$42.00
1981 was a groundbreaking year for the music industry. By releasing BGM and Technodelic in one year, YMO made a shift happen in Pop music. YMO introduced a new way of using samples and loops by cutting sound bites into fragments and reprogramming them with newly available computer technology.
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Technodelic is far more experimental than previous albums, and at the same time their 5th album is more minimalistic and full of Funk and Soul. YMO remained remarkably adept at inventing new ways of looking at compositions and creating a whole new music scene at the same time: Dance. – Music On Vinyl
Label: Music On Vinyl – MOVLP1470, Alfa – MOVLP1470, Epic – MOVLP1470 |
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Limited Edition, Numbered, Reissue, Clear, 180 Gram |
Country: Europe |
Released: 05 Feb 2016 |
Genre: Electronic |
Style: Synth-pop |
$39.00
Dark Entries is humbled to continue digging through the archives of legendary producer Patrick Cowley. While best known for his production on chart-topping cybernetic disco anthems such as Sylvester’s “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” or his own “Menergy”, Cowley, who passed away from AIDS-related illness in 1982, left us with a substantial body of work. Since 2009, Dark Entries has been working with Cowley’s friends and family to shed light on the lesser known facets of this singular artist’s output. This has resulted in a string of celebrated archival albums, including Catholic (featuring Jorge Socarras), School Daze, Muscle Up, Afternooners, and the recent Mechanical Fantasy Box. Some Funkettes, the latest addition to this series, is a collection of previously unreleased cover songs recorded from 1975-1977. These raw, unembellished tributes both showcase Cowley’s early musical interests and chart the development of his production techniques.
Some Funkettes opens with Cowley’s sauntering instrumental rendition of “Do It Anyway You Wanna”, the disco classic by People’s Choice. Next is a psychedelic reworking of the Temptations’ “Papa Was a Rolling Stone”, here hazily retitled “Papa Wuzza Rollinston”. Over its 7 minute runtime, the track’s metronomic, minimal groove builds to a frantic synth solo - this is pure Bay Area motorik. “Spiked Punch”, a curious riff on Herbie Hancock’s “Chameleon” follows. Cowley’s lurching, minimalist reimagining of Hancock’s opus prefigures the work he would later do on Sylvester’s masterpiece “I Need Somebody to Love Tonight”. Side B opens with a truly important historical document: Cowley’s cover of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love”. The Moroder-produced disco anthem was a critical influence on Cowley - he would later resculpt the original song into arguably its highest form with his 15-minute-long remix. The instrumental cover version here is sparse and euphoric, brimming with classic Cowley synth signatures alongside the infectious Moroder bassline. A relatively faithful take on Bazuka’s 1975 funk classic “Dynomite” follows. The record closes with the dub version of “Spiked Punch”, which highlights developments in Cowley’s recording and synthesis techniques by way of its resonant burbles and spring reverb-laden passages.
Some Funkettes was made possible with help from Patrick's brother Jim and his former studiomate Maurice Tani. All songs were mastered for vinyl by George Horn. The sleeve is a collage designed in 1975 by Cowley’s former roommate Francesca Rosa that was found covering a reel to reel box. It features a yin-yang symbol and a photograph of a scruffy 24 year old Patrick, to which we added his original handwriting. Each record comes with an insert featuring a four page essay by Francesca as well as a postcard featuring liner notes and a photograph by Cowley’s roommate and best friend, Theresa McGinley. This peek into Cowley’s formative years arrives just in time for what would have been his 70th birthday. – Dark Entries
Label: Dark Entries – DE-283 |
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album |
Country: US |
Released: 19 Oct 2020 |
Genre: Electronic, Funk / Soul |
Style: Disco, Funk |
$36.00
A Periplus around mediterranean savors from Pellegrino on his debut mini-album, a multi-flavored cocktail of fast-moving disco groovers, spacey jazz-fusion experiments and sun-bleached funky melters
Label: Early Sounds Recordings – EAS011 |
Format: Vinyl, 12", 33 ⅓ RPM, Mini-Album, Repress, Green Sleeve |
Country: Italy |
Released: Mar 2020 |
Genre: Electronic, Jazz, Funk / Soul |
Style: Afrobeat, Tribal, Disco, Funk, Fusion |
$39.00
For Those of You Who Have Never (And Also Those Who Have) is ambient music through and through—though it’s informed by a memory of club music, which hangs over it like a ringing in the ears.
There are no drums or percussion on any of the album’s nine tracks, just soft tendrils of synthesizer, submerged pulses, and tape hiss smeared on in thick, buttery swirls. The album opens with a soft, rose-tinted chord and it never gets much more abrasive than that. Many of the tracks on his last album felt like sketches—the kernel of an idea, abandoned quickly. The same sensibility holds here, but even the simplest idea is stretched across a much bigger frame, to six or seven or even eight minutes. That’s important; you need the time to sink into these things. After a spell, you can’t say whether you've been listening to a given piece for two or 20 minutes. - Pitchfork
Label: Proibito – PRB018 |
Format: 2 × Vinyl, LP |
Country: US |
Released: 20 Jun 2016 |
Genre: Electronic |
Style: Ambient, Experimental |
$45.00
The UK’s cosmic, psychedelic-funk ensemble issue their first album on maverick producer Madlib’s label, Madlib Invazion. The Heliocentrics’ albums are all confounding pieces of work. Drawing equally from the funk universe of James Brown, the disorienting asymmetry of Sun Ra, the cinematic scope of Ennio Morricone, the sublime fusion of David Axelrod, Pierre Henry’s turned-on musique concrète, and Can’s beat-heavy Krautrock, they have – regardless of the label on which they’ve released their music – pointed the way towards a brand new kind of psychedelia, one that could only come from a band of accomplished musicians who were also obsessive music fans. Drummer Malcolm Catto and bassist Jake Ferguson are the Heliocentrics’ masterminds and producers, and they are obsessive weirdos in today’s musical climate, searching, progressive humans who are often out-of-time with current trends. - Bandcamp
Label: Madlib Invazion – MMS 037 |
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album |
Country: US |
Released: 07 Feb 2020 |
Genre: Electronic, Hip Hop, Funk / Soul |
Style: Broken Beat |
$60.00
After Dark is a compilation album of tracks either performed by artists on the Italians Do It Better record label or remixed by the label, released in 2007 on CD and in 2008 on triple vinyl. Artists featured on the album are Glass Candy, Chromatics, Indeep, Farah, Mirage, and Professor Genius. - Wiki
Label: Italians Do It Better – IDIB001 |
Series: After Dark (6) – 1 |
Format: 3 × Vinyl, LP, Compilation, Limited Edition, Gatefold |
Country: US |
Released: 30 Jun 2008 |
Genre: Electronic |
Style: Italo-Disco, Disco, Electro, House |
$46.00
Beatbox is the earth-shattering classic from a band that changed the game, emerging from the underground with a template that would redefine pop culture in the decade since its release. From Nicolas Winding Refn’s Bronson (“Digital Versicolor”) to HBO’s Westworld (“Candy Castle”) & more, Beatbox has spray-painted culture with its vivacious shades of pink & blue. Ida No’s transcendent vocals & Johnny Jewel’s beautiful musical objects rebooted the system. Across Beatbox, Ida No & Johnny Jewel conjure up unabashedly uplifting dance cuts, drenched in versicolor sweat that shimmers glamorously in the reflection of the aura of divine disco energy. - Glass Candy
Label: Italians Do It Better – IDIB005 |
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Deluxe Edition, Reissue, Repress, Pink Bubblegum |
Country: US |
Released: 01 Aug 2017 |
Genre: Electronic |
Style: Italo-Disco, Electro, Synth-pop, Disco |
$45.00
In early 2008, age 18, Space Dimension Controller (R&S, Clone, Royal Oak) made his first album in his bedroom in Belfast, now set for a release on 27th May 2016 via Ninja Tune. Crunchy, tattered and enjoyably odd - “Orange Melamine” is a lovingly produced and deeply personal album that laces supernatural sounds and translucent synths with a sense of overflowing harmony. Washed in reverb and draped in hiss, the album draws influence from the old VHS tapes handed down to Space Dimension Controller from his older brother and cousins, as well as artists like Boards of Canada, Brian Eno and William Basinski.
