More fine bits from Vienna comming from Mr. Ho under the MRH alias.
techno
Kӣr – Imrali (Live At Medika Zagreb) [CREMECS002]
Recorded live during an Ekstrakt party, in the legendary Medika squat in downtown Zagreb. Kӣr is the production moniker of WhyBaneWhy, resident DJ of Belgrade’s dankest technoclub, Drugstore. Bane’s sets incorporate a wide range of influences and travel far off the beaten path, drawing in influences from techno to new wave to power electronics, obscure ambient, folk music, twisted echoes found deep in lost wormholes and whatever else it takes to distort your feelings, lost and disorientated whilst working up a sweat. Kӣr takes all this and pushes the envelope with punishing hardware. Its visceral music, embracing drones, repetition, rippling soundscapes and obscure sonic horizons, to boldly go where others throw in the towel.
Blue Hour – Blue Hour Remixed 2 [BLUEHOURMX002]
The second edition of Blue Hour’s ‘Remixed’ series features four distinctly diverse cuts. Mark Broom delivers a peak time take of ‘Common Ground’, followed by Substance’s (AKA DJ Pete) dub driven remix of the untitled hidden ambient track which appeared on ‘Reference 97’. On the flip Hessle Audio’s Pangaea re-captures the jacking and functional energy of ‘Falling Lines’, then closing the EP is a raw and dreamy electro workout of ‘Introspective II’ from VC-118A.
Unbalance – Reeko & Skudge Remixes [REBALANCE004]
VA – Cameron 10 [DSR/C10]
Delsin is to put out an eight track compilation for the tenth release on its Cameron series, taking in stronghold names as Claro Intelecto and Vril, as well as former contributors to the series Shlømo, Artefakt and Gunnar Haslam. As has been the mission for the series before, there’s eye for new talent too – in the names of recent Delsin newcomer Sentomea, The Invariants and Cameron. All contributors look beyond the dance floor to offer a mixture of moody and atmospheric sounds, and everyone was given free rein, which has resulted in a collection that covers so much stylistic ground.
Alessandri Adriani – RA Label of the month: Mannequin Records
Gunnar Haslam – Kalaatsakia [BK025]
The latest transmission from the world of Gunnar Haslam, Kalaatsakia wildly sprawls across the intersections of techno and more abstract sounds to take us on a wideranging journey from the subterranean to the coastal, from blown-out dub tones through fractured rhythms. An incredible work that is not easy to pigeonhole, Kalaatsakia is a full length album that navigates and sketches landscapes where new languages are created from old, dead ones to emerge as the lingua franca of interconnected immersive zones. Haslam is an avid home listener of dub, dancehall and calypso, and that influence is quickly felt as Kalaatsakia launches with a tight electro snap and dubwise crash. Kalaatsakia advances and retreats seasonally, tightening up for the floor with the chrome-plated ‘Broadcast’ and ‘Kjolle’ while splintering apart on ‘Kalapuyan’ and ‘nxbound’. Its constituent parts are often left to collapse in on themselves, smearing themes into residual trails. As the narrative of the album disintegrates and unfolds into more deconstructed territory, it stretches out even further with a striking skittering mental tease, settling into burbling sub-audible vocals and resonant spaces that all form a part of Haslam’s self-created subconscious language.
Bill Converse – Salt Of Mars [TABR039]
Tabernacle Records presents Bill Converse’s first release outside of the U.S. is spaced out over a double pack format, focusing on his lengthy, trippy jams.
VA – The Lost Realms EP [GRTW004]
Next up on Gravitational Waves, Dj Nephil brings four unrelenting bangers designed for peak hour play. A collection of tough drums and arpeggiated synths is a unifying theme and will serve those djs who want to highly energetic EBM tinged weapons.
Donarra – Les Sentiments De Shiva [SUIT010]
New to the Stay Underground It Pays gang, the tenth release on the label comes from one of the hotest & experimental french producer from Marseille : Donarra. The EP includes 6 cuts, which is almost a mini album introducing us to his astonishing sound. It could be described as dreamy, raw, completely analog, well some kind of proto-techno Chicago new-wave belter.
