For the next release on SVBKVLT we are proud to present ‘Arthropods’, the new album by 33EMYBW. 7 new tracks plus remixes from Hakuna Kulala’s Don Zilla, Hyperdub’s Ikonika and NAAFI’s Lechuga Zafiro. Arthropods will be released on Friday 11th October 2019. 33EMYBW will be premiering her new live show for the album at Unsound Krakow on the same date. About Arthropods The soul is a fragment of a dream, the seed of future and past, evolving infinitely on the Arthropods* Continent. We seek out dreams and catch them, to scrape together the new Adam. *1 ARTHROPODS： Arthropods is the alienation form of GOLEM*, and there is a soul in each metamere. They can upload, download, and link to each other. *2 GOLEM：A golem is mythical humanlike figure made from clay and magically able to move on its own. In the Bible, Golem is an unfinished human being, without a soul. Through the process of its own evolution and its makers' experiments, a Golem can contain or generate its own soul. It can appear in different interconnected forms and reproduce itself at will. A golem with a soul, in order to speed up its own evolution, will sometimes supersede or devour the original form of life. The album Golem is inspired from this source.
A collection of music made through 2016-2018. Dedicated to the good people across the globe who have supported my music career over these years. This music wouldn't exist without your energy. These tracks are to dance to, party to, walk to, eat to.. whatever your heart desires.. as long as there enjoyed with a smile on your face :) <3
SUBREAL is pleased to announce Amazondotcom’s first solo EP, Mirror River (SR001), as its debut release as a label. For this vivid and challenging new project, the Los Angeles-based producer and artist works with deep bass frequencies, ritualistic percussion and heavily processed sounds to evoke a shamanistic and alternate imaginary in a digital context. Made during 2018, the artist describes her production process simply as a place where forms are released free and animated. Her efforts were to bind herself to the forces and flow of matter, time, and affect, rather than genre or intent. She digitally processed an array of samples (among them: birds, trees, people in crowds) and synths to create the sound forces that guide the tracks. For her, shamanism can be seen as a body of knowledge predicated upon the animation of the natural world’s forces and the unseen--a worldview that is applied to her own ritual of making music. Shamanistic rituals are also a space that utilize time and repetition, and most importantly for her, a space where potentially something incomprehensible could be born.
Sam Barker is a resident DJ at Berghain, Berlin’s celebrated temple of techno, and as one half of the duo Barker & Baumecker, he has crafted plenty of hard-hitting tracks perfectly calibrated for the club’s cavernous post-industrial interior. On his debut solo album, though, Barker takes a different tack, excising the drums and other outward attributes of conventional techno until all that’s left is a billowing swirl of richly colored synths. Yet for all the music’s resemblance to the ambient techno of the mid-’90s, *Utility* isn’t really ambient music, save for the ethereal “Wireheading” and the downbeat closer “Die-Hards of the Darwinian Order.” Pulsing and flickering, filled up with pumping chords reminiscent of the Chain Reaction label’s dubby drift, the end result is a kind of techno by another means, where all the hard surfaces have melted away. Like rushing floodwaters, it carries real force beneath its fluid exterior.
“We all dance away our lives to the tune of the sovereign pleasure-pain axis.” – David Pearce, The Hedonistic Imperative Pleasure-seeking and pain-avoidance as a rave metaphor fits the music of Sam Barker. The Berghain resident and Leisure System co-founder has spent the last few years exploring the euphoric potential of altering key variables in dance music formulas. This was especially true on his 2018 Ostgut Ton debut EP ‘Debiasing’, which was flush with unconventional rhythmic chord stabs, melody and percussion but devoid of kickdrums. Now, on his debut solo LP ‘Utility’, he turns his focus toward melding experimentation and dancefloor pragmatism with the psychology behind the musical decision making process. ‘Utility’ is a playful but non-ironic musical approach to a whole spectrum of utilitarian and transhumanist ideas: from models for quantifying pleasure and “gradients of bliss” to abolishing suffering for sentient beings (not just people) through the ethical use of drugs and nanotechnology. Over nine tracks his vision ebbs and flows through waves of deeply psychedelic musical vignettes; free-floating and futuristic melodies and rhythms as targeted brain stimulation. The sound draws heavily on modular synthesis, as well as self-built mechanical instruments and plate reverbs to create atmospheres that are at once alien and emotionally recognizable, functional and utopian.
If you haven’t listened to Blood Orange’s 2018 album *Negro Swan*, start there. Let its chilling soundscapes and spoken-word commentaries about blackness, depression, and anxiety sink in until you’re a little uneasy (and probably also in awe of Devonté Hynes’ ambition and artistry). Then, return to this, his first-ever mixtape—billed as an epilogue to *Swan*—which the London-bred Hynes describes as an “almost stream-of-consciousness diary entry” that ultimately resembles something like healing. “It ends hopefully,” he tells Apple Music, “or tries to. I’m not sure if I’ve ever successfully done that before, but I wanted to here.” After a brutal year of political and cultural turmoil and the loss of several close friends, including rapper Mac Miller, Hynes felt moved to release more music and to change the tone. *Angel’s Pulse* is wide-ranging, fast-moving, and psychedelic, like a whirlwind tour through the back corners of his mind. It is not, Hynes notes, an overt political statement: “If there are things that read as political, it’s because I’m experiencing things that are happening in the world,” he says. “As someone who has struggled with sexuality, who is black, who grew up in Essex and Barking and then moved to New York City, who is 33 and lived before the internet and after it, and who is living in a time when just buying a fucking coffee is political, my music will of course be political. But it’s a diary, not an agenda. My goal is just to be honest.” **“I Wanna C U”** “For people who are fans of Blood Orange or have gotten to it within the last record or so, I feel like this, sonically, is the last thing you expect to hear when you press track one. That in turn sets the tone. It’s just live drums, bass, and guitar. So it’s my way of saying, ‘Leave your expectations behind.’ Also, I try to hold back a little. I’m not saying any one thing in particular with my music, more exploring thoughts and themes. And my thing is like, I always try to make it inviting. Rather than projecting myself onto people, I do my own thing and say, ‘This is my world and anyone is welcome into it.’” **“Something to Do”** “I originally wrote this in Paris in February \[2019\] and kind of kept it close. Sometimes certain melodies, chords, and lyrics circle around my head and I’ll try to work through them at various points in time to make different things. There’s probably five different versions of this track, and maybe even a sixth in the future. But for now, this was the one that led the pack.” **“Dark & Handsome” (feat. Toro y Moi)** “I rented a house in LA for a month where I just holed up and made music nonstop. This was one of the first songs I did in that time, and they’re some of my favorite lyrics I\'ve ever written. I feel like I really got the feeling and emotion out that had been bubbling around in my mind. And really, honestly, it’s about grief—grief, death, and suicide. Those are the three things this song is meditating on.” **“Benzo”** “I’m really happy with my mix on this track. I feel like I achieved a level of clarity that I’d been trying to get for years, to where it sounds clear and concise but still true to how it was made, which was just for me in my apartment. I’m always trying to toe the line between big drums and isolating everything. This is one song where I think the mix matches the mood. Lyrically, it’s about feeling like no one sees your worth while at the same time knowing that’s a lack of self-worth anyway. So I was in that circular thought process.” **“Birmingham” (feat. Kelsey Lu & Ian Isiah)** “I wanted this to feel like an abrupt new chapter. I had it cut into the end of ‘Benzo’ so it felt like kicking the door down. The lyrics are actually a poem called ‘Ballad of Birmingham’ by Dudley Randall, about the church bombing in the early 1960s. I had heard renditions of music set to those words before and they always stuck with me. Even if people aren’t aware of what the words are about, my hope is that the music will drive home a sense of grief and anguish. It’s powerful.” **“Good for You” (feat. Justine Skye)** “Justine is just so good. Every now and then I book \[the New York City recording studio\] Electric Lady and invite people down. On this day, I’d made the music for this track and she came by to hang out. She pretty much—I mean, it’s not even pretty much, she actually *did*—freestyled the entire song. Start to finish. She’s crazy for that.” **“Baby Florence (Figure)”** “Big surprise, this was recorded in Florence. The title isn’t too imaginative. I was there for a residency, working on a few pieces and some piano work, and wrote this song during my stay. It’s one of my favorites.” **“Gold Teeth” (feat. Project Pat, Gangsta Boo & Tinashe)** “I’ve always had an obsession with Three 6 Mafia. For this song, I was working with Venus X, a New York DJ, and she said, ‘You know, Gangsta Boo would be perfect on this.’ I was like, ‘Uh, yeah, that would be insane.’ And she said, ‘Well, I know her, she lives in LA now.’ And she came over the next day. Then I hit up Project Pat, who I had worked with on my last record, to see if I could sample his vocal. Afterwards he said he wanted to do his own verse. And I said, please!” **“Berlin” (feat. Porches & Ian Isiah)** “I was playing a show in Berlin while touring through Europe, and as you can imagine, this was from a really late night. It’s got an after-hours vibe to it. I actually finished it in Helsinki and then played it for Aaron, aka Porches, when I got back to New York. I told him, ‘Do something on it,’ which is kind of how I work with friends, and he did.” **“This Tuesday Feeling (Choose to Stay)” (feat. Tinashe)** “I\'m always trying to mash worlds together, you know, things I\'m a really big fan of. With this song, I think was trying to do like Pixies but also early N.E.R.D. In my mind, that\'s what I was going for.” **“Seven Hours Part 1” (feat. BennY RevivaL)** “Benny is the best. He\'s one of my favorite artists ever. I have all 17 of his albums. A lot of people don\'t know him, but that’s a shame, because he\'s so fucking good. I was lucky enough to become friends with him through my friend Despot, and he’d come down to New York to kick it. Having him on the track is a dream, because it\'s actually the first feature he\'s ever done.” **“Take It Back” (feat. Arca, Joba & Justine Skye)** “I always say that songs are something that I start and that I finish. I look to other people for everything else. How Arca got involved is actually kind of funny. I was in Dubai working on music and they texted me asking what I was up to. I told them I was in my room working on this, and they asked to hear it. I sent it and then had to play a show, and by the time I came back to the hotel, they’d sent me their part. It was so sick. They were so fire and took the song to this crazy place. Meanwhile, Joba and I send each other music all the time, and he’d heard the progression of this track from the very first piano chords. When I made it back to LA, he added his part. He’s very closely tied to this project as a whole—he’s also just a good friend—and I can’t really imagine it without him.” **“Happiness”** “I wrote these last two songs at the exact same time and I finished them at the exact same time. To me, they feel like a coda to this chapter as a whole. I was getting to the end of whatever I was working through—five or six months of deep emotional processing—and wanted to represent that. The lyrics on ‘Happiness’ aren’t supposed to feel glum; it’s more that when you realize a lot of things in life don’t matter, it’s freeing. It means you can focus on doing things for yourself, for your loved ones. You can be purposeful. That, to me, is the Angel’s Pulse.” **“Today”** “None of my projects are politically motivated. None of them. But they are inherently political because of the things I deal with and what I live through. I was saying to someone recently how I think I\'ve only written three songs about other people in my life. My music is about me because it\'s my way of working through emotions. It’s my outlet. So if there are things that read as political, like this song, it\'s because I\'m experiencing things that are happening in the world.”
Released digitally in July 2019, Angel's Pulse is a mixtape from Devonté Hynes aka Blood Orange.
Following 2017’s acclaimed 2LP “Patterns of Consciousness”, “Ecstatic Computation” is the new full-length LP by Caterina Barbieri. The album revolves around the creative use of complex sequencing techniques and pattern-based operations to explore the artefacts of human perception and memory processes by ultimately inducing a sense of ecstasy and contemplation. Computation is turned from being a formal, automatic writing technique into a creative, psychedelic practice to generate temporal hallucinations. A state of trance and wonder where the perception of time is distorted and challenged. Equally nervous and ecstatic, the fast permutation of patterns can create a state where time stands still whilst simultaneously being in motion. Is this propulsive music moving forward or backward? As long as the perception of the present is constantly enhanced and refreshed in an endless sense of loss, re-discovery and the search for self-orientation this question lies mute aside the thrilling and perplexing moment of the matter at hand. For vinyl orders please go here: editionsmego.bandcamp.com/album/ecstatic-computation
British music is fortunate to have Charlotte Aitchison. A restless collaborator and denier of pop borders with an unteachable ear for a hook, she’s one of the UK’s proudest exports. Her third studio LP serves as a blueprint for how a modern pop album should sound. Audacious but introspective, it’s straining with potential hits and subtler moments fans will hold close. And then there’s the cast list. If she tires of this pop star business, a sterling career in A&R probably awaits. She talked through some of the album’s standout moments on her Beats 1 show The Candy Shop. **“Next Level Charli”** “I wrote this track for the Angels—my fans. This is the Angel anthem. Everything in this song is about things that I imagine my fans doing: driving to a party, getting ready for a party, playing their music in their Prius, whatever it is. This song is for you guys. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for supporting me.” **“Gone” (with Christine and the Queens)** “This is the bop. The song of the summer, if I don’t say so myself. Me, Christine, dancing on a car, rain: What more do you want? We literally gave you everything.” **“Cross You Out” (feat. Sky Ferreira)** “I’m so happy that we got to make this song together. This was one of the first songs that kind of came to reality for this album. I sent this over to Sky, she felt it and came into this studio in LA with \[co-writer\] Linus Wiklund. She sounds so amazing and I’m so happy because Sky and I have known each other for quite a few years now. We kind of came up together in many ways, and we’ve shared a lot of the same producers. We’ve been on the same magazine covers together, and you know, I feel like we were on Myspace at the same time! I think her voice is really important and what she does is brilliant.” **“2099” (feat. Troye Sivan)** “My favorite dreamboat, my dream boy: Troye Sivan. I’m just in love with him. I just think he’s so brilliant. After we made \[the 2018 single\] ‘1999’, I kind of knew he wanted to get a little bit weirder than we got, as I’d heard him mention that he was into \[Charli’s 2017 mixtape\] *Pop 2*. So after ‘1999’ came out, I hit him up again and said, ‘Should we just go there? Should we just go out of space? Like, let’s do a weird moment.’ And he was like, ‘Yes, let’s do it.’” **“Click” (feat. Kim Petras & Tommy Cash)** “I’m not going to lie—and no shade to any of the other artists on the album— but I kind of think Kim’s verse might be my favorite on the whole album. I remember when I originally sent Kim this song, I did a verse and it was so bad. She sent me her demo back and her verse *killed*, and I was like, ‘Oh my god, I cannot put this song out with the verse I currently have.’ So I had to rerecord my thing, as Tommy had also sent me his and killed it, too. I was the weakest! It was bad! I love this song. It goes so hard. And Kim is still shining so bright on this song.” **“Warm” (feat. HAIM)** “This song is produced by A.G. Cook. He actually wrote a few of the melodies on this song, too. When we were making this song, we were working at \[Australian producer and DJ\] Flume’s studio in LA, and this was at the point where we thought we were still going to do a third mixtape. But then we had this song and a couple of ideas and were like, ‘Let’s just do the album. Now’s the time for the *Charli* album.’ When HAIM came to the studio house that I had rented in LA at the beginning of 2019, I had just had a lot of dental work done, so my whole mouth was super numb. I was dribbling; I couldn’t really speak. They were like, ‘What happened to you!’ It was a funny session, but the three of them came through. I’m so happy with the song.” **“White Mercedes”** “This is one of my favorite songs from the album. I guess it’s my version of a ballad.”