The album is also steeped in audio and visual references from 80’s and 90’s sci-fi films and animations; from The Guyver, Short Circuit, The Gobots, and Ghostbusters through to The Fifth Element, Escape from New York and Power Rangers - also reflected in the album's visual identity created by Jacob Chabeaux. - Bandcamp
$39.00
Tarquin Magnet is an album by Tarquin Manek (F ingers, Tarcar, LST. A unique synthesis of time-dilating folk-jazz romanticism, brittle chamber dub and plasmic post-techno electronics, it’s the Australian’s first full solo release on Blackest Ever Black.– Bandcamp
Originating from Australia but currently stationed in Berlin, recent years have seen Tarquin Manek rifle through DIY junkyard marginalia (Fingers Pty Ltd’s compelling scrawl Broken Fingers), dire swampland dub (Tarcar’s Mince Glace) and frayed dead-end somnolence as a member of F ingers. With Hide Before Dinner, the first release under the F ingers guise, Manek and his conspirators assuaged those previous instincts for dishevelment and density and turned them into bewitching, heavily blurred nocturnes.
As opposed to those collaborative efforts, Tarquin Magnet is Manek’s most significant solo release yet, revealing individual indulgencies which centre on an open-ended suite of strident clarinet soloing and claustrophobic wormhole FX. In some ways, he remains true to the notions which inform his work with Blackest Ever Black label cohorts and Melbourne associates Carna Del Forno and Sam Karnel. But in place of the soused silhouettes of those collaborations, the focus here is purely on Manek’s free moving instrumentation. – Crack Magazine
Label: Blackest Ever Black – BLACKEST047 |
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album |
Country: UK |
Released: Nov 2015 |
Genre: Electronic |
Style: Ambient, Abstract, Experimental |
$39.00
Nick Murphy (fka Chet Faker) fires off in a new direction while trying to bridge a gap with his diverse new EP featuring Afrobeat, R&B, soul, and Kaytranada—sometimes all at once. - Pitchfork
After teasing the project with a stylish Johann Rashad-directed trailer last week, Nick Murphy‘s Missing Link EP has arrived. Billed as “a new collection of tracks that bridge the sonic shift between Chet Faker and Nick Murphy,” Missing Link offers up five tracks in all and even kicks off with a collaboration between Murphy and Kaytranada, “Your Time.” The EP marks Murphy’s first post-Chet Faker project and follows the singles “Fear Less” and “Stop Me (Stop You),” both of which debuted in the latter months of 2016. - Hypebeast
Label: Future Classic – B0026427-01 |
Format: Vinyl, 12", EP |
Released: 10 May 2017 |
Genre: Electronic |
Style: Electro |
$75.00
Pure literature. That's how DJ and businessman Takayuki Fujisawa(藤沢隆行)described Makoto Matsushita's(松下誠)2nd album from April 1982, "The Pressures and the Pleasures" in his review in "Japanese City Pop". Fujisawa was probably referring to the four songs/stories contained within this Matsushita magnum opus. Yup, there are eight tracks in "The Pressures and the Pleasures" but according to the singer-songwriter himself in the liner notes, those eight make up four large songs. – Kayo Kyoku Plus
Label: Moon Records (5) – WPJL-10115 |
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue, Stereo, Blue Translucent |
Country: Japan |
Released: 03 Nov 2019 |
Genre: Electronic, Jazz, Rock, Funk / Soul |
Style: Prog Rock, Fusion, Jazz-Rock |
$45.00
Dark Entries and Honey Soundsystem Records have teamed up again to release another volume of gay porn soundtracks by San Francisco-based musician and producer, Patrick Cowley. Perhaps one of the most revolutionary and influential people in the cannon of disco music, Cowley created his own brand of Hi-NRG dance music coined "The San Francisco Sound." Born in Buffalo, NY on October 19, 1950, Patrick moved to San Francisco at the age of 21. He studied at the City College of San Francisco where he founded the Electronic Music Lab. During this time Patrick, along with his classmates Maurice Tani and Art Adcock, would create radio jingles and electronic pieces using the school's equipment, first a Putney, then an E-MU System and finally a Serge synthesizer. He would make experimental instrumental songs by blending various types of music and adapting them to the synthesizer. – Bandcamp
$39.00
After a run of dates playing “obtuse, strange” music as a warm-up act for the xx, Sam Shepherd translates that experimental energy to an album of mischievous, melodic, stripped-down electronic music.
The album was born in the aftermath of a 2017 tour opening for the xx. After touring Elaenia for a couple of years with a full live ensemble, Shepherd suddenly found himself alone onstage—in 20,000-capacity venues, no less—improvising with just a Roland drum machine and a Buchla synth. While he initially planned to keep things mellow, he quickly threw that plan out the window, choosing instead to embrace a more “chaotic” vibe and warm the crowd up with what he describes as “some of the most obtuse, strange, difficult music of my life.” It was a risky choice, but the shows left Shepherd feeling invigorated, and he was determined to continue these focused machine experiments once he returned to the studio.
Knowing that, you might expect Crush to be an intense, frenzied effort, but in Shepherd’s case, economy doesn’t preclude elegance. While certain elements—a distorted rhythm here, a shuddering synth there—can be traced back to those rough-and-tumble live shows with the xx, the LP as a whole is strikingly melodic and often beautiful, even in its most frantic moments. - Pitchfork
Label: Ninja Tune – ZEN259 |
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album |
Country: UK |
Released: 18 Oct 2019 |
Genre: Electronic |
Style: Bass Music, Deep House, Experimental, Future Jazz |
$39.00
Obscure 1980s Brazilian lo-fi synth LP re-issued and remastered for the first time. Soundway Records delivers a beautifully remastered reissue of Brazilian duo Grupo Controle Digital’s only album, “A Festa É Nossa”. First released in 1988, the album is now housed in a tip-on heavyweight sleeve with restored artwork.
With the title track “A Festa É Nossa” having circulated the last few years in the DJ sets of influential tastemakers, the album has become highly sought after by electronic fans and collectors alike. Lo-fi synths and cruising bass lines permeate the record, influenced by the group’s Brazilian contemporaries at the time such as Tim Maia, Cláudio Zoli, Secos E Molhados, and rock outfit Made In Brazil.
Band members Billy Jaguar and Gel Valiery regularly performed in various groups in São Paulo throughout the 80s and 90s, but after Gel passed away, Grupo Controle Digital was no more - the band and the album faded into obscurity and Billy became a priest, working with gospel music. It remained that way until Brazilian DJ Millos Kaiser (from label Selva Discos, and one half of Brazilian street party organisers Selvagem) tracked down the remaining member of the group to be able to include one of their tracks on the highly anticipated Soundway compilation “Onda De Amor: Synthesized Brazilian Hits That Never Were (1984-94)”, which was released in July 2018. - Bandcamp
Label: Soundway – SNDWLP126 |
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue, Remastered |
Country: UK |
Released: 2018 |
Genre: Electronic, Latin, Funk / Soul, Pop |
Style: New Wave, Disco, Hip Hop, Leftfield, Synth-pop |
$39.00
An exclusive new Record Store Day album comprising remixes and DJ edits of material from Laraaji's recent Sun Gong and Bring On The Sun LPs.
