Eidetic is a new project from the brokntoys camp, focusing on the deeper side of techno. To kick off the project, Eidetic welcomes Exhausted Modern – an alias from Layup, the co-founder of Endless Illusion, for a 4-track EP of grimy, grubby, eerie electronics suited for the early hours on the dance floor.
Green Village turns to DJ Spider for a new 12 inch. The NYC artist is now a respected member of the Big Apple’s contemporary house and techno wave, and it’s an absolute must for him to be represented on the city’s bubbling scene, especially when he’s up for firing off tunes like “Space Jungle” and Satsang”, two mean, club-minded house bangers with a prominent lower-end. “Divide & Conquer” turns things darker and more ominous thanks to its icy, minimal approach – a cold blend of stripped-back beats and circling bass tones – while “Urantia Of Nebadon” displaces the traditional house framework in favour of a dark, molecular selection of electronic sounds guided by a simple pattern of 4/4 beats.
The next COS_MOS release comes from Salomon Dunkan, a mysterious and unknown producer who serves up two tantalising tracks.’Android (Adamantium Mix)’ is a slow and percolating house track with a rugged acid line and sharp percussive knives cutting up the rubbery kick drums below. Swirling pads add a cosmic atmosphere and there whole hits slowly but surely builds to a raging and intense peak of bristling hits and gurgling synths. It’s controlled chaos and then ‘Tacchi A Spillo’ treads a more direct path. Again the high hats are bright and sharp, the mood is very sci-fi and the bass lines rumbled down low. Like a deep space odyssey this one travels far and wide and grows ever more physical and jacking as it goes on.
A regular contributor to Figure SPC, it was Jeroen Search who both started the series and also put an end to its story. With this creative chapter neatly closed, he is now bringing his ever-impressive work back to the main label. Across the EP the Dutch artist doesn’t stick to one style, instead he lets his infamous machines roam about freely. They take us for a smooth ride along swaying dub chords and gentle ripples until bellowing eches slowly rise above a hypnotic groove.On the B-side Search then pulls out all the stops and barges right in with fidgety claps and whirling bleeps, leaving the track itself gasping for air. This is the renowned ferocity of his live act – carved into wax! Ensuing the sonic assault, a simple synth figure emerges stoically over an almost housy bounce as nostalgic rave strings bring the EP to an epic ending. Firmly rooted in the past while always looking forward, Jeroen Search clearly is still on the top of his game. He simply keeps coming up with timeless techno – time and time again.
Cosmin TRG’s Fizic is proud to present its first 2017 release, from an exciting new name. Șerb is born and raised in Craiova, Romania, where he spent his youth playing guitar in Nihilistic, a local punk band. In 2014 he released his debut 12 on Transient Recs. His sophomore record is a prime example of his unique, cerebral take on dance music. “Qui Vive” is a somber, syncopated elegy of rugged elegance, with fizzy drums and percution filtering in and out over the fragile melody. “Feet Locked” is analog honey poured into your post-rave ear. After-glow synths follow an expertly modulated bass. Finally, “Persistent Prick” echoes the esotheric explorations of Actress, with added twisted funk. Șerb’s impressive talent and exuberance flow through his music, expect more from our new signing in the very near future.
Foreboding title, foreboding sounds. Berlin’s redoubtable Oliver Deutschmann joins the Hotflush roster with “In The Moment of Death We Have No Regret’. 3 club-ready weapons, one blissed-out ambient cut.
As Longitude is the illuminated brainchild of Eva Geist and Laura ODL. Together they explore sonic waves in an exiting world full of spatial drum machine rhythms and sequenced riffs. Some of those trips feel like earth bound rituals, while others seem to be nothing less than ceremonies of stratospheric magnitude.
Jasss returns with an instant-classic second single for Death Of The Machines. ‘Es Complicado’ is a percussive a-side driven track, a passionate industrial/futuristic wink to the past, while ‘No Chanche’ on the b side is opening a new path for her productions. The mind sick samples from the 1966 Bergman’s masterpiece ‘Persona’ leave the track – as the movie itself does – in a climax wrapped by a variety of interpretations, moving from tribal new beat rhythms and ending into an acid nightmare.
Making his Tortured debut is Liverpool based Techno DJ and producer, Binny with his ‘Devil’s Orchestra EP’. He delivers a refined EP from the striking and demonic strings of the aptly titled opener, ‘Devil’s Orchestra’ via the multihued tough groove of ‘Alternative Methods’, before the Tech-funk of ‘Roll With It’ and on to the Sci-Fi tones of ‘Untitled’ which closes the vinyl 12″.
Suburban Avenue welcomes two other great artists in its team. SAV007 is a splitted EP between the German-based djs and producers, Johannes Volk and Savas Pascalidis. Volk delivers two works: A1, “Dont Be Afraid, Theres No Hope” is a an elegant and minimalistic techno tune, that seems to reveal his dystopian vision of the future, A2, “Wrong Prophecy” is a proper Detroit banger track. Pascalidis gives his contribution to this release with other two amazing cuts: B1, “Night Force” is a perfect track, ready for the big floor: noisy, boomy with a straight groove. B2, “Strobe” is a classy and effective techno tool, lost in space.
New school electro wunderkind Privacy makes his debut on Klakson with a dark four tracker that checks all the right boxes. The EP kicks off with “Four IO”, a haunting, spacey dubbed out acid roller with lush pads throughout. “U Can Tell” and “NCSC” are both specimens of the finest EBM tradition, re-interpreting the sound for 2017, while “Shove” on the B2 effortlessly transports us into deep, uptempo aquatic electro territory.
The ninth release on Midligh brings to light Exhausted Modern, the new alias from Layup, the co-founder of Endless Illusion.