"4/5 (+ an epic poem)" - Tiny Mix Tapes 'Review', Jul. 22, 2019. Web. www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/dis-fig-purge ----------------------------------------------------------------- "It’s one of those records that will scare the shit out of you, enough to be life-affirming." - Flood Magazine '15 Noise & Experimental Artists You Should Really Know About', May 14, 2019. Web. floodmagazine.com/61131/15-noise-experimental-artists-you-should-know/ ----------------------------------------------------------------- "(A) kaleidoscopic record that bounces around a plethora of influences and styles. Industrial beats ... (c)razed rhythms and energetic renditions ... (yet) (t)he minimal touch still finds its way through, highlighted vividly in the soothing “Watering” and the beautiful vocal arrangements of “WHY.” But what holds everything is not just Dis Fig’s grasp on the various genres, but her honest songwriting, which always arrive with a highly emotive touch." - Invisible Oranges 'Deconstructing Interference #16', Apr. 11, 2019. Web. www.invisibleoranges.com/deconstructing-interference-16/ ----------------------------------------------------------------- - The Attic 'Staff Picks: March 2019', Apr. 7, 2019. Web. the-attic.net/news/2267/staff-picks-_-march-2019.html ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Dis Fig’s bewitching debut album spins a chrome-plated web of industrial power electronics and harsh, overdriven noise. However, there’s a natural musicality running through the album’s core.” - FACT 'The 25 best albums of the last three months - January to March 2019', Apr. 6, 2019. Web. www.factmag.com/2019/04/06/the-25-best-albums-of-the-last-three-months-january-to-march-2019/ ----------------------------------------------------------------- Felicia Chen, aka Dis Fig, arrives with her first full-length on New York label Purple Tape Pedigree – known for its genre-bending flirtations with the shadows of rap, techno, industrial, black metal and more (read our interview with label-head Geng / King Vision Ultra here). Having created a considerable buzz with DJ sets that meld a lot of those sounds to a dancefloor setting, on PURGE Chen moves away from the club and into her own head – and yours too – enacting a digital exorcism of “the feelings which you have been avoiding”. Summoning forth harsh noise that rears its head fully by the second track, ‘Alive’, this is electronic music that mostly shrugs off the shackles of tempo, rhythm and metre, opting instead to construct soundscapes that induce feelings of dread, but also release and catharsis. Throughout the record, her tracks’ chaotic energy is engaged in a constant struggle with more tender and mournful elements. Where there are vocals, the words are largely inaudible, and operate instead on the level of feeling, sounding closer to incantations. A resolution of sorts is found on penultimate track ‘WHY’ – the purge referenced in the album’s title seemingly complete – but by the final track, ‘I Am The Tree’, the sense of dread has returned, revealing the process at work here to be cyclical, seasonal, eternal and endless. This feels like a deeply personal project, an album that has been carefully constructed with meaning and purpose, demanding to be listened to in its entirety and resisting the algorithmically dictated culture of streaming playlists." - Astral Noize 'Reviews Round-Up: 023', Mar. 29, 2019. Web. astralnoizeuk.com/2019/03/29/reviews-round-up-023-dissonant-sludge-transcendent-post-metal-and-poignant-death-gospel/ ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Dis Fig taps right into something industrial and noise music has always been good at providing space for: a good old Purge! This ain’t just your run-of-the-mill wall of power electronics and angry screams though, Dis Fig’s range is surprisingly undogmatic, including synthetic brass sections, flutes, and piles of quiet. She weaves them all into dramatic theatrical shorts underpinning what she’s described as the "first experiments with her own vocals on tracks". The result is an idiosyncratic mash-up of industrial tropes, sunken club beats, and cinematic sound-design histrionics. Despite being purportedly new to this kind of singing, Dis Fig’s vocal performances are actually perhaps the outright best part of this tape. The deranged beats and rugged bass behind it all are familiar, but her unintelligible moaned and groaned lyrics on ‘Unleash’ come from a rarely-reached emotional spot. She manages to vocalise the nuanced strangeness of frustration, irritation, hatred, and sadness, which can all come at once, and when they do it can be without deserving a pure scream or a weep. Along with rough noise, the album’s got plenty of creaking beauty - plus lashings of ear-piercing sine waves. Press your ear close to the title track, and inside its subtleties - wordless echoey voices, tentacles of keyboard notes, piercing quiet tones - is the most emotionally damaging track of the album. It represents the flipside of that outright sense or purging, a state which reveals itself during the closing thuds of final track ‘I Am The Tree’. One of the more original debuts I’ve come across in recent months, and an introverted noise play bound to reveal more to me as those spools keep on turnin’." - The Quietus 'Spool's Out: Your Tape Reviews For March', Mar. 20, 2019. Web. thequietus.com/articles/26210-bredbeddle-massimo-pupillo-dis-fig-spools-out-cassette ----------------------------------------------------------------- "While 2017's "Rebirth" and 2018's "Excerpt From An Atypical Brain Damage" were also noisy compositions that toyed with pressure and suspense, the tracks possessed a hi-fi sheen, even at their most discordant points. The sound design on Purge is minimalist and desolate in comparison. This is most apparent on "Watering," where you feel as if you are hovering, like a cautious ghost, through green-gray sewers. Muted vocal asides and tonal swells guide you as much as the sound of water dripping. The music's sense of hollowness ties in with the process of confronting repressed feelings that Chen describes: "Feelings you want to be feeling or 'should' be feeling but you can't because your body won't let you. Because maybe it knows it's not safe for you." On the truly terrifying "Unleash," Chen renders this experience primarily through her vocals, with all the uncontrollability of an exorcism—the body is merely a vessel, something beholden to what's deep inside. Amidst a single, dirge-like note and sudden stabs of bass, she begins to slowly wail through blown-out effects—"Tell me," or maybe "Help me"—and then "Get out!" with increasing urgency, until the sounds coalesce into one guttural, pained scream. On "WHY," the second-last track, Chen's voice is lucid and measured. But is it clarity resulting from ultimate release, or composure in the eye of the storm? Low rumbling just beyond the foreground suggests that while the purge is immediate, healing follows another timeline entirely. Chen describes this back-and-forth elsewhere through more traditional instruments. On "Drum Fife Bugle," she gives us her own twisted version of a battlefield ditty, where a stoic melody with flute, trumpet, and trombone is offset by the sound of a car revving up and screeching to a halt. The rhythm is resolute, gearing us up for what lies ahead. It flows naturally into the lurching rhythm of "Alive," which repurposes trumpet and trombone as a warning siren. These instruments might normally bring warmth and comfort, but in these arrangements they become dark and austere. The album's last track, "I Am The Tree," is a reckoning of staggering scale. The thing you've tried to fight down is finally out of you, and you are face-to-face with it. There is a gradual rumbling crescendo, with a grotesque distorted guitar sprouting up through its middle. The flute returns in bright, fragmented shards, dangling above heavy crashes of power electronics. And then, a few deep pulses and an eerie fade to silence. Ominous is an overused word when writing about frightening experimental music, but Purge expresses the feeling in its entirety: the dread of waiting for the inevitable, the horror of it coming, and, perhaps scarier still, the anxiety of what might be left after it's gone." - Resident Advisor 'Review', Mar. 20, 2019. Web. www.residentadvisor.net/reviews/23604 ----------------------------------------------------------------- "A starkly original take on power electronics." - Resident Advisor 'March's Best Music', Mar. 19, 2019. Web. www.residentadvisor.net/features/3435 ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Dis Fig's 'PURGE' fits snugly into the PTP credo: The record wavers between Chen’s scorched vocals battling to be heard over brutal, electronic production and luminous, minimalist moments where her words resonate as tender pleas. Along the way, the album nods to trip-hop, techno, noise, punk and soul influences. But despite its progressive production, its emotional heart challenges the listener to empathize why Chen whips between violent outbursts and quiet pockets of respite. ... The ebb and flow between drama and reflection define PURGE’s topography. Her words are often repressed by the production, but she isn’t crying out in vain—she’s feeling for tears in a fabric of her own creation. ... As PURGE ends ... you realize all of Chen’s self-induced emotional pain and unstinting soul-searching has been a mechanism to just, simply, feel secure." - Pitchfork 'Review', Mar. 14, 2019. Web. pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/dis-fig-purge/ ----------------------------------------------------------------- "The album resembles a horror soundtrack in its ominous use of light and shade (...) lurching electronics thick with dread (...) cyclical, hymnal chant(s), at once hypnotic and sinister (... and) harsh percussive bursts, their suddenness and unpredictable rhythm mimicking the timing of jump scares. Although Chen plays with well established horror tropes, her use of bizarre juxtapositions cultivates a more unexpected kind of terror. Opener "Drum Fife Bugle" begins with distant, rumbling bass and static-like electronics: a familiarly creepy atmosphere until the introduction of a melody played on flute. A recording of a body moving through water is used in "Watering", but perhaps more sinister is the clip used on the title track. The listener expects the prowling buzz of "Purge" to pounce, but instead it resolves strangely into a recording of a domestic scene, with a radio playing in the distance. The switch from horror to