The Album connects the new age ambience of Laraaji's music to the kaleidoscopic cut-ups of the LA beat scene via re-works from the likes of Ras G, Dntel, Mia Doi Todd and Dexter Story. - On Bandcamp
Label: All Saints – WAST055LP |
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album |
Country: UK |
Released: 21 Apr 2018 |
Genre: Electronic, Folk, World, & Country |
Style: Ambient, New Age |
$39.00
In the early 1980s, Ahmed Malek was already in his 50s, when he discovered synthesizers and electronic music for himself and started to experiment with sounds. None of it was ever released but we got a huge box of master tapes from his family and we're happy to present this different side of Ahmed Malek's music. It was compiled and co-produced by Flako, a fan of early electronic and synth music. This is not a remix album though, Flako's aim was to create an album out of 2 hours of material that sounds like it might have if Mr. Malek would have finished it himself before of his death. Fully approved by the artists family. - Habibi Funk
Label: Habibi Funk Records – HABIBI 005 |
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Compilation |
Country: Germany |
Released: 24 Feb 2017 |
Genre: Electronic |
Style: Ambient, Experimental |
$39.00
The circle of musicians who have worked with Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, grime godfather Wiley, and the 1970s folk singer Linda Perhacs is so small that it probably doesn't stretch any further than Mark Pritchard, a 46-year-old polymath from Somerset, England, whose three decades in electronic music have seen him master genres from techno to grime and deep house to drum ‘n’ bass. That unusually diverse set of collaborators nicely illustrates Pritchard’s peripatetic tendencies. But The Four Worlds, his second solo album for Warp, sees him settle down into what might actually resemble a groove after years of wandering.
The new album shares a simple melodic elegance with Under the Sun, his excellent 2016 solo release, even recreating that record’s medieval air on “The Arched Window,” a track that combines harpsichord with Kraftwerk-like melodies. But where Under the Sun had a whiff of grandeur, courtesy of a Thom Yorke guest spot and its 67-minute run time, The Four Worlds is more understated. Only two of the eight tracks pass the four-minute barrier, while guest spots come from outsider musician the Space Lady—a singer whose Greatest Hits was named by The Guardian as one of the 101 strangest records on Spotify—and the audio artist Gregory Whitehead. – Pitchfork
Label: Warp Records – WARPLP296 |
Format: Vinyl, LP, Mini-Album, 200 grams |
Country: Europe |
Released: 23 Mar 2018 |
Genre: Electronic |
Style: Ambient |
$39.00
“From an artist in their seventies, you probably wouldn’t expect to hear an album like this. But Brazilian drumming legend Ivan ‘Mamão’ Conti has been experimenting and innovating for the last half a century. As one third of cult Rio jazz-funk trio Azymuth, Mamão was at the root of the group’s ‘samba doido’ (crazy samba) philosophy, which warped the traditional samba compass with jazz influences and space age electronics. Even with his lesser known jovem guarda group The Youngsters, Mamão was experimenting with tapes and delays to create unique, ahead-of-its-time sounds, way back in the sixties. More recently Mamão recorded an album with hip-hop royalty Madlib under the shared moniker ‘Jackson Conti’.
With his first album in over twenty years, and the first to be released on vinyl since his 1984 classic The Human Factor, Mamão shares his zany carioca character across eleven tracks of rootsy electronic samba and tripped out jazz, beats and dance music. Featuring Alex Malheiros and Kiko Continentino on a number of tracks, the Azymuth lifeblood runs deep, but venturing into the modern discotheque (as Mamão would call it), Poison Fruit also experiments with sounds more commonly associated with house and techno, with the help of London based producer Daniel Maunick (aka Dokta Venom) and Mamão's son Thiago Maranhão.” – Bandcamp
Item description:
Artist: |
Ivan Mamao Conti |
Title: |
Poison Fruit |
Label: |
Far Out Recordings |
Format: |
Vinyl, LP, Album |
Pressing: |
Europe |
Release Date: |
25th Jan 2019 |
Genre: |
Electronic, Hip Hop, Jazz, Latin |
Style: |
Deep House, Jazz-Funk, Samba |
Catalog No: |
FARO208LP |
Condition: |
New |
$55.00
“Nightmares On Wax emerged as one of the leading acts of the bleep and bass era, but for more than 20 years they've helped ease listeners onto beanbags as well as dance floors. That change began with 1995's Smokers Delight, which dropped the warfare sub-bass and synth chirps of tracks like "Aftermath" for a low-slung trip-hop gait. Nowadays comprised of cofounder George Evelyn and a rotating cast of collaborators, Nightmares On Wax has developed that sound ever since, slowly building a discography that draws from, jazz, dub, soul and reggae with an increasingly opulent feel. Shape The Future, built around a hazy amalgam of strings, horns, guitars and vocalists, with a greater focus on songcraft, is that sound's latest iteration.”– Resident Advisor
“George Evelyn, better known by his stage name Nightmares on Wax or DJ E.A.S.E., is a DJ and electronic music composer from Leeds, England. His music is released on Warp Records and was one of the first releases on the label.
Evelyn got his start in the music industry through an interest in hip hop and on joining a local breakdancing crew. He started as a DJ with John Halnon then Kevin Harper and together they released their first album in 1991, A Word of Science: The First and Final Chapter. Halnon is an established engineer/producer, Harper has since become a solo DJ, and Evelyn partnered with Robin Taylor-Firth.” – Wiki
Item description:
Artist: |
Nightmares On Wax |
Title: |
Shape The Future |
Label: |
Warp Records |
Format: |
2 x Vinyl, LP, Album |
Pressing: |
Europe |
Release Date: |
26th Jan 2018 |
Genre: |
Electronic, Hip Hop, Reggae, Funk / Soul |
Style: |
Trip Hop, Downtempo |
Catalog No: |
WARPLP275 |
Condition: |
New |
$60.00
“Afterglow is the music moniker for local fashion retailer HOAX's owner Julian. Having been involved in the local music scene for years as a guitarist and programmer, Julian has since found his muse in black music. Driven by this newfound passion, his recent music ambitions sees him going back to sounds he grew up with such as Michael Jackson and Prince, to the disco funk of the 70s and 80s, and the "Free Soul" series of Japanese compilations. "Different Light" is Afterglow's debut album, a music amalgam that takes cues from 80's synth-funk/boogie, electro from Street Sounds, r&b from Tabu, fusion from Herbie Hancock, to the sound of city pop greats such as Toshiki Kadomatsu, Tetsuji Hayashi, and Tatsurō Yamashita. A marriage of synths, thumping basslines, and drum machine grooves, the album also features the vocals of both SOPHY Wong and Yeung Tung. In contrast to what one might expect out of a vaporware aesthetic, the result is rather a pop music infused exploration of funk's past and future.” – Bandcamp
Item description:
Artist: |
Afterglow |
Title: |
Different Light |
Label: |
White Noise Records |
Format: |
Vinyl, LP, Album, Limited Edition, Transparent Vinyl |
Pressing: |
Hong Kong |
Release Date: |
16th Jan 2019 |
Genre: |
Electronic, Funk / Soul |
Style: |
Boogie, Vaporwave, Synth-pop |
Catalog No: |
WN1020 |
Condition: |
New |
$39.00
“Anders Trentemøller’s career is a travel-heavy one, with his touring schedule taking him pretty much all over the world.
But it’s his home port that’s inspired his latest project, the sprawling, stunning compilation mix ‘Harbour Boat Trips Vol. 02: Copenhagen’. Clocking in at just over an hour long, the compilation sees Trentemøller curate and craft sixteen songs into a heavy, hazy mix that ranges from shoegaze to electronica, featuring both familiar and celebrated artists like A Place to Bury Strangers (with a new Trentemøller remix) and Slowdive to more obscure finds, as well as Trentemøller’s own tracks and remixes, most notably a brand new Trentemøller cover of Neil Young’s classic ’Transformer Man.” – Bandcamp
Item description:
Artist: |
Trentemoller |
Title: |
Harbour Boat Trips Vol. 02 cOPENHAGEN |
Label: |
HFN Music |
Format: |
2 x Vinyl, LP, Compilation |
Pressing: |
Germany |
Release Date: |
23rd November 2018 |
Genre: |
Electronic |
Style: |
Downtempo, Experimental |
Catalog No: |
Hfn85lp |
Condition: |
New |
$45.00
“"Live shows and clubs and festivals, for me, have taken on an entirely different meaning the more the world has changed over the past 18 months," Matthew Barnes said around the time of his last album, Compassion. "It can feel a lot more like a shared and beautiful experience." A year later, the producer's DJ-Kicks mix also reflects obliquely on the power of live music experiences. It's inspired by DIY nights he went to when he was younger: events driven by the urge "just to share music between people", where "DJ etiquette" was ignored and artists instead seemed to be "cook[ing] up their personal mixtape in front of you."
