werk discs

Helena Hauff – Discreet Desires [WDNT014]

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Golden Pudel’s DJ-turned-producer, Helena Hauff, returns to Actress’s Werkdiscs with her debut LP. Compared to her last effort for the label and her banger of an EP on Lux, Discreet Desires spans across much vaster landscapes, and while we knew that she was heavily into Detroit electro, the album is heavily focused on fast, broken beats brimming with synths. “Spur” and “Funereal Morality”, for example, are a pair of Drexcyian bombshells, while “Piece Of Pleasure” clearly takes inspiration from Kraftwerk and the resulting synth pop wave. Instead, “Silver Sands & Boxes Of Mould” showcases her more experimental side thanks to its cinematic soundscapes and sparse beats, along with the beatless sway of “Dreams In Color”. A fine debut LP that cements Hauff’s position at the vanguard of current electronics.

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Helena Hauff – Discreet Desires [WDNT014]

Helena Hauff – Lex Tertia [WDNT013]

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Helena Hauff returning to Actress’ Werkdiscs with a 5-track EP. In the producer’s own words: “Lex Tertia is a further exploration into the idea of grimy, sonically crushed, dysfunctional, insane stuff that kicks on where Actio Reactio left off.”

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Helena Hauff – Lex Tertia [WDNT013]

Actress – Xoul [WDNT012]

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Outta nowhere Actress projects four mystic visions inna black label style. It’s some of his sweetest, darkest, psychoactive gear, flitting from the electronic gremlins and piquant melancholy of ‘Xoul’ to its inverse image, ‘Xoul Dark Chamber’ and the contemplative, effervescent keys of ‘Xoul Particles’, which sees the introduction of some haunting digital synth strokes that also colour the slanted swagger and reverse loops of the EP’s most beguiling piece, ‘Pharoah Moon Rising’.

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Actress – Xoul [WDNT012]

Actress – Ghettoville [WDNT006]

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Ghettoville is the bleached out and black tinted conclusion of the Actress image. Where the demands of writing caught the artist slumped and reclined, devoid of any soul, acutely aware of the simulated prism that required breakout. Four albums in and the notes and compositions no longer contain decipherable language. The scripts now carry tears, the world has returned to a flattened state, and out through that window, the birds look back into the cage they once inhabited. Spitting flames behind a white wall of silence. The machines have turned to stone, data reads like an obituary to its user. A fix is no longer a release, it’s a brittle curse. Zero satisfaction, no teeth, pseudo artists running rampant, but the path continues.

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Actress – Ghettoville [WDNT006]

Helena Hauff – Actio Reactio [WDNT005]

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A regular fixture at Hamburg’s Golden Pudel club where she presides over the Birds and Other Instruments night, Helena Hauff is a killer DJ with a keen interest in classic and contemporary electro. A longstanding friendship with Actress has resulted in his Werkdiscs label issuing Actio Reactio, her debut EP of solo productions. Both the title track and “Break Force” see Hauff utilize her arsenal of analogue gear to deliver two tracks of acid-drenched hardware techno, while shorter production “Micro Manifesto” is more grounded in the realm of primitive electronics.

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Helena Hauff – Actio Reactio [WDNT005]