this ordinary setting conjures ideas of unexpected violence, or the threat of home invasion, more unsettling than genre thrills. Chen's chameleon-like vocal performance is one of the album's major strengths, switching from tonal growls and hisses to assured jazz singing. Her voice is the emotional and expressive core of the album, assuming the roles of an omnipresent threat and its vulnerable victim with equal conviction. The aptly titled "Unleash" chronicles an unfurling wild state, as Chen's increasingly frantic, guttural screams multiply and intensify. On the title track, her screams are quietened to a barely legible, reverb- laden whisper. "Why" sees the voice that has been wrapped in distortion emerge clear, strong and measured. The title of PURGE is ultimately self-fulfilling: a violent, cathartic release fueled by emotional decadence." - The Wire #422 'Soundcheck', April 2019. Print. www.instagram.com/p/BuwCQslFrUl ----------------------------------------------------------------- “'PURGE' is the sound of industrial runoff, of sludgy instrumentation bubbling and swirling—sometimes literally, as in the case of the sickening splashes that fill “Watering.” Melodies creep through the ooze, but by and large, the record’s nine tracks consist mostly of bleak electronics. … The lead single, “Unleash,” is a ballad of static and screaming; Chen’s voice is distorted to hell. But there are other sides to the purge too, like “WHY,” ... (t)he instrumental is still harsh and droney, but Chen sings gently, cushioned by some ghostly reverb echoing out into the darkness. Her words can be hard to make out, but she sounds centered and self-possessed, a suggestion that there is peace to be found amid the pain. … Harrowing as they can be, 'PURGE'’s compositional twists and turns are harsh enough to offer you the same thing that they offered Dis Fig herself—relief from the bad shit you’re holding inside. Listen … and let go. It’ll help.” - Noisey 'Dis Fig's Debut Album Is a 'Purge' of a Lot of Heavy Shit', Feb. 25, 2019. Web. noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/a3b4we/dis-fig-purge-why-stream-interview ----------------------------------------------------------------- "'PURGE' is predominantly a kinetic album, but “WHY” is almost a prayer. Chen’s lyrics are a dialog – “What did you think of? I don’t know in time,” she incants at the song’s outset before continuing the conversation. The back and forth and the repetition allows for the “you” of the song to take on nebulosity..." - Ears To Feed 'Dis Fig’s Dynamic, Evocative Voice Is The Star On “WHY”', Feb. 26, 2019. Web. www.earstofeed.com/dis-figs-dynamic-evocative-voice-is-the-star-on-why/ ----------------------------------------------------------------- 'PURGE' is the debut album by Dis Fig. While the New Jersey born, Berlin-based artist is best known for her relentless and downright brutal DJ sets, this work comes in at a much different trajectory – an exploration of her own vulnerability through varying degrees of noise, vocal migrations, and orchestral composition. “'PURGE' is about confronting the feelings which you have been avoiding. Consciously or subconsciously. Feelings you want to be feeling or “should” be feeling but you can’t because your body won’t let you. Because maybe it knows it’s not safe for you. It’s when you reach that moment which makes your brow furrow because your chest is getting hot and something is about to erupt. When the feeling starts crawling up your neck, choking you, and you could try to make it stop but maybe it’s better for you if you don’t. When what comes out is painful - it’s tragic, it’s crippling. But with it comes a sliver of beauty. It’s burning and it’s stunning. When it’s over, you may learn by staring at the embers.”
DJ Haram is a producer and DJ who distinctively ties her New Jersey musical history with more recent involvement in the Philadelphia DIY noise scene, whilst paying homage to her Middle Eastern roots. A close affiliate of New York's Discwoman collective, she is also one half of 700 Bliss, alongside rapper and poet Moor Mother, who feature on this EP, and will release an album on Hyperdub in the near future.
Whether you make out the boast “Nigga Fox na maior” as “the illest” or “the chillest,” depending on your translation of Portuguese street slang, Brandão still sounds far out there, inviting the rest of us into his headspace. PITCHFORK + While touring extensively for the past few years, Nigga Fox never neglected reaching inside his mind for unheard of signature tunes. Four years since his last EP on Príncipe, a year or so after "Crânio" on Warp Records, pressure could be mounting, but he kept his chill. What does in fact amount to an album can be seen as the proverbial show of maturity, if you will, but to us it's definite proof of vitality and personality in this game. As before, way beyond notions of African music, something definitely coming from the street but taking form in a collective headspace. More than dance music (which it obviously is), "Cartas Na Manga" offers introspective joy in our effort to connect many loose dots inside the groove of each track.. There's more piano in there, but what does that mean? Just as much as the expressive dancefloor anthem "Talanzele" or the offbeat bassline in "Pão de Cada Dia". Nigga Fox is following a strong intuition and still maintaining his flow within the grid: while some moves are clearly venturing into the future, this is a celebration of present times. We hear him say "Nigga Fox na maior" in the closing track and THAT keeps us smiling long after the sound expires. And Márcio Matos came up with some interactive artwork. This one's for all us human artifacts free enough to change a cover any time we feel it :) :(
Emily A. Sprague’s Water Memory and Mount Vision are presented in new and vivid detail. Through sound and poetry, Emily’s craft focuses on fleeting moments of crystalline clarity and meditates on expanded lifetimes of intricate meaning-making. Memory and vision, ocean and mountains, question and answer, emotions and infinity. Sunshine, lizard, sea salt. Previously issued as small editions of self-released cassettes, Emily’s two albums have been resequenced and mastered by Taylor Deupree, each including previously unheard tracks.
For the 29th release on SVBKVLT we are excited to present ‘HOXXXYA’, the new album from Indonesia’s Gabber Modus Operandi. Artwork by Asian Dope Boys’ Chen Tianzhuo. ‘For this album, we owe a lot to the metal/noise scene and to the small rapidly growing rave crew in Denpasar, while at the same time a ton of influence strongly came from all the sounds blasting out from our banjar (neighborhood) community, the loudest spirits of Dangdut Koplo and Indonesian happy hardcore, to gamelan sounds and everything in between.’ – Gabber Modus Operandi
Since his 2013 mixtape *100% Galcher*, Cleveland-born, New York City-based DJ and producer Galcher Lustwerk has been honing a unique strain of hip-house that combines luxurious electro-inspired beats and stream-of-consciousness spoken-word narratives. Like the protagonist in a noirish detective novel, Lustwerk is a guide through this smoky world of hedonistic dance floors and late-night drives. On the bouncy “Cig Angel,” he details an encounter with a potential lover who could “hit the club and go to work in the same clothes.” Tracks like “I See a Dime” and “Another Story” are packed with hypnotic hooks, but the key here is mood, whether Lustwerk is drawing on influences from techno and house past or on jazz and quiet storm R&B.
First, the intel: since the emergence of 100% GALCHER, his first mixtape in 2013, Cleveland-raised, New York-based producer and DJ Galcher Lustwerk has operated in his own lane of low-key hip-house music. Deep, smooth, psychedelic, equally cut for the club, after-hours, night drives, and headphones. The sound was set from the start: a smokey stream-of-consciousness baritone shadow-boxing with beats, informed by funk, rap, rhythm and blues. He runs the label Lustwerk Music, an underground home to friends' work and several of his releases including the collaborative project Studio OST. In 2017 he issued his debut album, Dark Bliss, via White Material, and the following year shared a 20-track sprawl, 200% GALCHER, sharpening his craft. Now, the Information: Galcher Lustwerk’s Ghostly International debut is a clandestine rendezvous of half-dreamt nightlifes and smudged club dossiers, redacted like faded memories. Free associations on life as a recurring visitor, a deep house cover agent swaggering on and off the beat from city to city. As with most sleuthing, there are dead ends, transient (dis)engagements, faked documents, puzzles, and half-truths illuminated by strobe lights and cell phones. As he fills the file on Information, evidence suggests that Lustwerk is a singular and savvy logician. Stylistically, the tracks on Information are certainly in the same realm as Galcher Lustwerk’s previous output, but a noted inclusion of more live drums and jazz saxophone create a new dynamic. As does a pivot in mindset, he explains: “Being from the midwest and with Ghostly putting it out, I think it’s fitting to cull together my most midwest-minded, ‘hookier’ tracks. I wanted to capture a bittersweet quality that I hear in a lot of other Cleveland producers.” “Cig Angel” bubbles to life after dark, with a skipped out drum break bouncing through signature murky melodies and a hazy incognito narrative; the gumshoe ricochets late after a chance encounter, bailing to dust for prints at the penthouse. Similarly, on “Another Story,” a tight drum groove with reverberated claps pace through hovering clusters of major/minor synth structures. Every P.I. is due their own diligence, and here we see Galcher Lustwerk fronting lyrically, casting off idiosyncratic crows as he glides through the shimmering gutters of the city at night. “I See a Dime” bounds off at a chase sequence pace, with bongos and tightly wound high hats, syncopated lyrics and scratchy voicemail memos glinting in an out of focus, synth saws and clipped house melodies casting the sequence in hard lighting and deep shadows. One thing is clear, straight from the man himself, “Information doesn’t equal knowledge, though we may be getting facts, the truth may not be clear.” He isn’t as interested in decoding reality as he is playing with it, letting fragmented memories inform his fiction, fusing the exaggeration of rap with the suspended belief of dance music. Any uncertainty aside, on Information, Galcher Lustwerk is characteristically and conspicuously on point.