Forest Swords' first licensed mix is his own personal mixtape. A patchwork of sounds and moods with a few of Barnes's own "voice note" field recordings thrown in, it's casually and playfully eclectic, hinting at influences and nodding to his peers. There's only one Forest Swords track, the scratch-itching exclusive "Crow." But with its sombre mystical mood, clever combos of acoustic and electronic sounds, and the odd bright shot of pop, the mix as a whole has many of the qualities that define Barnes's own music.” – Resident Advisor
Item description:
Artist: |
Forest Swords |
Title: |
DJ-Kicks |
Label: |
DJ-Kicks |
Format: |
2 x Vinyl, LP, Album, Compilation |
Pressing: |
Germany |
Release Date: |
18th May 2018 |
Genre: |
Electronic |
Style: |
IDM, Techno, Leftfield |
Catalog No: |
K7365LP |
Condition: |
New |
$39.00
A TAV Essential Listening Album.
“The familiar sound of a cocktail shaker full of ice and the sound of distant seagulls give way to a simple, catchy melody and a lazy, carefree rythm. The first 15 seconds of Pacific, recorded in 1978 by Haruomi “Harry” Hosono (of Yellow Magic Orchestra) with collaboration of Shigeru Susuki and Tatsuro Yamashita tell you everything you need to know about what’s to come in the next 38 minutes…
… Instrumental-only, each track has a different composer who brings his own distinct flavor to the mix, without deviating much from the record’s set thematic and tone. Every track fits solidly on the whole of the narrative but can stand as solidly on its own without context, which further proves the genius of the three main composers at creating emotionally immediate melodies and textures, efficient at the time of constructing an idyllic summer atmosphere that, freed from the obligation of telling a ‘story’, can focus 100% on painting an extremely detailed scene with the limited resources at their dispposal. A work of rare conceptual clarity, master management of composition and instrumentation that doesn’t need to prove anything, fully confident in its own capability.
Simply one of the chillest albums you’ll listen to in your life.” – Sputnik Music
Item description:
Artist: |
Haruomi Hosono, Shigeru Suzuki, Tatsuro Yamashita |
Title: |
Pacific |
Label: |
Victory |
Format: |
Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue, Unofficial Release |
Pressing: |
Germany |
Release Date: |
This reissue: Mar 2017 | Original: 1978 |
Genre: |
Electronic, Jazz, Folk, World, & Country |
Style: |
Fusion |
Catalog No: |
V25AH426 |
Condition: |
New |
$50.00
“Kranky recently released the third piece of the American composer and visual artists Christina Vantzou, titled simply ‘No. 3’. Recorded in Belgium (where she’s currently based) with a 15-piece ensemble of strings, horns, woodwinds and micro-choir, this new album explores a deep path of dreamy and meditative soundscapes, with reminiscences of lush layers of classical instruments, synths, vocal samples and somnambulant melodies…”
“…There is a certain tension throughout the album that can be felt on every track; an isolated feeling of something really big or really significant, which is going to happen. During its 16 tracks, the album develops melancholic but cold drones that can only be described as deep. Nevertheless, the album is diverse and very rich in structure. Although the entire music on the previous Nº1 and Nº2 was composed without time structure or steady click, the pillars on Nº3 follow a solid mathematical pattern.” – The Attic
“Each of these collections are meticulously arranged, but Nº 3 shows the most eclecticism, particularly in its more explicit use of synthesizers. And I’m happy to say it’s in the tradition of the most lucid of early electronic composition (like that of track two’s namesake, Laurie Spiegel) rather than the more self-indulgent experiments of the period. Also new to her palette is plucked strings (“The Library”), guest collaboration (Loscil, on the muffled grandeur of “Stereoscope”), and Penderecki-sized dread in a three-minute package (another pessimistic hat in the ring about “The Future”)…”
“Although the loaded titles don’t illuminate the largely elusive compositions, the numbered releases suggest a humbly ambitious drive on the part of the artist to let her output be a continuum, rather than a series of timely statements. Just as the work is the sounds and vision of due diligence in the realms of the lost, its presentation is both formal and adventurous. Christina Vantzou’s albums continue to be a well-appointed clearing in which to both tentatively grasp at reason and revel in its absence. A subconsciously magnetic force in meditative sound if there ever was one. An imperceptibly tremoring place of stolen serenity. I’ll meet you/lose you there.” – Tiny Mixtapes
Artist: |
Christina Vantzou |
Title: |
No. 3 |
Label: |
Kranky |
Format: |
2 × Vinyl, LP, Album |
Pressing: |
US |
Release Date: |
|
Genre: |
|
Style: |
|
Catalog No: |
krank199 |
Condition: |
New |
$39.00
"Brussels-based composer Christina Vantzou has made a name for herself by being unassuming. In collaboration with Stars of the Lid’s Adam Wiltzie, she made up half of the Dead Texan, whose 2004 collection of noisy vignettes supposedly stemmed from aborted SotL pieces. These sketches were too aggressive to fit in with Wiltzie’s main project and Vantzou, who was then best known as a maker of bleary short films, stepped in. The Dead Texan’s music was all loops and whorls, more intent on grabbing your attention than SotL’s work but still grounded in the monochromatic haze that Vantzou would go on to explore in her visual art and in solo material. Her new solo album, No. 2, underscores her commitment to subtle composition..."
"...No. 2 takes the gauzy, filmic work that made up Vantzou’s first release and homes in on the emotionally engaging details. Even with its expanded instrumental palette and larger string section, its small moments that give her music a new diversity. Vantzou’s bedtime symphonies have been fleshed out with the addition of woodwinds and a more dynamic use of her voice, and “Sister” in particular stands out for its foreboding clarinet swells in the midst of an album heavily reliant on a glacial string section." - Pitchfork
“…this is instrumental music, ambient music, with thrust and purpose, as beautiful as the colours dancing over tired eyes on a prolonged train ride, their owner lost in these moments. It can creep out the listener, too – ‘Brain Frog’ is a number which sets icy screech against sheets of rising squall, akin to someone like Brian Eno washing up against a landscape framed by the early soundtracks of Elliot Goldenthal. Think Alien 3, without all the running around…”
“…Vantzou’s music isn’t of a kind that arrives unheralded – not only does her previous work set expectations for this collection, but the aforementioned Barwick, and the material of Nashville’s Hammock, are precursors, too. (Not to mention the earliest ambient experimentalists and contemporary classicists too numerous to list.) But that ‘No. 2’ doesn’t sing with a singular appeal does nothing to affect its exquisiteness. This is wordless music with weight and emotional pull enough to snap a drifting commuter to attention, to take it in like so few albums of its breed can be: as a work in and of itself, and not simply an accompaniment to a life lived at speed.” - Clash Music
Artist: |
Christina Vantzou |
Title: |
No. 2 |
Label: |
Kranky |
Format: |
Vinyl, LP, Album |
Pressing: |
US |
Release Date: |
|
Genre: |
|
Style: |
|
Catalog No: |
krank 186 |
Condition: |
New |
$45.00
"The world of rare Japanese Funk & Soul is a vast and expensive one to visit. The kind of realm that can be dangerous for your record budget once you start falling deep into. But there is something absolutely irresistible about the pop music that was coming out of Japan in the late 70’s and early 80’s...
...Filed under “Experimental Synth-Pop” is probably where you’d find this gem by Hiroshi Sato sorted at your local record store. Except you won’t. It’s one of those rare treasures that won’t appear magically in a dollar bin near you. You’ll have to pay a couple hundred dollars for an original of this one but thankfully it has been reissued a few years ago and will probably come around again. Back to the record in question: “Orient” (released in 1979) was Sato’s third album in a very productive period that saw him release 8 albums in 12 years (from ’76 to ’88)." - Music Is My Sanctuary
"If you like synth-pop, you’ll love this obscure, cult-ish, previously hard to find and expensive treat. Actually, it’s synth-pop meets jazz-funk with more than a touch of exotica and Oriental proto-electronica...
