William Thomas Burnett aka Willie Burns / DJ Speculator / Black Deer is one of the creative minds of the underground music scene in NYC. After releases for L.I.E.S., The Trilogy Tapes, Crme and Rush Hour, The WT Records boss unveils his new monicker Phobian, presenting 4 TR-808/SH-101/Pro One driven electro jams for the mysterious Haunted Air Records.
Sumerian Fleet aka Alden Tyrell and Mr Pauli with vocalist Zarkoff. Their debut eponymous EP was released on Clones West Coast series in 2010 and the Sturm Bricht Los EP came out in 2012 on the Creme Eclipse branch of Creme Organization. Sumerian Fleet is ready to release their first full length album Just Pressure all new material recorded between 2013 and 2014 as well as a remixed version of the title track from the Sturm Bricht Los EP. Just Pressure contains 80s Dark Wave/EBM inspired tracks with an industrial tinge. Citing inspiration from Fad Gadget, Front 242, Bauhaus and Sisters of Mercy, Sumerian Fleet deliver 9 songs of vintage dark electro. Their sound brings to mind rough 80s/90s Industrial dance with a Gothic tinge and a touch of bass guitar as the lead instrument. The band utilizes vintage analog gear like the Linn Drum, Roland TR-808, MiniMoog, Korg MS-20, and Roland Jupiter 8 . All songs were recorded at Mr Paulis studio in Den Haag and Alden Tyrells studio in Rotterdam. The album has been mastered for vinyl at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley by George Horn. Each LP is packaged in a custom-made jacket by our in-house designer Eloise Leigh, incorporating Mesopotamian pyramids and occult symbols, offset printed with gold ink at Stumptown Printers in Portland.
Neud is a trio from NYC and Zagreb consisting of Nico Nightingale (Neud Photo), Iva Viskovic (Croatian chanteuse), and Pierre Klein (MOX). They’ve been producing their own brand of Italo/Space Disco the ‘old skool’ way since last summer. Ranging from sexy, groovin dizko to deep, dark and dancey trax.
Lux Rec continue their endless research at the margins of music, what is underground, at every latitude, to find rough gems and bring them to light. After a series of releases which explore Techno in various ways, they turned their attention to another field. That of the Cold Electronics and New Wave movement, and French musical existentialism. Cold Colors comes from Bordeaux, France. To Lux Rec he is the best expression of and a new take on that type of music. A sense of solitude is the first reaction to his music. Melodic longings for something that is not there, unreachable. Four songs to depict a hopeless stare into emptiness. Shadows of a love long gone.
Cute Heels is the solo project of Victor Lenis, a contemporary artist living in Brussels, Belgium. He grew up in Bogot, Columbia during the 1990s, surrounded by the radial punk scene. He has been working with many electronic projects since 2003. He manages the label Black Leather Records, which is also a regular party with live acts and DJ sets. Over the years, Victor’s passion and fascination for synthesizers and drum machines to produce and compose resulted in various digital-only releases as well as his first vinyl release, an EP on Gooiland Elektro. Cute Heels is ready to release their debut album ”Spiritual” of all new material written throughout 2013. ”Spiritual”, rides the line between cold electro-techno and left field electronic body music. Inspired by equal parts Liaisons Dangereuses and Drexciya, ”Spiritual” takes the listener on a journey over 8 tracks and 40 minutes of music. Cute Heels has been called ”the new blood and spirit for the next step in techno music” by electro/techno pioneer Juan Atkins. Listening to ”Spiritual” you can see why. The songs on this full length reveal a sublime influence from Detroit techno, early Chicago house and new wave. Advanced electronics for the dance floor, pumping and sophisticated.
Cold Beats is a record label from Barcelona created to give support to bands and artists in the wave/electronic scene. ‘No Souvenir’ is the third release on the label and comes from the French duo Coco Gallo & Stephane Argillet. The album include 14 tracks and it was recorded and mixed in Paris-Berlin between 2011 and 2013.
Nation starts off the year with brand new artists to the family from San Francisco from 2 ladies on a mission is to present the most emotional and artistic music that brings many moods and colors that equals timeless avant-garde paintings of sound. Abstract darkness from San Francisco. Red Light started as a pact between Kerri LeBon and Rachel Aiello in early 2013,though neither of them had any prior musical experience, they both were determined to dive head first into creating their first recordings…their music being generally angst and moody, the two girls sought to beautify their suffering through sound.
Straight from the Gothenburg harbour comes Video Look. They were featured on flexi009 (Flexivåg), Fact mag 004 and has remixed Roladex, Love Surgery. 11 tracks of the finest working class synth-punk with harsh lyrics in Swedish.
Cititrax is honored to introduce Bruta Non Calculant, a new project by Alaxis Andreas G, the mastermind behind Le Syndicat Electronique and numerous other analog electronic, experimental and esoteric industrial folk projects of the past 20 years. Alaxis formed Bruta Non Calculant in 2006 along with his brother Victor-Yann (De Frontanel). Their debut album, World In A Tear, presents 10 tracks drenched in a dark european atmosphere complete with a sound fully formed and heroically executed. Themes of death, lust and unrequited love are all bound in this brown book-esque collection. The songs occupy their own space and communicate in their own language and as such almost seem to have the ability to alter time once the listener has succumbed to their discordant beauty. An unsurprisingly impressive comeback, Bruta Non Calculants debut album blends new wave elements with folkloric balladry impeccably, and approaches this with a modern sensibility. World In A Tear is an elegant collection of seductive songs. Vinyl pressed on white 160 gram housed in a matte full color printed sleeve.
