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Accelerator is the debut studio album by British electronica group The Future Sound of London. The album was first released in 1991 by the record label Jumpin' & Pumpin'. It is widely regarded as the group's most "club-oriented" album in that almost all the tracks have a sonic, dance-friendly vibe and it does not contain much of their later, more off-beat, complex, ambient techniques. – Wiki

When House and Techno exploded out of America in the mid 1980s a whole generation was transformed not only musically but also culturally and chemically speaking. Peaking, quite literally, with a second ‘Summer of Love’ in 1988, millions of young people would experience the life-changing ups of a new world but with it of course came the downs; enter the concept of a ‘Chill-out’ room. Whilst early Chill-out rooms lacked a specific sound and were often sound-tracked by music such as reggae and soul, slowly young Techno and House producers themselves became increasingly interested in developing a futuristic ‘Ambient’ soundtrack to a world beyond the thud of the main room.

‘Ambient’ in this new age now though had sharper teeth than in Brian Eno's key text for ‘Music for Airports’, instead here the sounds were the mode of transport rather than the backdrop. While the melodies were pretty, the soundscapes steered away from the pastoral, often dreaming of outer-space and technology as opening up transformative new dimensions. Much like in the first Summer of Love; the musicians were again exploring psychedelic, mind-altering and transcendental possibilities of music. And also, much as in the first Summer of Love, a psychedelic visual language would accompany the music. Now though the tracks would be accompanied by music videos, often utilising early CGI techniques, and they would look almost entirely to the future: envisioning technology, nature and humanity intertwined in a new Utopia. These were the Virtual Dreams of a new world.

From Ambient and early Chill-out classics, to lesser known one-off projects, as well as Ambient deviations by some of House and Techno’s leading producers, Volume One of Virtual Dreams features tracks by Bedouin Ascent, David Moufang, LA Synthesis, LFO, Marc Hollander, Mark Pritchard & Kirsty Hawkshaw, Richard H. Kirk and more. – Music From Memory

Is It Electro? Hip Hop? Techno? House? Funk? Disco? Balearic? Obscure?

It’s all up to you. Ottagono Design Of Music is back introducing from its Italian headquarter the Japanese crossover Hoodoo Fushimi‘s Oto (sound) Imprint. Fushimi Sensei from his private studio in Yokosuka (the city where he is born ) during 1979 -1993 used to work on many projects, producing different music albums, working as a painter and illustrator, working also for a few Japanese magazines as a music writer and English translator. Nowadays for many people, he is considered one of the Electro Disco Tech Funk Japanese pioneers/ innovators. Tamaran released during 1989 was available only on CD format on Syntax ( ’89 was the boom of CD Japanese Market ) for the Japanese Local Market becoming a true hard to find during the years, finally thanks to Ottagono after 30 years it takes the first official vinyl release. The Japanese Fushimi sound trademark looks still beautiful, fresh, and powerful ( from the Japanese word utsukushii) with influences that remind early Afrika Bambata, Cybotron, Egyptian Lover, De La Soul. Tamaran is featured by the club Hit “ Kaette Ne ” where Fushimi joining with singer Harka made a love song where still today it seems a true manifesto to Chicago Warehouse, New York Paradise Garage, it is something like a true mix of early Joe Claussell Instant House/Jungle Sounds, Chicago Trax Records with some reminiscence of Nami Shimada and Soichi Terada. We are sure that Larry Levan and Frankie Knuckles would have liked to play at that time if only had a chance to have this pearl in their hands at that time. Claudio Mate from his musical vision after introducing Zen Oikawa Studio Ghibli director with the first Ottagono release remarks the Otaku Sound concept, where Artists, Producers, Musicians from the land of Rising Sun are responsible for Soundtracks for Anime, Video Games, Drama Live Action, Movies as at same time fathers also of a few pieces such as of Underground Music, indeed more recently Hoodoo Fushimi Ongaku (Music) got featuring over a few episodes of Giri/ Haji the cult Netflix Uk/ Japanese Drama series. Claudio and Fushimi Sensei together introduce one more time another Italian /Japanese connection impossible to lose !!  – Bandcamp

Tenderlonious returns with a brand new 4 track EP, seamlessly cooking up a blend of hybrid house and broken beat with his unique analogue productions and signature flute instrumentation.