...Originally released in 1979 (on Kitty Records in Japan only), it was a distant Japanese relation of M, Flying Lizards, Buggles, Gary Numan, The Human League et al. And it is now being made widely available (digitally remastered from the original tapes), six years after the death of its creator, Hiroshi Sato, a keyboardist, composer, arranger, producer, sound engineer and – some say – near-member of Yellow Magic Orchestra (apparently he turned down the offer to join the collective and they drafted in Ryuichi Sakamoto instead)." - Classic Pop Mag
"Sato, was a member of Happy End and had things turned out slightly different, he could have been a part of Yellow Magic Orchestra. The position was offered to him by Haruomi Hosono but was later taken by the great Ryuichi Sakamoto. Needless to say, it is a testament to Sato’s musical chops, all of which are on full show on Orient. With Haruomi Hosono featuring on bass, Sato took on vocals, keyboards and synthesizer, kalimba, drums, writing and production duties for the album." - Electronicbeats
"Digitally remastered from the original tapes, Orient features the cream of Japanese musicians including Shigeru Suzuki on guitar, Haruomi Hosono on bass, Pecker on Percussion and Sato himself on keyboards and synthesizers. This highly sought-after album on the Balearic scene is a superb breezy mix of Japanese synth-pop and exotica with subtle touches of mid 70s Herbie Hancock-style funk and AOR." - Bandcamp | Wewantsounds
Item Description:
Artist: |
Hiroshi Sato |
Title: |
Orient |
Label: |
|
Format: |
Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue |
Pressing: |
|
Release Date: |
This reissue: Feb 2018 | Original: 1979 |
Genre: |
|
Style: |
|
Catalog No: |
WWSLP12 |
Condition: |
New |
$39.00
“Age Of, the tenth studio album from the electronic artist Daniel Lopatin, spills over many of the formal and conceptual boundaries set by previous OPN records. After working with Anohni on her debut solo album Hopelessness, Lopatin found himself drawn to the process of collaborating with other artists, a stark contrast to the cerebral solo labor that had driven his work to date. Instead of going it alone again, Lopatin looped in James Blake to co-produce and mix the album. Anohni and noise artist Dominick Fernow (aka Prurient) lent vocals to several tracks, while Eli Keszler supplied live drums and multi-instrumentalist Kelsey Lu played keyboards. Strikingly, Lopatin sings lead on four songs, threading his distorted voice through jagged electronics for the first time since 2010’s Returnal.” – Pitchfork
"Moments of heightened cacophony on “We’ll Take It” overwhelm as sampled voices crash into a fractured, slumbering beat and stilted keys. A slippery dynamic builds on “Still Stuff That Doesn’t Happen” as romantic keyboards offset a dragging jazz beat on the drums while multiple variations of Anohni crooning “release me” are layered on top of each other as a discordant plea with her operatic vibrato. The combination of these dissonant elements make for a truly haunting yet enveloping listen.” - Consequence of Sound
"Flitting through soundtrack-style pieces, pop songs and dense instrumentals spanning from post-kosmische to neo-baroque, it's a dizzying trip meant to shore up Lopatin's status as an avant-garde auteur while aiding his forays into mainstream pop culture. It'd be easy to see this album-as-prospectus approach as cynical. But whatever his motives, Lopatin has successfully broadened his scope. Age Of is the sound of an internet addict sifting through the digital ruins, part of a culture jamming legacy for future generations, should they exist." - Resident Advisor
Item Description:
Artist: |
Oneohtrix Point Never |
Title: |
Age Of |
Label: |
Warp Records – WARPlp295 |
Format: |
Vinyl, LP, Album |
Country: |
|
Released: |
|
Genre: |
|
Style: |
$55.00
Ten years after his first release, UK artist Lone is putting out his
first ever commercial mix CD. His entry into the celebrated
DJ-kicks series lands on 29th September and features four of his
own new and exclusive tracks.
Lone’s DJ-kicks very much feels alive, lived-in and authentic. It is
a hugely personal view into his unique musical world and marks
another landmark entry into !K7's long running series – Bandcamp
“Tapping Detroit techno, IDM, and boom-bap hip-hop, Lone’s horizontally inclined DJ-Kicks mix uses expert selection and programming to highlight his own distinctive musical sensibility.” – Pitchfork
“Unlike his productions, it's not a seamless weave of trends, genres and ideas. Instead, DJ-Kicks lays out each of his influences piece by piece, almost like listening to a deconstructed Lone album. For fans of Cutler's singular music, it's an essential entry in his discography.” – Resident Advisor
Item description:
Artist: |
Lone |
Title: |
DJ-Kicks |
Label: |
Studio !K7 |
Format: |
2 × Vinyl, 12", Compilation |
Pressing: |
UK |
Release Date: |
29 Sept 2017 |
Genre: |
Electronic, Hip Hop |
Style: |
Techno, Experimental, Downtempo |
Catalog No: |
K7353LP |
Condition: |
New |
$48.00
“For many enlightened club goers in Chicago, Hieroglyphic Being is as much a part of the house and techno scene as the sticky floors and the sweaty walls. His appetite and passion for the Chicago club scene as a DJ, producer, and promoter has solidified his standing as one of the most important house artists to come from Chicago since the peak years of Chicago house in the mid to late '80s.
Hieroglyphic Being, aka Jamal Moss, is an artist who marches to the beat of his own drum. He is a willfully prolific artist, confident in his ability but certainly not one to shout about it. With releases on his own Mathematics Recordings label and a slew of releases for Spectral Sound and Soul Jazz, he has proven himself time and time again to be a unique talent. Last LP, 2016's The Disco's of Imhotep seemed like the perfect summation of his career up to that point as he confidently moved from trippy experimental techno to classic kinetic Chicago house all with a healthy sprinkling of jazz fusion. While that album was purposely concise and succinct, The Red Notes sees Moss let loose as he trusts the listener to buckle up and stay along for the ride.
On this album, Moss takes his cues from jazz as he describes the album as, "an homage to the Blue Note jazz sound of Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, and Herbie Hancock". In effect he applies the attitude, freedom, and sounds of jazz, especially it's liberal application of form and structure before fusing it with characteristic leftfield techno and Chicago house.” – PopMatters
“While jazz stylings have previously played crucial roles in Moss’s unique sound, it was 2015’s We Are Not The First (credited to Hieroglyphic Being & J.I.T.U. Ahn-Sahm-Buhl) which expanded on the links between cosmic jazz methodology and acid house. Live players such as Daniel Carter and Marshall Allen seamlessly applied decades-old practice to Moss's electronic circulation and the whole vibe of the record felt akin to what Sun Ra might have brought out in our present day had he not been called away from Earth. On The Red Notes, however, Moss’s sonic template is recognisably that of classic acid house but filtered through jazz’s interstitial phrasing and exploratory dynamics. As you’d expect from Moss’s considerable body of work, this is no exercise in fusing electronics with virtuoso hyper-noodling so as to enable a soulless vacuum. In terms of sheer uplifting joy, the nearest comparisons I can make for The Red Notes are with Alice Coltrane’s spiritual music or Laraaji’s sun-eyed exhortations.” – The Quietus
Item description:
Artist: |
Hieroglyphic Being |
Title: |
The Red Notes |
Label: |
Soul Jazz Records |
Format: |
2 × Vinyl, LP |
Pressing: |
UK |
Release Date: |
Feb 2018 |
Genre: |
Electronic |
Style: |
Techno, House |
Catalog No: |
SJR LP 394 |
Condition: |
New |
$45.00
Further departing from both the cinematic abstraction of ‘Piteous Gate’ and the hectic drums of ‘Damaged Merc’, Berlin producer M.E.S.H’s new full-length, ‘Hesaitix’, is marked by its hyper-ornamented rhythms and a sense of pensive, moonlit spaces.