What do an alien balancing on one of it’ s three legs, the RSA encryption algorithm, neuroscience and prehistoric musical instruments have in common? Design A Wave isn’t sure either but this is some music made while trying to find out.
The Games truly were visionaries and pioneers. They never got the credit they deserved because they were not in the right place at the right time and lacked the contacts good management could have provided. This album is a must for all synth-pop enthusiasts and lovers of quality pop anthems. It earns its place as an historical masterpiece when you consider the dates when these songs were released and the timeless relevance of the songs to the world today.
Medical Records presents it’s second contemporary artist release with Roladex. Using an arsenal of analog instruments, Roladex nostalgically borrows ideas from music of the past to carefully craft a unique brand of futuristic-mechanized pop, with an emphasis on songwriting and layered production. Weaving sparse, sequenced arpeggios into fuzzy bass and bubbly melodies to create a bed of sound where they layout a somehow bright melancholia. Part minimal synth-wave, part dream pop. The opening track “Anthem For The Micro-Age” sets the tone with dreamy atmospheric synth textures and interwoven male and female vocals. “Love Surgery” is chock full of pop hooks and synth leads interspersed with angular guitar accents. “Empty Streets” has an almost minimal John Bender bedroom aesthetic. Fans of early Wire (esp 154), Drinking Electricity, Fad Gadget and even noisy 90s shoegaze are sure to enjoy. Presented on high-quality 180gram heavyweight electric blue transparent vinyl and features a bonus LP insert with lyrics.
Featureless Ghost take it straight towards the blackened ecstasy of dance- floor revelry with their Trance State or Identity EP, a collection of four highly crafted and mechanized emotions issued forth from the Acoustic Division. Known for their mastery of tense cybernetic synth-pop, the Atlanta duo bridge the more gothic strains of techno, electro, and clubland music into a precise and cutting future funk. This record runs the full course- hard and jacking right into the beautiful and disorienting warmth of the abyss. Electric romanticism and drum machine communion at its finest.
The newly forged CGI label debuts with a 12″ release from Featureless Ghost, a Atlanta-via- Brooklyn duo hotly tipped with the online content farm after releases on the Crash Symbols and Night People labels. Describing themselves simply as ‘synths/rhythms/voices/moods’ the Featureless Ghost pairing of Matt Weiner and Elise Tippins occupy the crawl space between synth pop, wave, industrial and nascent forms of techno, which manifests itself in two intriguing original tracks in “Sugar coated” and “Cybersapien”. Kudos to CGI for the remix commissions too, with both Scott Fraser and Beau Wanzer excelling – the latter’s take on previous FG single “Flash” is a particular highlight here.
Minimal Wave present Smile With The Eyes: a double LP of selections of unreleased material from the prolific outsider duo Five Times Of Dust. Formed in 1980 in Bristol, Mark Phillips (MAP) and Robert Lawrence came together with a shared passion for Krautrock, Industrial Electronics and the burgeoning DIY tape scene, as well as being influence by the Dadaist movement and the works of Burroughs and Ballard. Unconventional, quirky and at times melancholic and romantic, their music acted as the perfect escape from the urban decay of early 80s Bristol and Cardiff, the two cities they travelled between on weekends to record. Although unashamedly electronic, the sound of Five Time Of Dust is far harder to pin down, perhaps in part due to their location. Both Phillips and Lawrence produced music that owed little to any scene happening in London, Manchester or Sheffield at the time. As a result, the majority of their output are perfectly formed electronic curiosities. The material on Smile With The Eyes spans recordings Lawrence and Phillips made between 1982-1986. As a follow up to The Dadacomputer, their debut cassette release as a duo which we reissued earlier this year, Smile With The Eyes remains lo-fi but is musically more complex. The recordings are catchy, curious and emotionally rich. Whereas The Dadacomputer could be compared with the early output of Robert Rental, Smile With The Eyes is a collection of works that stands all on its own.
Final part in the Charles Cohen trilogy on Morphine Records. Featuring various works made for Dance & Theatre productions between 1976 & 1988. Eleven tracks in total – lovingly spread over double LP and featuring some of the most beautiful material of the series. Another essential purchase.
Morphosis’ Morphine records boldly step into the archives of one of Philadelphia’s best kept underground secrets: synth composer, Charles Cohen. This excellent release beholds seven key tracks (recorded between 1979 & 1988) that go into uncharted polyrhythmic / ambient / cosmic territory. The label say ” First chapter in the trilogy of Charles Cohen retrospective works, featuring some of his early works from the Philadelphia’s “No Man’s Land” Art Installment, the “University Of Texas in El Paso” and “The Painted Bride” Art Center performances. This release also features the track, Dance Of The Spiritcatchers, which previously appeared on the Music From No Man’s Land EP by Ghostwriters, a split record with Jeff Cain, originally issued in 1980 on Zero Records.”
The band drop their highly anticipated album debut on NYC post-punk stalwart DFA. Tracks from both of their singles appear alongside a slew previously unheard synth-wave / EBM gems. A vivid snapshot of a progressive band, still in the ascendant, smashing through yet another ceiling.
