape cutting & looping and electronic sound synthesis. As the project developed song-structures and vocals were employed in a more-or-less recognizable mutant electro pop style. After many line-up changes featuring Garry Bradbury and psychedelic guitarist Simon Knuckey, Severed Heads was the vehicle for composer Tom Ellard. ‘Come Visit The Big Bigot’ was Severed Heads’ first record to be released commercially simultaneously in Australia, North America and Europe in 1986. It was a prime period for this ‘industrial dance music’ and Bigot was a respected album that did well from the tour they did with Skinny Puppy that same year. Quite a few people still define the band by this period. ‘Come Visit The Big Bigot’ was made on a Fostex 16 track recorder in Tom’s bedroom, employing the newly acquired AKAI S612 sampler and Roland SH-101 to create most of the drum sounds. The album signaled a new direction, flirting with the dance floor and the pop song. Presenting the Heads at their most cohesive, while retaining their distinctive musical stamp. Tom’s vocals are harmonized, slowed down, sped up, run through fuzz boxes, backwards, drum machine rolls, sampled guitars, horn sections, and voices but with a subversive rather than malevolent intention. Tape loops are more subtle and define their own space and texture. Like the original Australian version of the album, we’ve included a bonus disc featuring three extended remixes by Sydney DJ Robert Racic (who produced the edited 7” version of “Petrol” we reissued in 2015), plus three B-sides from the ‘Twenty Deadly Diseases’12” and two additional tracks from the same recording sessions. All songs have been remastered by Tom Ellard, who worked very slowly and methodically with much better equipment over two years, letting each track have its own breath.
NEP was a loose multimedia collective formed in 1982 Zagreb, ex-Yugoslavia. The founder Dejan Krsic collaborated with various artists in a quest of re-thinking the stale concepts of art history, position of the author and the barriers between pop and elitist high culture. Deeply immersed in pop-culture, politics and art theory Krsic’s search for perfect pop music with cutting critical edge peaked in 1989, the year Decadance track was conceived in studio, but has never been published. Pumping Roland 808 beats, with sampled vocals from Linda Cooper asking herself “How do I dance to this music?” were chosen by Fox & His Friends label owners Leri Ahel and Zeljko Luketic for a 12″ opener of the unknown NEP’s pop history. All material is restored and mastered from original reel-to-reel tapes and presented on wax for the first time and for this occasion, deconstructed and reinvented in a remix B-side by Snuffo. Snuffo splitted the title vocal into a new cut-up, now telling “Dance to this music” to its audiences.
Brilliant comet of the Italian New Wave scene. Real deal. Atelier du Mal were formed in Florence in 1983 by Lapo Pistelli (synths, electronic drums), Iacopo Ficai Veltroni (bass, synth) and Ignazio Matteini (drum programming, percussions). Recorded in 1984, ‘Noblesse Oblige’ was the first and subsequently the only demo tape by the group, self-released using classic gear like Korg Ms-20, Roland Tr-606, Roland Tr-808, Roland Juno 60, Roland TB-303.
L’Avenir is the cold synth side project of veteran electronic musician and sound artist Jason Sloan. Known throughout the space and ambient music scenes for his contemplative electronic soundscape work for over a decade; Sloan founded L’Avenir as a side project in 2012 to explore his long time love of synthpop and minimal wave music created purely from analog and vintage equipment.
Hand-picked selection of tracks by UK’s Negative Response in this initial limited run of 300 discs. Negative Response is a DIY minimal synth project that formed in 1980. They self-released 3 cassettes from 1981-1983 as well as playing a number of gigs from 82-85. The tracks embody a very melancholy atmosphere reinforced by their arsenal of early electronic analogue equipment. This collection will certainly appeal to fans of early bedroom synth artists such as John Bender and other DIY home recording moguls of the era.
On his debut full-length album as Marker, New Orleans artist Mike Wilkinson eschews traditional pop catharsis for total submersion into a blue, luminous tunnel. Guitar, bass, and Wilkinson’s voice are all treated through a variety of outboard and software effects, gently blurring into one another. Written and recorded between 2012 and 2015, the songs distill themes of isolation and connection, unreliable memory, identity, and the problem of infinite introspection and its relationship with reality. Filled with surprise melodic turns and evocative, vaporous production, “Marker” is an immersive work of otherworldly pop, encouraging its listeners to retreat inside themselves.
The Hipodrome Of Music 