The atmosphere has shifted; the radical deconstruction of previous releases has given way to subtler interventions, building new structures in strange territories. Shifting from the meditative to states of manic unease, Hesaitix is an unnerving injection into both the social space of club music and the interior space of digital audio fantasy. – PAN
“The images conjured are potent and surreal—two good descriptors for M.E.S.H.'s music, incidentally—and are as good as any an entry point into his rich, complex second album. Other M.E.S.H. records—including his 2015 debut LP, Piteous Gate—were narrow beam; Hesaitix is the full spectrum.” – Resident Advisor
“Hesaitix has a more refined quality to it, more confident. It creates spaces for you to exist in temporarily - or be trapped in, which is my theory. It’s like being in a warehouse rave, but in absolute darkness, with powerful flashes of sound that evoke the effect of searchlights” – The Quietus
Artist: |
|
Title: |
Hesaitix |
Label: |
|
Format: |
Vinyl, LP, Album |
Pressing: |
Europe |
Release Date: |
2017 |
Genre: |
|
Style: |
|
Catalog No: |
PAN 82 |
Condition: |
New |
$45.00
Ziúr is one of the most exciting producers to come out of the fringes of Berlin club music in the last few years. A new generation is breaking out of the techno mould and creating in a spirit of freedom and experimentation, taking seemingly incompatible influences and balancing them into a new and exciting sound.
'U Feel Anything?' was written as a way to think about music as a tool of enlightenment, a de-conditioning force and the kind of yin and yang that can be summed up in the title of one of the songs 'Laughing and Crying are The Same Things', a track which features Swedish pop singer Zhala, whose vocals straddle twisting beats, space and staccato strings. The album also features a collaboration with Aïsha Devi on the epic 'Body of Light', in which Aïsha's vocals are pitched up and down, manipulated and distorted into wispy angelic tones, setting the tone for the first half of the album. There's a process to Ziúr's music that's informed by this wish to get beyond the small things. She says "Putting a relation on what's big and small and certainly meaningless behind our existence; how nothing is everything at the same time etc... it's something that I try to explore again and again by putting myself into a thought process, rather than having everything already formulated. – Bandcamp
“Warped and pitched-up voices call out over whistling drone, and contemplative bells echo—the backdrop for a moment of quiet reflection in an album defined by intense emotions. Its sections of high energy, of tension, of unpredictability, show an ability to bring contrasting energies together in a powerful way.U Feel Anything? asserts Ziúr as one of club music's most vital rising talents.” – Resident Advisor
“U Feel Anything?, an album that grabs the listener by the arm and throws them deep into its complex and fervent sonic world. This is an album of extremes — blastbeat percussion and golden-glistening synths, serene pop and ferocious club — but not of oppositions. Rather, it seems best to consider the ways in which Ziúr’s sounds resonate with each other, to trace the ways in which they touch, tease, and collide.” – Tiny Mix Tapes
Item description:
Artist: |
Ziúr |
Title: |
U Feel Anything? |
Label: |
|
Format: |
Vinyl, LP |
Pressing: |
UK |
Release Date: |
|
Genre: |
Electronic |
Style: |
|
Catalog No: |
ZIQ391 |
Condition: |
New |
$45.00
Lapalux will release his third album, “Ruinism”, on Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder imprint, 30th June 2017. His previous LP, “Lustmore” was partially inspired by the concept of hypnagogia, a suspension of consciousness occurring between wakefulness and sleep. Throughout “Ruinism” the British producer takes this exploration further, journeying onward to the more ominous limbo space between life and death. In this liminal space where the finite and infinite intermingle, Lapalux sounds more at home than ever.
Much of “Ruinism”’s inspiration was born out of a theatrical score Lapalux (aka Stuart Howard) wrote for the performance art piece “Depart” which was performed in an East London cemetery. The aptly named project served as genesis for a direction wrought with doom and melancholia. “Ruinism” is all sonic wreckage and rubble created using only hardware and real instruments. The sound simultaneously destroys and redeems itself across a tight and formidable forty-eight minutes. – Bandcamp
Though far less accessible than his previous material, Ruinism isn’t the clinical listen it could have turned into. Its performers are never spotlit and yet its textures never lack a human soul. It is the kind of album that tends to frustrate a fanbase while cementing its maker as an artist for that very willingness to alienate the faithful. You could say that Ruinism is Howard’s coming-out party as a composer, but even that incorrectly implies an adherence to tradition. With Ruinism, Howard sets out on a whole new path to conceiving his music. – Pitchfork
Item description:
Artist: |
Lapalux |
Title: |
Ruinism |
Label: |
Brainfeeder |
Format: |
2 × Vinyl, LP, Album |
Pressing: |
UK |
Release Date: |
28 Jul 2017 |
Genre: |
Electronic |
Style: |
Abstract, Experimental, IDM, Leftfield |
Catalog No: |
BF061 |
Condition: |
New |
$45.00
Hieroglyphic Being’s debut album for Soul Jazz - The Acid Documents - is an album made up of tracks first released last year only ever available in a bespoke edition of 100 copies (yes 100) – in the form of a homemade CD-R – made exclusively for the Sounds of the Universe record store.
This album is now released officially as a one-off edition of 1000 copies on coloured double vinyl, CD and digital, fully remastered with artwork by Japanese artist 2Yang.
Hieroglyphic Being, aka Jamal Moss - who features on the front cover of Wire magazine’s current issue – is a DJ/composer/sound artist who makes pioneering, experimental, boundary-pushing Afro-futurist electronic music.
Born and based in Chicago, Moss’s music embodies two of the cultural foundation blocks of the city’s musical lineage; that of Chicago’s original Acid House sound (c. 1986), that of Frankie Knuckles, Phuture, Marshall Jefferson et al, alongside a rigorous experimental sound searching that taps into the cosmic musical lineage of pioneering artist Sun Ra whose Arkestra landed and was based in the city from 1946-61.
This association with Sun Ra is by no means hypothetical, having just been in the studio with the Arkestra leader Marshall Allen and a host of free jazz players for the album Hieroglyphic Being & JITU Ahn-Sahm-Buhl’s ‘We Are Not The First.’
Similarly his relationship to Chicago’s original acid house pioneers of the late 80s is no hyperbole. Originally menotored by artist/producers Adonis and Steve Pointdexter, Moss also now runs his own Mathematics label which has released music by foundation acid house pioneers Lil’ Louis, Adonis and many others. To quote Moss, ‘I am the last of the line of producers directly influenced by Ron Hardy (the pioneering acid house DJ) at the Music Box.’
Moss grew up in the south side of Chicago. After being thrown out of the home of his adoptive parents, he then spent three years homeless living on the streets of Chicago, living a nocturnal existence as a gigolo in Chicago’s alternative clubs. He began his career as a DJ at the pioneering Liquid Love parties at Chi-town’s legendary Power House (home of Ron Hardy’s MusicBox) around 1989.
What clearly defines Moss’s music is that while sometimes pushing the limits of sound to an ear-splitting dimension of experimentation and DIY-electronics – the music is always clearly a progression of the lineage of black music. In the words of fellow Chicagoans, The Art Ensemble of Chicago, it is simply ‘Great Black Music.’ And yet in this uniquely defined sound, Moss somehow manages to draw into this world elements of industrial music, German electronic music (Cluster, Harmonia etc), Detroit’s sci-fi techno artists (Atkins, Saunderson, Craig) and more. – Sounds of the Universe
“Jamal Moss' 'The Acid Documents' album sees a necessary vinyl issue on Soul Jazz Records. The ten tracks now have titles but don't worry; they're still raw as f**k and unaltered from the original CDr.
In full, psychedelic flow he jacks-a-body from lo-fi, curdled house in 'Culdees' thru to the gurgling ceramic acid of 'Aurum Solis' and a warped slow motion ace, 'Hollow Earth', peaking out at the cryptic tribal patterns of 'Illumiates of Thanateros' and the spannered, chaotic harmonics of 'Burlesque Degrees'.” – Boomkat
Item description:
Artist: |
Hieroglyphic Being |
Title: |
The Acid Documents |
Label: |
Soul Jazz Records |
Format: |
2 × Vinyl, 12", 33 ⅓ RPM, Album, Limited Edition, Orange |
Pressing: |
UK |
Release Date: |
2015 |
Genre: |
Electronic |
Style: |
Abstract, Experimental, Techno, Acid House |
Catalog No: |
SJR LP322 |
Condition: |
New |
$39.00
A suite of electronic laments, tone structures and dreamtime rhythms, with a conceptual arc taking in death, life, sleep and religion.