The title track ’After The Storm’ picks up where 2019 album ’Hard Rain’ left off (Bandcamp's electronic albums of 2019) - a stormy, atmospheric 4/4 groove, with flute flurries, build the track to a state of euphoria. The EP continues with G Flex, a tune dedicated to Tender’s mentor Sterling Styles, aka Equinox (Scientific Wax). Broken drum machine loops are brought to life by classic Tender flute and synth solos. Fans of his 2016 ’On Flute’ EP will be feeling this one!

’D Low’ is the 22a squad pick on this cut. Deep house vibes, with a classic London soundsystem style hook, shaking bass lines and twisted synths. ’Broken Heart’s Club’ rounds things up, and may sound familiar to 22a heads. Beefy broken drum machines take centre stage, making way for some more synth magic from Tender’s vast array of hardware. First time on vinyl for a track that’s been doing the rounds for a couple of years! - Bandcamp

Umwelt allies with Midnight Shift for the release of the mini LP Superior Life Forms, featuring six devastating tracks on the vinyl release and an exclusive number seven for the digital release.

Known for his take no prisoners approach to searing hardware-based broken electro with the spirit of 90s French rave parties where he participated in, Umwelt himself is founder of labels such as Fundata, New Flesh Records and Rave or Die, and a diehard scene activist, pushing the resistance for the past twenty years and more.

A dark, sci-fi bleak horror theme runs through his prolific cosmos of productions and Superior Life Forms continues the narrative. It’s a tri-invasion attack between man, machine and foreign sentient beings. From the snarling Shadow Entity creeping from the sidelines to the ominous sound of the day of reckoning depicted on title track, Superior Life Forms, Umwelt has full control of the genre – telling a story with tightly programmed sounds, deadly textural atmospherics and an uneasy, foreboding tension of a world signalling its end. - Bandcamp

.gif have earned critical comparison to the likes of Bjork, Yukimi Nagano, The xx and Portishead, but the illustrious pair have managed to retain a fresh and unique dynamic to their chimerical sound, one that proved so compelling that the pair began filling a void of their own making within the Singaporean music scene. 

Following the acclaim of their past releases, .gif's sophomore LP HAIL NOTHING still showcases the haunting vocals, deft lyricism and obsidian production that has become their distinctive sound. The album is named after a line in Ernest Hemingway' s A Clean Well Lighted Place - "Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee." 

The duo digs deeper on HAIL NOTHING; an ode to chaos and nothingness, a love song to the void. Expanding on their synth-driven soundscapes, haunting vocals and poignant lyrics, the album also features guests Bani Haykal and Usaama Minhas. 

The Analog Vault is supremely honoured to be working with .gif for their first-ever vinyl release on TAV Records. 

Perte d'identité, which translates to “loss of identity,” is the debut LP by composer, singer and poet Marie Davidson, one of the finest artists rising from the electronic dark-synth scene in Montreal. Her voice is a stark half-spoken monotone which will tell you stories from which you can’t escape unchanged. With this release, she refines her storytelling with suffocating tales that are both intimate and melancholic. Meanwhile, her miraculously human electronic rhythms are as frantic and hypnotic as an intense stare. In her premier full length album, she invites you to take a look in the peephole, revealing a fascinating cinematic picture. What you will be shown are the parts of yourself which you're scared and ashamed of, but also the ones that reveal a haunting and glamorous sensuality. Not only will she spin you a tale, but her music will immerse your soul in images of sweet anxiety. "This album is about romance and a quest for meaning." - Bandcamp

 Marie Davidson is a spoken-word poet and electronic artist who is also one half of the duo Essaie Pas. Her third solo release, examining club culture, shows near-exponential growth in her abilities…

…One of the most successful and captivating practitioners of spoken-word electronic has been Marie Davidson, one half of the Montreal coldwave duo Essaie Pas. Her two previous solo releases (Perte D'Identité and Un Autre Voyage) mingled gothic ambient music, poetic repetitions, and analog synthpop to great success. Her work has never felt campy, but is darkly rendered, probing, and redolent of Lizzy Mercier Descloux. In her third solo release, Adieux Au Dancefloor, Davidson presents a project that indicates exciting and near-exponential growth in her ability as a writer and producer. - Pitchfork