Richard Fearless – BIS Radio Show #888
400PPM – Fit For Purpose [AVNLP004]
New York native Shawn O’Sullivan returns to Avian as 400PPM with debut LP, ‘Fit for Purpose’. As an artist, O’Sullivan has long since explored the juncture between hard-hitting, functional dance floor material and more lofty, conceptual work. From a purely structural standpoint, the artist’s return to Avian bears all the hallmarks of previous output under the alias, utilising the same palette found on early EP’s for Guy Brewer’s label. Stripped back and driven, the music marries caustic drum-machine polyrhythms with warping, pitch bent leads and characteristically atmospheric use of reverb. It’s a decidedly dance floor offering, but the music comes refracted through O’Sullivan’s own lens, with plenty of elegant references to a career spent exploring much of the Techno genre’s periphery, from Noise to New Wave. Crushed vox bubble up from beneath wrought-iron percussion and the artist takes time to step away from high energy 4×4 workouts to explore more complex rhythmic structures and harsh, low tempo grooves. While O’Sullivan’s music as 400PPM might eschew the colour and vibrance of some of the unabashed hedonists that made up the Club Kids scene – who reinvented the DIY spirit of punk rock and incorporated Sci-Fi and the circus, there is on the one hand an undeniable sense of both the rising hysteria that comes with the pervasive and unbridled drug use for which the group were as infamous as their outfits and rejection of then societal norms, and on the other, a further anxiety regarding the notion of machine-made music in a contemporary society swiftly approaching a new and daunting technological age.
Roogunit – Mesh EP [MOTE049]
Roog Unit is the new production duo fusing together the talents of Luke Slater and Ø [Phase] a.k.a. Ashley Burchett, the music being the result of many months of discourse and growing connection. The full dose of “Mesh” shows two producers clearly at their most focused and precise. Like their best work to date, it will get fans’ active imaginations churning – and leave them wondering what this collaboration has in store for the near future.
Zenker Brothers – The Schyren [IT033]
Noleian Reusse – First Generation EP [RHYTHM022]
From Chicago Noleian Reusse (Africans With Mainframes) serves 3 tracks of alien jacking weirdness. The package is completed with a remix by labelboss Paul du Lac aka Paul West.
Gene Hunt – Feeling It [MNSX010]
One of the founding fathers of Chicago house, himself a grandson to a DJ and frequently alongside other greats such as Ron Hardy on the decks, Gene Hunt summons a 3-tracker for the Midnight Shift label. True house and techno direct from the source and in his own words, a rather ‘jungly’ take of it due to the tracks’ chaotic percussion.
Identified Patient – Weeshuis Der Verloren Zielen [PNKMN019]
Identified Patient debuts on Pinkman with a brimming 12” with claustrophobia and paranoia. Acrid acid lines have been boiled down and smeared across cranking percussion. Sired in a soup of static, a blackened groove stalks the entire EP. Dusty beats are rinsed in smelting liquor, a smouldering EBM undercurrent surfacing as the noose tightens to a close.
Alessandro Adriani – Fall Elsewhere and Shatter [PBD007]
Alessandro Adriani weaves a nightmarish scenario as the Mannequin man returns to Pinkman’s Broken Dreams with four hardened works. Beats are shaven into rigid points as EBM echoes are speared with contemporary contempt. Throughout the quartet are moments of exotic abstraction, psychological stresses and visceral disorders. Music for sleepless nights and addled minds.
Seph – Rom [AMR010]
The Aula Magna team presents the label’s tenth release, Rom by Seph, featuring Cosmin TRG as remixer. A modern and energetic EP that showcases the artist’s unique techno sound: deep, robust & daring. Lead track Rom kicks off the record in breakbeat manner, an epic cut that twists its sounds progressively through distorted percussive and melodic riffs. This is followed by Cosmin TRG’s tribal take on the title track, a mind-dazzling and hypnotic reinterpretation. Two techno highlights from Seph’s latest live sets thrust the B side even further into the dance floor. Inner warps its solid rhythmic core through swirling dub noise mayhem and P+1 ends the record with a steady synth chord that evolves throughout the track on top of a powerful, stripped down beat.
VA – Voiceless Z [AF005Z]
Analogical Force drops the third and last part in the voiceless series taking no prisoners. For this EP AF mastermind Pervert has teamed up with incendiary friends to deliver a must for the collectors of the label. Heavy line up that includes the Hamburg’s well respected Helena Hauff, Zurich’s acid lover CCO (50% of Savage Grounds), the legendary UK techno imprint B12, Canada’s Suction Records co-funder Lowfish and Utrecht based Endfest. Stunning 5-track record with loads of acid-drenched techno, super wide basslines, melancholic pads, slamming 808’s…enough to fill brains as well as floors. This release is dedicated to Rhys Celeste.
The Hipodrome Of Music 