Right from Hazyville, Actress’s music has been deeply marked by London’s rave music heritage. But after the angular dynamics of Splazsh, R.I.P heads out into deep space. The rhythms and pulses are smudged or blurred, or are hinted at by their absence. 2-step garage is collided into gamelan, and freeform interludes explore microtonal spaces and imagined string instruments.
R.I.P underlines Actress’s reputation as one of the most eloquent voices to emerge from the sub-bass nexus of London dance music. His intuitive and original grasp of beats, textures and rhythm puts him on a parallel path to dance music innovators such as Basic Channel, Burial and Aphex Twin. But the way he engages with electronic sound from first principles, realising his own self-contained sonic worlds, hints at less obvious kinships outside the dance music fraternity, with pioneers of homebrewed sound experiments such as Cabaret Voltaire, Pan Sonic and Oval. It moves the body but the sounds also tap into to something more intangible inside you; you dance, but also ‘slip/drift into another realm, probably without even realising.’ – Honest Jon’s Records
“Darren Cunningham is a dance producer who references extroverted, populist music to create a meditative, introverted, immersive experience.…It's not the sound that makes the music, though, but the structure of it. R.I.P. is a deliberately uncoordinated album. Rhythms, basslines, and melodies slip in and out of line with each other. Comparatively straightforward, house-oriented tracks like "Shadow From Tartarus" are situated next to murk and ambience like "Tree of Knowledge". The emphasis here, though, is on "comparative": Even R.I.P.'s steady 4/4 tracks sound grimy and deconstructed. But there's something almost flirtatious in the way he lets the sounds worm around in the dark, looking to hook up with something firm. When they do, it's both mechanical and mystical, like watching a sculpture cut from raw stone.” – Pitchfork
Item description:
Artist: |
|
Title: |
R.I.P |
Label: |
|
Format: |
2 x Vinyl, LP, Album |
Pressing: |
UK |
Release Date: |
2012 |
Genre: |
Electronic |
Style: |
Leftfield, Glitch, Techno, Experimental |
Catalog No: |
ZEN 241 |
Condition: |
New |
$48.00
A TAV Curator's Pick.
Actress, real name Darren Jordan Cunningham, known to friends as DAZ, returns with a new album, now on Ninja Tune and a new music system called “AZD” (pronounced “Azid”), a chrome aspect journey into a parallel world. An artist who has always preferred to make music than to talk about it, in “AZD” he has achieved another remarkable landmark, one which is as resistant to interpretation as it is demanding of it. Following on from his previous albums, R.I.P, Splazsh and Hazyville, an epilogue poem attached to the press release for Ghettoville was construed by media, commentators and spectators that Cunningham had retired. This led him to conceptualise this mass of conclusion as the key to ‘Giving power back to identity.’
So a few pointers, or possible ways to think about “AZD”. The album is themed around chrome – both as a reflective surface to see the self in, and as something that carves luminous voids out of any colour and fine focuses white and black representing the perfect metaphor for the bleakness of life in the Metropolis as suggested by Anish Kapoors Cloud Gate.
Another way to approach would be through the art of James Hampton and Rammellzee (who inspired “CYN,” which Cunningham also sees as a vision of New York in reverse…) – both of whom, though of different generations of the African-American slave diaspora, created art through “Sourcing castaway materials from their environment and reinterprating them into absolute majesty given from the fourth dimension.” There is also the career-long influence of the Detroit techno pioneers, something which becomes clear on this album “there is a contrast in the type of glow or reflection”.
Alternatively, you could write your PhD thesis on Jung’s Shadow Theory and AZD: “Lots of ideas come from dreams, this isn’t new, but sometimes the conscious mind starts to meld into the universal consciousness through constellation tunnelling.” If that sounds too taxing then you could always fall back on Star Wars and, in particular, the Death Star: “It has a dark dystopian backdrop, with highly sophisticated technology, but it is fading into the ether, still holding on and emitting a powerful energy. The music remaking the embers, binding them together and pulling them apart again.”
Alternatively, just listen. That “glow” Cunningham talks about makes this in some ways more immediate than previous Actress releases. Take lead single, “X22RME” (pronounced “Extreme”) which elegantly plays between the lines of Oriental classic rave and Balinese warehouse Techno machined in a Rotherhithe lock up welding the grooves into a seamless cracked joint.
At the other end of the spectrum is “Faure in Chrome,” a byproduct or development from his collaboration with the London Contemporary Orchestra, in which he “repatterns” aspect of Faure’s Requiem into a piece which sounds like the very institution of classical music being encased in electronic ice and scanned through a high frequency bandwidth. In between are gems like “Runner,” a personal re-soundtracking of Blade Runner “its from the deleted Fade Runner scene where AZD in a Peckham Cafe realises his barber has over the years etched a faded scroll into his head using early 80s African synthpop as a vexing serum“, or “Falling Rizlas,” an alienated music-box ballad. It’s a remarkable piece of work, that harks back both to Actress’ previous productions and to earlier iterations of the (broadly conceived) “techno” project without being beholden to anything but Cunningham’s forward-facing, individual and disembodied vision. – Ninja Tune
The simplest you could say about “AZD” is that it’s art – the unique creation of a unique mind. There will be few more distinctive, brilliant or visionary suites of music released in 2017. Call him what you will, this is the year that Darren ‘Daz’ Cunningham - aka Actress, aka AZD – asserts more clearly than ever before his complete independence. “Actress has a talent for melodies that snag at you, as demonstrated on the music-box ambience of Falling Rizlas, or Blue Window, on which house music battles to be heard over the sound of tape hiss. He also has an ability to twist the sound of dance music until it sounds private and intimate. Even the album’s most upbeat moment, X22RME, has a strangely introverted atmosphere to it: when the beats drop out, it doesn’t feel like a euphoric breakdown, but rather as if someone’s mind has wandered in the middle of the dancefloor.” – The Guardian
“…for all its artfully-deployed discordance, *AZD *maintains a musicality that holds the listener close. Sometimes this comes through in more danceable techno moments, like the single “X22RME” or the 80s-leaning synth-driven track “RUNNER,”; elsewhere, it’s in the emotive minimalist breaks of “FALLING RIZLAS” or “THERE'S AN ANGEL IN THE SHOWER.” Cunningham participates in a futurist tradition, following an arc set by artists and writers like Rammellzee and Eshun. But that futurism isn’t predictive, something yet to come; rather, his combination of science fictions, music histories, and socio-spatial realities feels deliriously adjacent to the world we’re listening to it in.” – Pitchfork
Item description:
Artist: |
|
Title: |
AZD |
Label: |
|
Format: |
2 x Vinyl, LP, Album |
Pressing: |
UK |
Release Date: |
2017 |
Genre: |
Electronic |
Style: |
IDM, Techno, Experimental |
Catalog No: |
ZEN 241 |
Condition: |
New |
$55.00
Following last year’s full-length LP, ‘&’, which saw him extensively collaborate with an impressive host of contemporaries and friends, including Joe Goddard, Prins Thomas and Agoria, Michael Mayer is set to contribute to the legendary DJ Kicks series. Spanning sixteen tracks, the mix finds Mayer is just as generous of a mood, composing a musical journey that spans his ever-expanding record collection, and above all, his defining instinct to share the beauty of music with others.
“On an abstract level, the approach was basically the same for both projects”, observes Mayer. “For & I put together a group of people that are close to my heart. For Kicks it was a group of records that are like friends to me. All of the tracks I used went through heaven and hell with me. They've become true companions. Circling in on and bringing together these friends was the only criterion for the making of this mix. I wanted it to be as personal as possible.”