Umek continues his Zeta Reticula series for Billy Nasty’s Electrix with ‘EP 6’. The bass-quaking ‘Reticulum’ opens the EP and the release instantly sparkles and explodes into electrofunk action, followed by ‘Solar Analogs’, like a ticking time bomb. ‘Rotating Protostellar Cloud’ heads up the B-side with its more Moroder / Kraftwerk era sound that’s epic and melodious, before ‘Circumstellar Debris Disk’ completes the quartet, with a flurrying filmatic soundscape approach.
Dark Entries present ‘A Tape’, a double LP of early work by Helena Hauff. ‘A Tape’ is a compilation of Helena’s earliest recordings from 2011 and 2014, originally released on limited cassette by Handmade Birds in 2015. Clocking in at over 50 minutes, this collection spans Hauff’s musical universe, from jacking acid-techno to krautish zone-outs and scuzzy feedback interludes. It’s tempting to consider it Helena’s debut album, but she views these tracks as mostly forgotten sketches left on the cutting room floor. It a gripping collection of deep, sinister analog synth sequences, industrial dissonance, and heavy percussion. Her equipment set up was a Roland Alpha Juno 2, Juno 60, TB-303, TR-707 and TR-808. Both of the discs end with Hauff stepping outside of the intentionally stiff, robotic rhythms, instead showing her skill at crafting less conventional electronic sounds.
BANK Records 7 series continues with a two tracker by Steve Summers and Bookworms. Side A features a track from long time collaborators Jason Letkiewicz and Nicholas Dawson who have showcased their signature free form sound on Letkiewicz Confused House imprint. Side B is a solo cut by Bookworms. The menacing sound of this recording is reminiscent of Dawson’s work you may have heard on his Nord release, Compact Visual Nature. Classic tracks from two of BK’s finest.
Credit 00 delivers his debut album “Game Over”. After four EPs for Uncanny Valley the Leipzig based musician is now ready to let loose his electronic visions on full length. As everybody can confirm who saw him playing live or DJing, the head behind Uncanny Valley’s sub label Rat Life is a slave to the rhythm on a full-time basis. Obsessed with sound, he can’t stop pushing the buttons of his synthesizers and drum machines like someone torturing the controls of an Arcade machine. “Game Over” is an electronic love letter to the romantic fantasy worlds of classic video games and their bleepy and clonky sounds which used to be common also in repetitive electronic dance music.
Collecting tracks from the last six years, “Game Over” is also a passion project that channels all his influences. You can get a glimpse of the ingredients that make up his record collection. Whether it is Hip Hop,Techno, Electro Boogie, New Beat, Italo, Jungle, Reggae, House or Chill Out. Though, all those different sounds and styles do not tear this album apart. It’s a bit of a miracle that it feels so flawless for what happens between the appetizing “Level One” and the final track “The Last March”. Those beats on “Game Over” can be brutally effective like the fatalities in Mortal Kombat while the overlying sounds can be smooth like the lemmings’ animations in the eponymous Amiga game. Just listen to the title track. Or the instant hip shaker “Breakers Revenge” that comes with a little help from friends like Sara Stammburg on vocals and Max Rademann on Rhodes.
Without losing sight on the dance floor Credit 00 creates an electronic wonderland that delights dancers and connoisseurs at the same time. To top things off the wonderful artwork was created by Alexander Dorn a.k.a. Credit 00 himself.
“A long time ago, at a festival far, far away, the members of the legendary Borft trio Frak were just going to bed in their tent when something caught their attention. Now, this was well before Frak’s rise to international fame – in fact, this moment was Swedish music history in the making, because what they heard was someone playing a Frak tune. That someone turned out to be Kontra-Musik’s own Ulf Eriksson and once their paths had crossed, there was no turning back. Frak has since released five highly sought after records on Kontra-Musik and Kontra-Musik White Label. When it was time for a 10-year anniversary gathering in Ulf Eriksson’s private garden, Frak of course turned up together with other Kontra artists like TM404 and Rivet. For those present – we few, we happy few – this turned out to be one of the most magical summer nights in living memory. The Swedish word for porch is altan, and so, to honour this wonderful experience of the whole Kontra-Musik family coming together, Frak decided to name their brand new album Altan Gathering. Another great friend of Kontra, Henrik Jonsson aka Porn Sword Tobacco, made the album cover and we wouldn’t have it any other way. His aesthetic choice of tin foil is on point: Listening to Frak is a lot like biting into a fresh falafel wrap without first removing the aluminium foil holding the delicious mess together; it’s mouth-wateringly warm and moist but at the same time intensely harsh and tough to chew. This might seem like a far fetched analogy but if you’ve ever went partying in Kontra-Musik’s home town Malmo you’ll know the feeling. And if you’ve never been to Malmo, well do stop by someday. It seems, when the stars align, the gatherings here can be the stuff both legends and albums are made of.”
It’s astonishing to think that Frak’s Borft Records has now notched up three decades. The Swedish imprint remains as eccentric and essential as ever, as this label debut from inspired Norwegian oddball DJ Sotofett proves. By his standards, “Ol Pa Ibiza” and the stripped back “Ol Pa Klubb” are pretty straightforward, with the Sex Tags man laying ricocheting dub notes and percussion hits over a rock solid drum track and booming bassline. “Ol Pa SM-Art Bar” sees him channel the spirit of early British bleep techno and the darker end of Belgian new beat on a clandestine mid-tempo chugger, while “Drikkepause” is a quick-fire shot of ambience built around echoing bells. Finally, he heads for a dirty warehouse on the acid-laden, EBM informed sleaziness of “Nekta Ol Par City Club”.