Pan Daijing, a Chinese artist now based in Berlin, discovered techno on her first trip to Europe, when she was 20. But unlike many who have had a similar epiphany in Berghain's dark halls, Daijing didn't suddenly dedicate herself to dance music. "It's not so much 'music,' but 'sound,'" she told RBMA last year. "Sound has always been the thing I've been the most interested in." Or maybe "noise" is a better way of putting it, as her interests in industrial and experimental music have been a major part in the intense, sexually charged performances she's become known for. All of which is to say that Daijing has taken a roundabout path to making techno, which gives her second release an interesting angle. A Satin Sight isn't light on rhythmic force, but the drums are sometimes utilized more for their sonic blasts than time keeping. "What I like about techno is the energy," Daijing said in that same interview. "Whether you're making it, playing it, listening to it or dancing to it, it's an energy exchange. – Resident Advisor

Tobias. returns to Ostgut Ton with his third full length Eyes In The Center and expands the musical narrative laid out by his Helium Sessions EP (O-TON, 2016). The Berghain resident keeps exploring the vast modular synth-driven Techno, Experimental and Ambient territories on a journey in-between genres. 

“Moriyama is the first release on Palto Flats by Nagoya-based experimental producer Foodman. A 5 track 12” focused on deep, tactile rhythmic and offbeat tracks, Moriyama tilts on some of the producer’s most dance-friendly work. “Mizuboro,” (meaning water bath) elicits the feeling of soaking in a tub of warm bassy synth pads, metronomic patterns of woodwinds and skittering percussion suitable for latenight winds. Elsewhere, on “Soudesu,” Foodman experiments with traditional instrumentation & vocal forms to create a special post-ambient/dance hybrid of familiar sounds reconfigured.

Named after the district he lives in, Moriyama represents some of Foodman’s most direct, accessible work - a full helping.” – Bandcamp

“Nagoya-based artist Takahide Higuchi will release some of his most "direct, accessible work" to date, the label says, with an emphasis on "deep, tactile rhythmic and offbeat tracks." It's the second release of the year for Palto Flats, the New York label that's perhaps best known for reissuing rare Japanese albums from the '80s—Mariah's Utakata No Hibi, Midori Takada's Through The Looking Glass and Yasuaki Shimizu's Kakashi among them.” – Resident Advsior

 

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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

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“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

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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

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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

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Jamal Moss, aka Hieroglyphic Being, returns for a new second album on Soul Jazz Records, after last year’s debut The Acid Documents. this time under the name Africans with Mainframes.

Hieroglyphic Being and fellow Chicago producer Noleian Reusse have been releasing music under the name Africans with Mainframes for over 15 years now, ever since their debut on Hieroglyphic Being’s own Mathematics Recordings label in 2005. ‘K.M.T.’ is the debut album from the group, a collage of apocalyptic Chicago acid meets industrial and transcendental post-house machine funk.

Both intense and unique, the album of forward-thinking, experimental, boundary-pushing Afro-futurist electronic music shows why Hieroglyphic Being is regarded as one of the most serious purveyors of experimental black music today. You can't stop the prophet! – Sounds of the Universe

“Devastating album of epic dancefloor rituals and visions from Jamal Moss (Hieroglyphic Being) and Noleian Reusse in their prized Africans With Mainframes guise, amounting to their most substantial and impressive collection.” – Boomkat

“…Working with fellow producer Noleian Reusse as Africans With Mainframes, [DJ and producer] Jamal Moss swings from Windy City jazz to Chicago acid at its most caustic. While the duo have released a slew of 12”s dating back to 2001, K.M.T. is their first full-length. Kemetic Modulating Textures is eight tracks of Moss and Reusse at their most unrelenting and there’s a coarseness to every texture that at times might make you mistakenly think it was just slapped together. Yet the frequent references to Egyptology (Googling each track title reveals a profound knowledge of prehistoric culture) suggest a greater thought at work, and if you manage to survive the bruising BPMs of the album's first half, it becomes mesmerizing.

Opener “Anachronistic” sets the table for what lies ahead: everything in the red, a snare fill stumbling and slipping across the grid, the 808’s edges increasingly fuzzy with distortion. And then just when it verges on pure noise, that telltale acid squiggle worms through and the snare coheres into a visceral thrill.

Last year, Moss explained his first encounter with Sun Ra’s music as a shock to the system: “His music wasn’t about making sense: it was just about receiving these transmissions, this knowledge.” It’s a lesson that Moss carries forward with K.M.T., suggesting that while some of his tracks might scan as scrambled transmissions, continued exposure reveals a profound signal beneath the noise.” – Pitchfork

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