Perhaps unnervingly to some, fifteen years have passed since the debut edition to Mayer’s breathtaking, scene defining mix trilogy, Immer. Not that it’s legacy - Resident Advisor’s #1 Mix of the 00s, one of Rolling Stone’s 30 Greatest EDM Albums Of All Time - has disturbed Mayer’s formidable workload. A catalogue of no less than 23 EPs, 4 albums and 170 remixes informs a near constant level of international touring. Exhausting as this can be, even after all these years, it’s a ritual that informs the delicate construction of Mayer’s contribution to the DJ Kicks series.
“Kicks has turned out to be a pretty international affair, especially if you compare it with Immer 1 or Fabric 13, which consisted almost 100% of German productions”, highlights Mayer. “At that time, there were such incredible things happening in my direct neighborhood and all over Germany. In the meantime, that spark has traveled a lot since then. The sound I've been pushing is often falsely described as "minimal". Minimal used to be a thing in the pre-Kompakt days, mid 90s. After that I took much more interest in an eclectic way of playing music.”
Alongside this consistent, all-embracing attitude to music, ‘Emotive’ is still perhaps the term best associated with Mayer’s leanings as a DJ, and as the man himself once observed, “there is room on the dancefloor for emotions other than euphoria.” Certainly, DJ Kicks delivers on this expectation, balancing wistful passages with frequent bursts of high energy aimed squarely at the dancefloor.
Mayer’s own reliable talent and golden touch for remixing the likes of Kasper Bjørke, Dreems and CSS provides much of the mix’s atmospheric backbone, supported by dispatches from the contemporary underground from the likes of Jon Hopkins, SAVE! and Boreal. Resolutely a forward thinking affair, the Cologne master nonetheless takes a trip to revisit his timeless love of Throbbing Gristle, slides back over a decade for the electro euphoria of Mekon and Royksopp, as well as his good friend Roman Flugel’s Alter Ego persona.
“I'm constantly scanning my record collection for older tracks that could make new sense in a contemporary context”, reveals Mayer. “There's no system behind it. My record collection is too chaotic for a systematic approach. As much as it annoys me having to search for a particular record and often not finding it - during the search I'd always find 10 other records that deserve to be revisited.” – DJ-Kicks
“DJ-Kicks is Mayer’s first commercially released mix since 2010’s Immer 3… But the new set is clearly cut from the same cloth as its predecessors. It is quiet in places and raucous in others; its selections are sometimes intuitive and sometimes wildly idiosyncratic, but its forward motion is always fluid. Leaning mostly on fairly obscure house tracks from the last several years, it also reaches back and gathers up some real oddities—a Marc Almond feature remixed to hi-NRG heaven by Röyskopp; a 2004 remix by Basement Jaxx’s Simon Ratcliffe of Throbbing Gristle’s 1979 song “Hot on the Heels of Love”—to carve out a unique corner of the dancefloor.” – Pitchfork
Tracklist:
A1 |
Throbbing Gristle |
Hot On The Heels of Love (Ratcliffe Remix) |
|
A2 |
Jon Hopkins |
Abandon Window (Moderat Remix) |
|
B1 |
Boreal |
Canopy Target |
|
B2 |
Michael Mayer |
The Horn Is Conspiracy Club Mix (DJ-Kicks) |
|
C1 |
CSS |
Honey (Michael Mayer Remix) |
|
C2 |
Alter Ego |
Gary |
|
D1 |
Mekon Feat. Marc Almond |
Please Stay (Röyksopp Remix) |
|
D2 |
Dreems |
Mirages (Michael Mayer Remix) |
Item description:
Artist: |
|
Title: |
DJ-Kicks |
Label: |
|
Format: |
2 × Vinyl, 12", 33 ⅓ RPM, Compilation |
Pressing: |
Germany |
Release Date: |
2017 |
Genre: |
Electronic |
Style: |
Techno, House |
Catalog No: |
K7348LP |
Condition: |
New |
$39.00
Grammy-nominated Little Dragon’s new album Season High—the first new music from the band since their acclaimed 2014 album Nabuma Rubberband—saw its long-anticipated release on April 14th 2017. Discussing the process behind recording Season High, vocalist of the Swedish four-piece Yukimi muses, “We have grown through the years but the making of this album has been a struggle. As much as our band is based on a deep friendship, we are four strong wills who find it really frustrating to compromise. We have gotten better at that though, but it’s still a real battle. It gets harder and harder for us to make records but we still love it. Sometimes it feels like we have 100% passion and life or death emotions yet there’s a pointlessness with everything. We want to exist in our own bubble where we can stay curious about sounds. The magic feeling that sounds can sprinkle over any boring day is what got us all hooked, that feeling of escapism.” – Press release
“Fittingly for an album that contains a song called ‘The Pop Life’, Little Dragon really bring the hooks here. With its refrain of “let love drip”, ‘Celebrate’ is a sexy blend of Prince and ’80s Janet Jackson. ‘Should I’, a midtempo electro rush, comes off like a freaky Pet Shop Boys-Neneh Cherry mash-up. And the breathy dance-pop of ‘Sweet’ is so cute and catchy, it could almost be a more experimental Kylie Minogue hit.” - NME
“When Little Dragon focus on their forte of blending brooding, gossamer synth washes with Yukimi Nagano’s breathy, sensuous vocals, as on “High” and “Don’t Cry”, the results are blissful; while the striding electro grooves of “Strobe Light” and the punchy paean to ambition “Push” offer a more active alternative. And when the two combine, as on the irresistible “Sweet”, the result is bleep-tastic boudoir electropop for Clangers.”
– Independent
Item description:
Artist: |
|
Title: |
Season High |
Label: |
|
Format: |
Vinyl, LP, Album, White |
Pressing: |
US |
Release Date: |
2017 |
Genre: |
Electronic, Funk / Soul, Pop |
Style: |
Synth-pop |
Catalog No: |
LVR00135 |
Condition: |
New |
$60.00
A TAV Essential Listening Album.
Palto Flats & WRWTFWW Records are proud to announce the highly-anticipated reissue of Japanese percussionist Midori Takada‘s sought after and timeless ambient / minimal album “Through The Looking Glass”, originally released in 1983 by RCA Japan.
Considered a Holy Grail of Japanese music by many, “Through The Looking Glass” is Midori Takada’s first solo endeavor, a captivating four-song suite capturing her deep quests into traditional African and Asian percussive language and exploring contemplative ambient sounds with an admirably precise use of marimba. The result is alternatively ethereal and vibrant, always precise and mesmerizing, and makes for an atmospheric masterpiece and an unparalleled sonic and spiritual experience.
The fully licensed reissue is available both in its original form as a single 33rpm LP and a limited 45rpm 2×12″ (this version is exclusive to WRWTFWW,) both cut directly from the original studio reels (AAA), at Emil Berliner (formerly the in-house recording department of renowned classical record label Deutsche Grammophon) for the 45rpm DLP, and at the equally famous Frankfurter SST Studio for the LP. It is also available in CD format for the first time. All versions come with liner notes, with extended quotes from Ms. Takada. – Press Release
“In a perfect world, Japanese composer Midori Takada and her works for percussion would be as revered and renowned as that of Steve Reich. Much like that world-renowned American composer, Takada drew influence from a study of African drumming and Asian music, and surmised how these sensibilities dovetailed with that of minimalism, serving as means to break with the Western classical tradition (she originally was a percussionist in the Berlin RIAS Symphonie Orchestra at the Berlin Philharmonic). But with only a handful of works to her name and all of it long out of print—be it with her groundbreaking percussion trio Mkwaju Ensemble, the group Ton-Klami or the three solo albums she released across nearly two decades—her music has been impossible to hear since the early 1990s.” – Pitchfork
Item description:
Artist: |
Midori Takada |
Title: |
Through the Looking Glass |
Label: |
We Release Whatever The Fuck We Want Records |
Format: |
2 × Vinyl, 12", 45 RPM, Album, Limited Edition, Reissue, Crystal Clear Transparent |
Pressing: |
Switzerland |
Release Date: |
2018 |
Genre: |
Electronic, Classical, Stage & Screen |
Style: |
Minimal, Contemporary, Experimental, Ambient |
Catalog No: |
WRWTFWW018 |
Condition: |
New |