Tony Price – Hit Piece LP [LPTER113]

Tony Price returns to Telephone Explosion Records with the new “Hit Piece” LP. The album is his first full-length since his 2022 release, “IBM CONTRA,” on L.I.E.S. Records, and the follow-up to the “Bail Bonds” EP on his Maximum Exposure imprint in May 2023. There are no lofty intentions or concepts here; this is music about action and movement. Eschewing the narrative-driven structures of his previous albums, Tony shifts his focus to the groove, reducing dance music to its rawest textures and core principles. With this project, he unites jackin’ house rhythms, early hiphop bombast, and the hydraulic drive of Motor City funk with a punk rock immediacy and abrasiveness that recalls pre-robot Daft Punk, Todd Terry, Dance Mania, and his L.I.E.S. label mate Delroy Edwards.

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Tony Price – Hit Piece LP [LPTER113]

Badge Époque Ensemble – Future Past & Present [TER074]

BADGE EPOQUE ENSEMBLE - Future Past & Present

The Badge Époque Ensemble group came out with a surprise album on Telephone Explosion Records, the fittingly titled “Future, Past & Present”. A compilation of sorts, the album collects instrumental, alternate mix versions of all BÉE songs which originally featured guest vocalists. In practice this results in a pseudo-greatest-hits survey of the Ensemble’s catalogue to-date, touching on highlights from all three releases while emphasizing the group’s strength as versatile mood-conjurors. Where these songs once featured vocal heavyweights like Meg Remy, Jennifer Castle, James Baley and Dorothea Paas, they are now strung together instrumentally in a sequence which represents the purest distillation of BÉE’s collective musical chemistry to date.

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Badge Époque Ensemble – Future Past & Present [TER074]