This is the recording of Dunkeltier’s aka SneakerDJ session at the pre-party for the STRCamp festival in Vilnius, Lithuania in July 2014.
Dunkeltier is going deep into obscure things (edits that will come on Macadam Mambo Edits Rec. and Rat Life Rec.), then turning into sweet uptempo synth tunes.
Danny Bosten is back with brand new material as his Das Ding pseudo. Don’t expect this guy to ruminate on his eighties material though. This is about moving forward. ‘Sequencer’ contains four stoned, late night, modular synth explorations. With a far out, heavy dub feel for ”space”, this tape will find fans of Aphex Twins’ SAW 85-92, drooling all over it.
This collection of recordings by Richard H Kirk is now released as a 3xCD box set by Die Stadt,in association with and under license from Intone.The box set contains the three albums for the first time on CD. CD 1-Richard H kirk-Reality is Opposite (guitars, breakbeats, electronics and digital interference in the sound of insurrection.) Cd 2- Orchestra Terrestrial-Umladen(classical analogue mood music) Cd 3-Richard H Kirk and the Arpeggio 13-Anonymized (minimalist analogue arpeggio workouts). All three albums were recorded between October 2010 and December 2011 as cities around the world were in turmoil. Richard H Kirk is a co founder and now sole member of electronic music pioneers Cabaret Voltaire and last year celebrated 40 years as an audio/visual artist.
Solitude FX is no stranger to Enfant Terrible. This German Duo has been present on the great Dutch label since the first compilation from 2006. This new album consists of 10 super melancholy lo-fi minimal synth tunes for the true new wave fan…
Born from the depths of a basement show and raised on the hallowed, unrelenting beauty of the Kentucky countryside, the artist known as Live Island proves not all hope is lost in world. In fact: just the opposite. “King” is effective music for a disaffected people; transmitted by the Philosopher King guiding us into the coming Ice Age. Harboring hope with its timeless synthetic beauty, “King” promises only the shift in perspective you’ll need to survive what’s to come. Its sibling, the “Home Dub”, is an etude of broken minimalism, born of dank basements but not alien to the terrains of the dance floor.
This Perfect Day was a band formed in Manchester, UK around 1981 by vocalist/blues harp player John Sama Snowden and synthesiser player Mik Hayes. John had the street-cred having previously been vocalist with The Limit and for a short time was the vocalist with The Passage during which time they played gigs alongside Joy Division. Mik, by contrast, had no street-cred, having been bass guitarist with a semi-pro cabaret/covers band, playing 2 hour sets of pop songs every Saturday night. The antagonism between the two, the fight between atmosphere and melody characterizes This Perfect Days sound… in fact the name This Perfect Day is an attempt to convey this. It comes from the novel by Ira Levin in which everything on the surface is perfect, but underneath this surface is an underbelly of pure scum! Their music was never intended to be synth music in the classic Kraftwerk / Human League / OMD / etc sense. It was music that just used synthesizers because they didnt have a drummer or a guitarist. They immediately started writing their own songs, bouncing music from track to track on a Revox B77 tape recorder, using a monophonic ARP Axxe and a Soundmaster SR-88 drum machine. Over the next 2 years, besides playing a number of gigs in the northwest of England, they were able to record a total of 13 songs on 8-track tape at Bootleg Studios, Stockport, UK, culminating in the final session with the recording of The Garden and The Time of Your Life, which utilized the polyphonic capabilities of their new Crumar Stratus synth. The Garden and The Time of Your Life were put together as a double A side single purely for promotional purposes. Copies were sent to record companies, radio stations, DJs, etc. but no-one was interested, so the music finally faded away. No decision was ever made to stop… life just took over… until now…
Xymox was founded in Nijmegen, a city in the east of the Netherlands in 1983 by Ronny Moorings (Vocals, Guitars, Synthesizers) and Anka Wolbert (Vocals, Bass). In April of that year Moorings bought a TEAC 144 four-track tape recorder and the duo moved to Amsterdam. They began to record songs utilizing a Yamaha CS-15, Korg MS-10 and MS-20, a BOSS Dr. Rhythm DR-550, guitar and effects pedals. They layered the drone-like tones of monophonic synthesizers alongside tape loops and rhythm tracks, then played guitar and bass, without the use of computers. The 5-song EP Subsequent Pleasures was released in 1984 and limited to 500 vinyl copies, and served as a precursor to the dark wave sounds they would champion on their self-titled debut on 4AD the following year. Also of note, the track Muscoviet Musquito, was later re-recorded for the compilation album Lonely Is An Eyesore released by 4AD in 1987.
Executive Slacks was spawned in the humidity of post-industrial Philadelphia by three restless art students – Matt Marello, John Young and Albert Ganss. Starting out with performance art in subways, they soon took their angst-ridden act to galleries and night clubs. They recorded four songs in the fall of 1982 that became their self-titled EP released by local independent label Red Records in 1983. On their debut EP Matt Marello roars and churns out white-hot shards of guitar while John Young’s short-circuited noise machines and Albert Ganss’s industrial metal drums create dramatic body rhythms. The Slacks drew their influences from contemporaries like Cabaret Voltaire and Tuxedomoon, but also from extremes like disco and dadaism. Songs were created using heavily modified synthesizers and various percussive instruments: industrial steel drums, a filing cabinet, metal rods, and an African drum covered in antelope skin. Executive Slacks’ unique brew of primitive electronics, harsh guitars and aggressive vocals inspired many bands like Ministry, Front 242, Skinny Puppy.
Severed Heads are one of the longest standing bands to have emerged from the Australian post-punk and experimental scene. They began in Sydney in 1979, and were an early outfit to incorporate 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. Dead Eyes Opened features samples from a radio program narrated by Edgar Lustgarten, a crime journalist from England, referencing a double murder case that occurred in 1924. The rhythms are made by a TR-808 drum machine and an SH-1 synthesizer. A KORG PolySix was used for strings and additional atmospheric elements. The lead solo was a Casiotone run through an Octaver foot pedal. On the B-side are two solo compositions Bullet and Mount that Ellard recorded at Terse Tapes in 1982.
Medical Records presents the debut full length release of Kline Coma Xero. Formed in 2012, Kline Coma Xero is a group whose work embraces elements of early minimal synth wave with distinctively thoughtful lyrics and evocative melodies. Kline Coma Xero’s Tony Williams has had his roots planted in various projects in the past, spanning a realm of styles from experimental noise, tape loops and early industrial. Using a writing style that employs the use of hardware sequencers driving analog instruments rather than computers, Kline Coma Xero produces a uniquely oblique interpretation of past-meets-present in modern electronic music.
Their most varied, interesting work, City Slab Horror includes stark synthesizer workouts, several tracks of pure rhythm and noise, and, thankfully, little of the unambitious tape music for its own sake of Since the Accident. “Cyflea, Rated R,” “4.W.D.,” and the title track provide several examples of the best experimental synthesizer tracks of the mid-’80s.
The ”Insoc EP” contains the first official recordings from the legendary Minneapolis music collective Information Society led by founder/producer Paul Robb. Originally released on vinyl in 1983 the EP became extremely difficult to find. Now, for the first time since 1983, Mannequin Records is giving it a new birth on wax, this time including a bonus track ”Charentiesm” never appeared before in any format, which is the first track ever recorded by Information Society in 1982.
The Hipodrome Of Music 