raw culture

Anna Funk Damage – Tarantola LP [RWCLTR029]

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Hailing from Raw Culture, Anna Funk Damage returns with his third release on the Roman label, delivering a record as fierce as it is intimate. ‘Tarantola’ was born out of a winter suspended between contrasting emotions – melancholy, anger, love, confusion – distilled into a sound that transforms personal fragility into collective energy. There’s no pursuit of perfection here, but rather an urgency running through the veins, taking shape across supersonic punk, wave, ambient and industrial. Hailing from Raw Culture, Anna Funk Damage returns with his third release on the Roman label, delivering a record as fierce as it is intimate. Tarantola was born out of a winter suspended between contrasting emotions – melancholy, anger, love, confusion – distilled into a sound that transforms personal fragility into collective energy. There’s no pursuit of perfection here, but rather an urgency running through the veins, taking shape across supersonic punk, wave, ambient and industrial.

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Anna Funk Damage – Tarantola LP [RWCLTR029]

Venice Affair – Ascension [RWCLTR028]

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Venice Affair seeks only to give humans a look into their own lives, history, suffering, and peace, all while providing a backbeat sprinkled with sexuality, romanticism, and especially entertainment. The concept of “Ascension” is much larger than a description of upward motion; it is the human description of our evolution from four to two, from caves to high rises, from child to elder, and from stardust to flesh. This collection of songs has been in the works since 2021 and meticulously arranged to provide the best possible lens into Venice Affair’s concept of human existence.

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Venice Affair – Ascension [RWCLTR028]

Asymmetrical – Porno Incubo [RWCLTR027]

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As is now a well-established tradition, when 7 appears in the catalogue number it is the turn of handyman Asymmetrical. The title takes its inspiration from a tag that appeared in the bathroom of the historical Knick Knack Yoda after one of the (in)usual nights, and is a leap in time, a project born from the layering of different sessions that took place between 2018 and 2020 and only sees the light of day today. 7 is also the number of inches of PVC on which this double is engraved, hosting on one side the track that gives the album its name, on whose rhythms the sound of Luigi Gargano’s saxophone echoes. On the other Estetica Della Notte, is a journey into the phenomenology of tumultuous nights in the shadow of Rome’s Dome.

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Asymmetrical – Porno Incubo [RWCLTR027]

Human Figures – Open Window LP [RWCLTR025]

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That true beauty lies in the essentiality and meticulous combination of a few elements is sometimes not just a cliché. The delicate blend of Roland CR-78, acoustic guitar and dissonant organs that intertwine in ‘Open Windows’ is a vivid demonstration of this. It is these few elements, now distant and hinted at and now close and deafening, that paint the backdrop of melancholic nostalgia where laconic whispers move the listener within the paintings that bear the sonic signature of Human Figures, the project of Daniel Lewis known also as Daniel Holt. In the 8 canvases of Open Windows the folk tradition is repainted in a more contemporary guise: the sweet and sad litanies are alternated with fast and frenetic stornelli in which the combination of tradition and experimentation constitutes the stylistic signature. The open window through which the listener has the opportunity to look out in this album does not, however, give onto a natural external panorama. It projects into an inner world where introspection and silence are the only chance to grasp its sublime beauty.

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Human Figures – Open Window LP [RWCLTR025]

Fontaine SMC – I Was A Soldier EP [RWCLTR019]

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FONTAINE SMC - I Was A Soldier EP

A roundup of positive nostalgia from Fontaine SMC: two French artists and friends who share the same vision of electronic music. They have several project under other names, often axed on IDM/electro, but this time the joined the forces for a synthwave and punk flavor project. I was a soldier EP is a social criticism/journey into human fears and hard relationships, synthetized into an 80s look, dusty and raw sounding. A mix of punk dementia and the most intense dance music, the one that takes the joints and makes you move them well.

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Fontaine SMC – I Was A Soldier EP [RWCLTR019]

Asymmetrical – Blind Faith [RWCLTR017]

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ASYMMETRICAL - Blind Faith

Raw Culture turns 5 and for its fifth anniversary it is its handyman Asymmetrical to blow out the candles, with the album, Blind Faith. Inspired by Ben Elton dark, savagely comic novel where he imagine a post-apocalyptic society where religious intolerance combines with a confessional sex obsessed, self-centric culture to create a world where nakedness is modesty, ignorance is wisdom and privacy is a dangerous perversion, Blind Faith aims to be a critique of post capitalist society and to redesign the idea and the relationship in the contemporary club. Two densely engraved sides for a total of 8 tracks ranging from EBM to techno, from electro to New Wave, all connected by raw rhythms, noise and distant voices.

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Asymmetrical – Blind Faith [RWCLTR017]