In her most personally narrative work to date, A Fossil Begins To Bray is the follow up on Dais Records for NYC producer Hiro Kone, furthering the dialogue set forth on her 2018 release, Pure Expenditure. While the statements on Pure Expenditure rallied behind a point of dangerous excess and injustice, the material on A Fossil Begins To Bray embark upon a journey of discovery and self-analysis, proposing a potential reorientation towards absence in hopes of illuminating potential futures. In Mao’s own words, “This album considers the power of absence as neither a lack or deficit, but as a quiet, indeterminable force to cultivate in this time of looming and unrelenting techno-fascism. It asks that we take pause to consider our learned languages and actualities and to better consider how desire shapes our recollections and interpretations of this ‘existence.’” This allegory is expertly applied to every song on A Fossil Begins To Bray. Mao has established a long history of employing absence in her productions to maximum effect. With a vast assortment of diverse elements at play, no single track ever feels overly convoluted and further illustrates Hiro Kone’s skillful attention to dynamic tension and flow. Tracks such as “Fabrication of Silence” and “Submerged Dragon” perfectly represent the power of absence, utilized in a matter to create unique amalgams of decisive, cinematic techno rhythms from the electronic void. As the melodic elements contained within A Fossil Begins To Bray begin to unravel and slowly take form, the unaware are rewarded with a driving yet tangible refrain that offers resolve in contrast to the dense, texture-laden backdrop that forms the album’s foundation. The first single, “Feed My Ancestors”, expands upon Hiro Kone’s signature take on electronic music structures. Seemingly free from the predictable contracts imposed by any one genre’s stereotypes, Hiro Kone throttles the foreboding bassline in favor of more calculated, abstract cut-ups that gracefully hold the track in place between hopeful utopia and something more ominous. The production and detail found throughout the album shows Hiro Kone’s neverending development and dedication to principle. ‘A Fossil Begins To Bray’ is a challenge to dust off the forgotten modes of existence, expel the accepted paradigms within modern subculture and utilize the absence left behind. For more info: www.daisrecords.com
Slow, methodical organ recordings on this major new work from Kali Malone; a quietly subversive double album featuring almost two hours of concentrated, creeping organ pieces governed by a strict acoustic and compositional code with ultimately profound emotional resonance. ‘The Sacrificial Code’ takes a more surgical approach to the methods first explored on last year’s ‘Organ Dirges 2016 - 2017’. Over the course of three parts performed on three different organs, Malone’s minimalist process captures a jarring precision of closeness, both on the level of the materiality of the sounds and on the level of composition.The recordings here involved careful close miking of the pipe organ in such a way as to eliminate environmental identifiers as far as possible - essentially removing the large hall reverb so inextricably linked to the instrument. The pieces were then further compositionally stripped of gestural adornments and spontaneous expressive impulse - an approach that flows against the grain of the prevailing musical hegemony, where sound is so often manipulated, and composition often steeped in self indulgence. It echoes Steve Reich’s sentiment “..by voluntarily giving up the freedom to do whatever momentarily comes to mind, we are, as a result, free of all that momentarily comes to mind.” With its slow, purified and seemingly austere qualities ‘The Sacrificial Code’ guides us through an almost trance-inducing process where we become vulnerable receptors for every slight movement, where every miniature shift in sound becomes magnified through stillness. As such, it’s a uniquely satisfying exercise in transcendence through self restraint - a stunning realisation of ideas borne out of academic and conceptual rigour which gradually reveals startling personal dimensions. It has a perception-altering quality that encourages self exploration free of signposts and without a preordained endpoint - the antithesis to the language of colourless musical platitudes we've become so accustomed to. REPRESS AVAILABLE VIA BOOMKAT: boomkat.com/products/the-sacrificial-code
The debut full- length album from Lafawndah, ANCESTOR BOY, announced today and releasing on 22nd March 2019 via her own label imprint CONCORDIA, is a bracing statement of intent, heralding an artist unbound in scope, scale, and intensity. She opens 2019 with bold single DADDY, plotting new territory onto her own highly personalized map of influence – a map drawing the club, composition, and pop into thrillingly unresolved, ultramodern erotics. Lafawndah’s 2018 was filled with myriad musical highlights and successes - including a celebrated performance featuring peers Tirzah, Kelsey Lu and more at London’s South Bank in December, growing from her acclaimed HONEY COLONY mixtapes. Meanwhile her heart-stopping inter-generational music & film collaboration with japanese ambient legend Midori Takada in Le Renard Bleu (with KENZO and Partel Oliva) continues to echo into new forms, with a full production performance titled ‘Ceremonial Blue’ premiering at the Barbican, London in April. And streaming now, her achingly beautiful self-directed video for JOSEPH - a lullaby and an ode to newborn life co-written with Jamie Woon and also featuring on ANCESTOR BOY - has set Lafawndah apart as an independent director with a singular vision spanning multiple media and artforms. Having in her prior self-titled and TAN EPs upturned geography, in ANCESTOR BOY Lafawndah digs deep to unravel geology, mining emotions of the deep past and future. The album’s physicality is elemental; its memory, mineral. It is a becoming- of- age story for a people yet to come, created out of a need to find the others. In the middle of the album’s sonic and lyrical onslaught is the desire to share the uncertainties of growing up when you don’t belong anywhere. Crafted with the aid of fellow travelers Nick Weiss, Aaron David Ross, and James Connolly, ANCESTOR BOY’s maximalism- it’s overflow of detail, of feeling, of ideas- serves to amplify a frequent lyrical motif: the sensation that one body, one lifetime, isn’t big enough for what you’re feeling. The record is pregnant with memories shared across more than one mind, recalling the storytelling antagonisms of Nina Simone at her most strident and unpredictable. In response, the rhythmic aggressions of her music have grown even more determined and psychedelic, drawing a line in fire between Jimmy Jam’s turnt industrialism on Control and the furious unease of Red Mecca-era Cabaret Voltaire. With a palate equal parts chrome and dirt, ice and depth, Lafawndah’s finesse with song architecture imbues the LP with an uncanny addictiveness: anthems loaded with trap doors. ANCESTOR BOY imagines a pop music that is neither imperial nor local, but a freedom of movement; a residue, perhaps, from the album’s nomadic creation between Los Angeles, Mexico City, New York, London, and Paris.
Loraine James was enticed into the world of music making through her mother, who would go from playing the steel pans to blaring out music from Metallica to Calypso. Having grown up in Enfield, London, she credits the multiculturalism in the city for “broadening my mind and ears”, having listened to jazz, electronica, uk drill and grime, and the results of this exposure can be heard on the mix-up of For You And I. Part of For You and I explores the complexities of being in a queer relationship in London, and the ups and downs that come with that. “I’m in love and wanted to share that in some way. I wanted to make songs that reflect layers of my relationship. Reflected in the song titles and mood of songs like So Scared and Hand Drops she says "A lot of the time I’m really scared in displaying any kind of affection in public…This album is more about feeling than about using certain production skills.” Of her process, James says she aimed to make something that wasn’t overthought. For You and I is rhythmically free flowing and sprawling, with melodies that evolve into rippling keys. It feels like a live jam session with a jazz mentality, contrasting the delicate and abrasive. She also says “The other half of the album is about me, and I wanted it to be about only me.” On three tracks, guest vocals from rapper Le3 bLACK and singer Theo brilliantly articulate Loraine's emotional feelings. The artwork, which features a photo of James holding a photo of her estate from ten years ago is a tribute to her upbringing. “I started making music in those flats, news of my Dad and Uncle passing away happened in that flat, I came out to my mum crying in that flat. Most of my life has been there and in so many years time this area will no longer exist.” This album is a deeply intimate and personal offering, expressing happiness, anxiety, joy, sensuality and fear through a vivid sound palette and an experimental sense of rhythm.
Houston\'s status as a fertile and influential rap mecca is still thriving as the rest of the world continues to catch up with the city\'s historically insular greatness. So consider Megan Thee Stallion an ambassador of what’s happening there now. From the blaxploitation vibes of its cover art to its loaded contents, her proper debut album builds upon the filthy flows that made her preceding *Tina Snow* project and its breakout single “Big Ole Freak” such an essential listen. Over live-wire beats informed less by purple drank and slab cars than by Cash Money and Hypnotize Minds, she doles out sex positivity and hustles wisdom about female empowerment in anthems like \"Dance\" and \"Money Good.\" Boasting a rare and deadly approach both lyrical and diabolical, she clowns hopeless imitators on “Realer” and provides ample ratchet motivation on the bassbin ruiner “Shake That.” Academy Award winner Juicy J, who produced three of *Fever*\'s cuts, doles out his legendary cosign with Southern pride, dropping a few raw bars himself on “Simon Says” alongside Megan’s characteristically raw ones.
This album was recorded between 2016 - 2019 and features some wild edits and some big tunes to party to until the end of time. take great care with these. they go. special shout out to my brother Mitchell Tuckette W. for his beautiful work on the keys. shoutout to my brother Acemo and shout out to HAUS of ALTR and Weapons+ the cover art was shot by photographer Ciro Paoillo 2019 - infinity.
My body is resonant; it has the capacity to radiate power and love. My body is energy; it pulses every moment as it ebbs and flows. My body is forever; it has a form now and will hold new patterns in the future. “Resonant Body”, the third studio album by Octo Octa (Maya Bouldry-Morrison), is her most spiritual and nature--connected work. Maya recorded the songs at her cabin in New Hampshire inorder to channel the resonance of the forest, the beauty of the river, and the energy from the rituals she conducts within it. The album was written and produced at the end of December 2018—after a year of near constant touring—in order to process through art an intense and magical year of change. “Resonant Body” is the second release on T4T LUV NRG, the label co-run by Maya and her partner Eris Drew. It draws on the same themes of togetherness (“Power To The People”), embodiment (“Spin Girl, Let’s Activate!”), love (“Deep Connections”), healing (“My Body Is Power”) and survival (“Can You See Me?”) that animated her acclaimed “For Lover’s EP” (Technicolour, 2019). The album’s art was created by Maya’s partner Brooke, who painted two canvases after a magical day-trip Brooke, Eris, and Maya took earlier this year on the “Sweet Trail” in New Hampshire. Octo Octa’s live performances and DJ sets are known for calling the dancers to move their bodies to a message of love. The dancefloor can be for all of us. It is a communal space that can provide healing when respected, where the dancers can actualize if they can let go and embrace themselves and each other. When we engage with music that heals, through dance or deep listening, we use an ancient technology for its original purpose. Octo Octa believes in the healing power of her music. “Resonant Body” transforms her life and intentions into healing art. 50% of the profits from the album will be donated to the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP), which works to guarantee that all people are free to self-determine their gender identity and expression, regardless of income or race, and without facing harassment, discrimination, or violence.
Oli XL — Rogue Intruder, Soul Enhancer Bloom 01 Release Date: July 22nd, 2019 Format: CD / Digital Drawing by Roberto Ronzani “Can you be my ringtone... I Feel liquid Love!”. Debut album by Oli XL. Artwork drawn by Roberto Ronzani. 386 uncleared samples, twisted and patchworked into emotions (132 songs, 53 video games, 14 movies, 187 misc. found clips). Assembled in Johanneshov, Stockholm - from 2017 to 2019. ♔ Special thanks to Emilie, Zak, Lisa, Anton, Emilio & Robin. credits
Palmistry is the project of London-based vocalist, songwriter and producer Benjy Keating, known for his stripped back pop and forward thinking production. His second album Afterlife was written in a heatsick haze in Athens, Greece and the Mixpak Studios in Brooklyn, NY, and further pushes his knack for intimate and heartfelt earworms that grapple with disconnection, devotion and the emotions in between. While his debut album PAGAN was a self-contained effort, with Afterlife Palmistry cracks the door open to some accomplished friends who bring their own colors & textures to his singular world. There’s woozy anthem “Water” produced by SOPHIE, “Tru Luv” - a duet with Miami-based vocalist Toian produced by Benny Blanco, as well as assistance from Ghanaian artist Klu, Cashmere Cat and Mechatok. Afterlife is pop at the edges, with poetry at the core, evoking bodily sensations, lucid dream states and fractured memories - the slice of an orange, the patter of rain on a car roof and the crushing weight of city life.
Movimiento Para Cambio, is the full-length and debut for PAN from Montreal based duo Pelada. Comprising of vocalist Chris Vargas and producer Tobias Rochman, they have gained international attention through the city’s underground warehouse rave scene. An urgent, headstrong body of work, the LP uses the music as a mechanism for delivering ideas central to the group’s moral and political ethos. Vargas explores themes of power, identity, surveillance and environmental justice atop Rochman’s raw mix of rave synths, acid basslines, breakbeats and dembow rhythms. While at times unpredictable, the album is unified in its fast and loose approach. A Mí Me Juzgan Por Ser Mujer (‘I Am Judged Because I’m a Woman’) is an anti-machista anthem, stylistically nodding to NY house. Though Vargas doesn’t identify as a woman themselves, they understand their experience as a woman in an imbalanced patriarchal society that excludes women, femmes and non-binary people. Habla Tu Verdad (‘Speak Your Truth’) emphasizes the need to overcome the stigma around discussing sexual harassment, offering courage and strength to those who may need it. Asegura (‘Secure’) deals with the unprecedented power of Big Data, which monetizes a surveillance based economy through its users' data and behaviours. These themes are set to fierce unrelenting bpms, nods to gabber, and samples of a reality show where young men compete in a prison fitness contest. Caderona (‘big hips’), features a hardline perreo-tinged beat that carries Vargas’ vocals with refreshing ferocity. Inspired by a cumbia song, Caderona offers a counterpoint to the male gaze, acting as an opportunity to demand space. Aquí describes the reality of a global corporate domination, where capitalist insatiability meets government inaction as we sit on the precipice of a mass extinction of our own making. Pelada hope to inspire critical self- reflexivity through engagement, building power, demanding space and action. Or as it is written in their liner notes: ‘ABRE TUS OJOS, LA BESTIA SE ALIMENTA DE LA EXPLOTACIÓN' which translates to ‘OPEN YOUR EYES, THE BEAST FEEDS ON EXPLOITATION’.
Daniel Fisher, AKA Physical Therapy, is an artist of many faces. Bouncing from techno to jungle, IDM to disco— often under the moniker Physical Therapy, elsewhere as house duo Fatherhood, and sometimes under a slew of untold aliases — his catalogue can be a confounding proposition to decode. But no longer. "It Takes A Village: The Sounds Of Physical Therapy" contains 11 unreleased tracks from 9 different aliases and collaborations, and is the definitive primer for the sly producer and DJ's enigmatic work. Across Village’s two discs, we see Fisher explore the seams and folds of electronic music's various sub-genres. On disc 1, we get jazz-inflected breakbeat science from Jungle Jerry and bass rumbling instrumental hip-hop from Green Buddha. The irascible pairing of Kirk the Flirt & Peter Pressure offer one of their signature disco-edits. "Ya Carrying" a collaboration with Michael Magnan as Fatherhood, imagines classic house through a digi-dub prism. On disc 2, Fisher flexes his techno muscles. Proto-hardstep by Physical Therapy, psychedelic bongo driven techno by Buckaroo!, pumping electro fusion by DJ Overnite, and deep warehouse soul by Stefan Proper. The compilation ends with an ambient cleanse by Fisher’s "no kick drums allowed" project, Car Culture. "It Takes A Village: The Sounds Of Physical Therapy" is available as a limited edition opaque colored 2xLP as well as digitally.
Rian Treanor will release his anticipated debut album ‘ATAXIA’ on Planet Mu this March. The striking full-length follows singles for The Death Of Rave and Warp’s Arcola imprint as well as live sets at Boilerroom x Genelec, Nyege Nyege festival, tours in India and various high profile EU shows. The title ‘ATAXIA’ means 'the loss of full control of bodily movements' and relates to Rian's music which is “intended to make people’s bodies move in unpredictable ways.” He adds “the angles in the letters, the phonetics seem to mirror the geometry and idiosyncratic patterns in the music.” Rian explains that components of the tracks were made by generating a series of irregular events and re-structuring them, or by destabilising a pattern that is constant. When asked how the album compares with his previous releases, he says “My earlier EPs share a similar interest in angular and asymmetrical rhythms that are designed for club sound systems,” adding “they were more improvised, focusing on sequencing and pattern modulation, using standard drum sounds and synthesiser patches. ATAXIA is more focused and stricter, it’s more co-ordinated in terms of the track selection and the rhythmic structures. I spent more time refining the synthesis and sound design, pushing it further than the previous releases.” He expresses an interest in exploring opposites in his music: “fluidity and syncopation,” “systematic and unpredictability,” “reduction and extremity,” “irregular symmetry,” “easy listening and brutal”. There’s clear a conceptual backdrop, but the music itself is not overthought. There’s an immediate joy to much of the album – check out ATAXIA_D3 with its wonderful cut-ups and modulations of the phrase “people don’t understand people.” The roots of Rian's playful sound are directly linked to his love of the music he grew up with. Coming from Sheffield, you can hear elements of industrial, synth-pop, bleep, extreme computer music and speed garage at play. From Cabaret Voltaire to Warp and beyond; the sound of his city has been, and is, an integral part of his musical development and is still a direct influence. Last year, he noted in an interview that "I'm not a computer programmer, I'm not an articulate person in that kind of way. I'm a visual artist." Now he elaborates “I meant more that I’m a visual thinker.” Drawing and visual art have been a fundamental part of his life “since I was a child. I got really into graffiti as a teenager and around the same time I got into mixing and these both developed together.” You can sense the mind of a visual artist at work in his music which is also reflected in the artwork he created for this project. As well as his visual art, installations and multichannel sound works he is involved in numerous collaborations such as with composer Nakul Krishnamurthy exploring the common ground between Indian classical music and electronic music and his work with improv saxophonist Karl D'Silva, plus his time studying with Lupo at Dubplates and Mastering in Berlin (who taught him the “importance of reduction”) have all helped shape and push his sound into other unique and adventurous zones. Treanor is developing on different levels and in different forms all at the same time, re-imagining the intersection of club culture, experimental art and computer music, presenting an insightful and compelling musical world of fractured and interlocking components.
The most punk moment of 2019 is Rico Nasty screaming “Kennyyyyyy!” in a voice like a revved-up chainsaw. The DMV rapper reestablished her signature sound with producer Kenny Beats in 2018 through an alter ego called Trap Lavigne, recalibrating the “sugar trap” style of her early hits into devil-horns missives shouted over heavy metal beats. *Anger Management* is Rico and Kenny’s first full-length collaboration, and it begins in sheer chaos: “Cold” and “Cheat Code” sound like primal screams from the soul. But the mood mellows out over the course of nine bite-sized tracks—a conceptual journey of catharsis from two of the most inventive names in rap right now. It’s like a therapy session, if your therapist was prone to hollering, “I got bitches on my dick and I ain’t even got a dick!” over JAY-Z samples.
* * * * * * * Boomkat Product Review * * * * * * * Kenya’s Slikback stuns again with the singular, forward rhythms and stark electronic space of ‘Tomo’, his follow-up to the resoundingly acclaimed ‘Lasakaneku’, also for Nyege Nyege Tapes sister label, Hakuna Kulala At the vanguard of a vital East African electronic music scene, Slikback combines local rhythmic heritage with sheer, abstract electronics in ways that utterly fascinate bodies on the ‘floor. Stepping ahead from his debut EP in 2018, he offers twice as much material and amps up the energy and noise in ’Tomo’, surely setting the benchmark for anything to follow in its wake in 2019. Between the Nostrofmo-like atmosphere and mutant footwork-like percussive intensity of ‘SONSHITSU’, thru the dissonant dancehall swagger of ‘Gemini’ and the hyperhall push of ‘Kyokai’, to the polymetric fizz and parry of ‘Karuym’, and the pelting hardcore of ‘Zuhura’, Slikback’s music will leave nobody wanting on the ‘floor. But if you’re the insatiable type, then the inferno of his parting shot ‘Rage’, switching from full frontal rhythmic noise to industrial swagger and back, will polish you the fuck off. Massive recommendation! * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ALBUM INFO Slikback is a Kenyan DJ and Producer. After joining the Boutiq Studios in Kampala in mid 2017, he began to find his sound which fuses a diverse sonic pallette borrowing from footwork, trap, grime and a variety of contemporary underground African club styles into a uniquely accessible dark presentation. His Debut EP "Lasakaneku" was released in June 2018. The ep and individual tracks have gone on to top charts, being placed among the best electronic music of 2018 including on Pitchfork and Fact magazine. Since then, he went on to perform at MTN Nyege Nyege Festival in Uganda. He then had an European premier at Unsound Festival in Poland. His performance there was highlighted by Resident Advisor as one of the 5 key performances of the festival. He has upcoming performances at CTM Festival Berlin, Sonic Acts Festival, Amsterdam, Elevate Festival, Graz, Mutek Festival, Barcelona , Sónar Festival, Barcelona and an upcoming China tour in collaboration with Chinese label SVBKVLT. Slikback continues to create new interesting sounds and collaborate with amazing vocal talents from Kampala. He also has a new project called o g n i k i with polish producer, Morgiana Hz combining their respective worlds into one composition. TOMO is his anticipated follow up ep featuring six new tracks of mutant African club explorations.
In the three years since her seminal album *A Seat at the Table*, Solange has broadened her artistic reach, expanding her work to museum installations, unconventional live performances, and striking videos. With her fourth album, *When I Get Home*, the singer continues to push her vision forward with an exploration of roots and their lifelong influence. In Solange\'s case, that’s the culturally rich Houston of her childhood. Some will know these references — candy paint, the late legend DJ Screw — via the city’s mid-aughts hip-hop explosion, but through Solange’s lens, these same touchstones are elevated to high art. A diverse group of musicians was tapped to contribute to *When I Get Home*, including Tyler, the Creator, Chassol, Playboi Carti, Standing on the Corner, Panda Bear, Devin the Dude, The-Dream, and more. There are samples from the works of under-heralded H-town legends: choreographer Debbie Allen, actress Phylicia Rashad, poet Pat Parker, even the rapper Scarface. The result is a picture of a particular Houston experience as only Solange could have painted it — the familiar reframed as fantastic.
She first emerged as an avant-garde violinist who channeled her playing through loop pedals. Then songwriter, vocal performer, and beat-maker. She's captivated audiences at festivals around the world, touring her trail-blazing EPs Sudan Archives (2017) and Sink (2018). Sudan's many identity coalesces in her debut album, Athena: a psychedelic, magnetic take on modern R&B. "When I was a little girl, I thought I could rule the world," Sudan Archives announces in the sparse, string-plucked opening bars of Athena, on the strident "Did You Know". Her musicality and sense of self-belief developed as a young child in the church. Born Brittney Parks, but called Sudan from a young age, she moved around Cincinnati, Ohio many times as a child; religion and music were the most stable forces in her life. It was in church that Sudan began learning to play the violin by ear, participating in ensemble performances. "I remember begging my mom to get me a violin," she says. "From there I just never let it go – it felt like I had a purpose." Growing up with a twin sister, Sudan also learned young that she was the "bad twin". Her stepdad – a one-time music industry executive – tried to turn the two into a pop duo when they were teenagers, but Sudan would miss rehearsals and curfew so frequently that the project was abandoned. Still, the experience was valuable: "My stepdad basically planted this whole idea of artistry as a career," she remembers. Though she left the band behind, Sudan clung onto the idea of pursuing music when she moved to Los Angeles at age 19. While studying and holding down two jobs, she would spend her spare time "fucking around with some beats and making some weird shit", which she released tentatively under the name Sudan Moon – a combination of her childhood nickname and her love of Sailor Moon. The ethereal quality of those early lo-fi, G-funk-inspired beats would eventually make its way into Sudan's current sound. It was once she discovered ethnomusicology, and learned to incorporate the violin into her beats, that she really unlocked a new level. Cameroonian electronic music pioneer Francis Bebey was an early inspiration: "His music is so simple, and the way he combines strings and electronic music is such a vibe.” From there, she educated herself about other artists and ethnomusicologists, learning about the history of one-string fiddling in Ghana, Sudan, and all over the world, which "blew my mind". Now a fervent crate-digger with ambitions of studying ethnomusicology, she changed her artist name to Sudan Archives. After she met with Stones Throw A&R and Leaving Records founder Matthewdavid, Peanut Butter Wolf signed her to Stones Throw. Her self-titled debut EP introduced the world to Sudan's fusion of North African-style fiddling, layered R&B harmonies, and pared-back production. Her second EP Sink was a resounding six-track statement that, according to Jenn Pelly at Pitchfork, saw Sudan "level up as a songwriter" — especially true of the bold self-love song "Nont For Sale". Those EPs, Sudan says, were "like a haiku of what the album is". Athena is "more in your face, more confrontational – and that's also how I've grown as an artist. I used to be a hermit who would make beats in her bedroom, but now I'm working with other writers, producers and instrumentalists, I've learned how to communicate. It feels like I'm almost back in church." At first, it was tough for Sudan to cede any control in her creative process, but as she got stuck into the sessions with producers Wilma Archer (Jessie Ware, Nilufer Yanya), Washed Out, Rodaidh McDonald (The xx, Sampha, King Krule), and Paul White (Danny Brown, Charli XCX), she opened up. The resulting album, whittled down to 12 taut tracks from around 60, is her most ambitious work yet. On the album's cover, she poses as a Greek goddess sculpted in bronze. Simultaneously at her most powerful — channelling the energy of her princess warrior heroes Xena and Sailor Moon — and her most vulnerable, Sudan challenges the viewer to see what's under the surface. "I'm naked!" she says. "I don't have anything to hide at all, it's all out there."
Summer Walker doesn’t look the way she sounds. The Atlanta singer’s face tattoos are more in line with the aesthetic of her hometown’s many hip-hop superstars than that of ’90s golden-era R&B acts like Mary J. Blige, Xscape, and SWV, but the makeover feels right for the moment. On Walker’s heavily anticipated *Over It*, which follows her 2018 breakout mixtape *Last Day of Summer*—as well as the *CLEAR* EP—the singer recontextualizes some familiar-sounding frustrations and reckonings about hard-earned romantic truths by way of throwback sounds and contemporary real talk (all of which sounds even richer thanks to Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos). “Did I ever ask you to take me to go shopping in Paris?/Or go sailing overseas and just drape me in Gucci?” she asks on the Bryson Tiller duet “Playing Games.” “No, I never had an issue, go to the club with your boys, baby/I never wanted you to stay too long, just wanted you to show me off.” Later in the song she borrows a few bars from “Say My Name,” Destiny’s Child’s eternally catchy ballad of the underappreciated lover. *Over It* is indeed peppered with references to the R&B of Walker’s childhood: Producer London On Da Track utilizes a vintage 702 sample for “Body” and builds the beat for “Come Thru,” which features Usher, on the keyboard line of the ATL icon’s 1997 “You Make Me Wanna...” The album also boasts guest spots from Drake, 6LACK, A Boogie wit da Hoodie, and long-dormant moody-R&B hero PARTYNEXTDOOR. The vantage point of *Over It*, though, is wholly the singer’s own. The exchanges in Walker’s verses sound like they could have been grafted directly from text messages or pulled from a FaceTime conversation. “Am I really that much to handle?” she opines on the title track. “You wanna be a good friend to me/Why don’t you pour up that Hennessy/Light up a few blunts so we can get high,” she sings on “Tonight.” “Too much Patrón will have you calling his phone/Have you wanting some more,” she advises on “Drunk Dialing…LODT.” Walker’s words are so relatable they seem destined to become social media captions. *Over It*, then, is a project whose title betrays its maker’s constitution, one certain only to leave fans wanting more.
Ulla’s productions reveal a discerning process of stripping tracks to their essence, letting space, silence, simplicity and repetition be her guide. They lend a magic touch to a difficult and minimal style of music, creating an album that is comforting and tranquil, yet hypnotizing and transportive. Most evidently, UIla’s music is inspired, by emotions and experiences unknown to us, but perhaps best represented in her own words: “keeping pictures on a wall left there by someone else. day dreaming about something not real. hearing a friend walk through the front door. letting a plant die. the silence of a room when the box fan is turned off."
SOUNDCLIPS: soundcloud.com/darkentriesrecords/violet-bed-of-roses-clips We are honored to release the debut album from Violet, the alias of Inês Borges Coutinho, Lisbon born and raised DJ, producer boss of Naive records, co-founder of Rádio Quântica, and mina resident. Violet began producing music in 2012 and has released music on One Eyed Jacks, Love on the Rocks, Paraíso and Naive. Inês uses her seemingly boundless energy to amplify other artists all the while progressing her own creative practice. ‘Bed of Roses’ contains 10 songs made as a sort of childhood-teenage memories diary, a return to things Inês liked then and also the difficult things she’s been through. The feeling behind the album is self forgiveness in an optimistic way but also in an adult way, aware of the bruises (thorns) but also of the invaluable love and life experiences (roses). The title comes from the Bon Jovi song that Inês loved as a 9-year old and doubles as an intent of positivity paired with the inescapable darkness of life. Inês says, “I wrote this music as a healing device that I hope can somehow help heal others too.” All songs have been mastered by George Horn at Fantasy Studios. The jacket features an original design by Eloise Leigh incorporating themes of self-inspection and hope, mixing a teen bedroom girly vintage scrapbook aesthetic with contemporary 3D mapping techniques.
xin returns to Subtext to share their debut LP, MELTS INTO LOVE. Mining fragments of neurofunk, hardcore and dubstep, xin searches for something else. They borrow from dance and rave lexicons to warp, mangle and strangle tropes into something anew. Embracing failures, blemishes, inexperience and misuse, xin imagines new affinities, anxieties and ecstasies in an age of noise, spectacle and inundation. Alien, shapeshifting reeses dance and twirl in “Myopia,” while AI choirs and pseudo-breaks are distilled into “Spent, Wasted and Saved” (featuring AYA, fka LOFT). The fiendish, ecstatic imagery that accompanies is created in conjunction with painter Gabrielle Bejani and machine learning engineers Ash D'Cruz, and Chris Tegho. Like xin’s 2018 EP, MELTS INTO LOVE will be released solely via independent platforms Bandcamp, Boomkat and Resonate. The record also borrows from fellow Subtext signee Fis and his Saplings project and is released as a “biodigital” LP—meaning the music is released digitally, but with a living consequence woven in. All proceeds from sales will be donated to Eden Reforestation Projects, with each purchase of the LP funding the planting of at least 40 trees. xin has recently performed live at Berlin’s Volksbühne, in support of Holly Herndon’s PROTO launch, and Kraftwerk, for MaerzMusik’s The Long Now, among others. They are soundtracking Zach Blas’ upcoming installation The Doors, and are a summer 2019 research resident at Trust, Berlin’s space for utopian conspiracy and the (re)design of infrastructure. with thanks and love to: Aya, Billy, Izzy, James, Laurel, Oscar, Sam Artwork: Ash D'Cruz, Chris Tegho, Gabrielle Bejani and xin
Ziúr's 2017 debut album for Planet Mu/Objects Limited ‘U Feel Anything?’ was widely praised. It was both maximal and graceful, thoughtful but physical music that came out of the 'anything goes' approach of certain club nights she was involved with in Berlin, and stood head and shoulders above other music coming out of the city’s club scene. Since then Ziúr has clearly been working hard, and on 'ATØ' she has developed a sophisticated toolbox of sounds from which this album is produced. Its rush of clear electronic beeps and tones, crunchy drums and cold metallic stabs share space alongside bell tones and marimba, dhol drums, r&b melodies and rich strings, as if the gritty distortion of ‘U Feel Anything?’ has given way to a bloom of colour. As a songwriter, Ziúr’s work on 'ATØ' has really grown. The songs could be loosely described as left-field pop, but like all her music there is a steely undertow of determined strength. The album features some key surrogates in the shape of singer-songwriter Samantha Urbani, formerly of the band ‘Friends’ and vocals from Ash B, who lays down a gravelly response to betrayal on F.O.E (Friendship Over Ego). What’s even more unique about the album is that Ziúr pops up multiple times singing, her voice transformed through effects into a different character every time. On the lead track 'ATØ' her vocals are pitched down to feel like she’s a wise, otherworldly force, or the ghostly childlike voice transmitted on ‘I Vanish’, the swooning tones of Life Sick, or on the last track ‘Mother’ where she intones in her own untreated voice. 'ATØ' has a purpose laid out in its title. Ziúr describes 'ATØ' as a network of intersectional support, a network of mesh to help us through these dark oppressive times: it’s ‘THE ALLIANCE TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD’. The album was made in her words "in support of all people who struggle finding a place in this world, who are having trouble being respected AND celebrated for who they are. For everyone, who is part of resisting the status quo, for all survivors, outcasts and weirdos. For people who fight for their existence, every day." The record is here to celebrate respect, human rights, love, intersectionality, change, pushing boundaries, bravery, critical thought, genuine support and curiosity. She says of the album, "This Record is not here to please, but to disrupt & to connect us in Solidarity."