Collection of tracks from the past couple years. Hope you guys enjoy. :)
On her previous releases for Hyperdub, Loraine James has developed a musical language of broken beats and granular textures, one where catharsis arrives in splintered glimpses through a smashed-up windshield. But on her eponymous debut under a new alias, Whatever The Weather, the UK experimental musician explores more subdued energy. It’s a concept album of sorts: The song titles are each keyed to a different temperature meant to evoke an emotional response. The ambient “25°C” summons a drowsy summer afternoon, while “0°C” is brittle as fresh ice, and “2°C (Intermittent Rain)” is as gloomy as ‘80s dream-pop goths This Mortal Coil. What it all shares (apart from the jittery “17°C,” a flashback to the artist’s roots) is an interest in slowing down and tuning into more meditative mind states, where immersion takes precedence over disruption.
NYS#85 some of these songs were made very quickly, some others took months until i figured out how to finish them. i spent some time collecting bits from many old abandoned song ideas to reuse and recontextualize in these beats. i spent some time figuring out how to write melodies. some were born (or finished) from the fusion of 2 different beats into one. some are very new, some date as far back as 2019 when i wasn't even releasing music under this name. i began working on this thing right after i released 'eye girl' with no agreements. as proud as i am of that EP, i honestly don't even feel like sitting down to listen to 13 minutes of alien bleep bloops anymore, nor sitting down to listen to 20 minute ambient tracks :p i spent some time just thinking about what my favorite electronic music actually was in the first place to then have a clearer idea about what style i truly wanted to pursue. yes i love autechre, but over time i realized i'm more of a bogdan raczynski type of guy. or maybe my attention span is just shortening then i set some goals for myself 1. to make my first non-ambient LP 2. to capture my love for melody, textures and, in general, the music that has captivated me the most lately 3. to incorporate some more acoustic sounds 4. not to depend so much on sampling for composing 5. to have enough material to make it longer than 30min. i was tired of only getting to make enough beats for EP-lenght projects lol 6. to just try to make the music i wanted to hear, as close as i could it's funny because vibe-wise this sort of ended up being the polar opposite to the music i was dropping before. i don't really care about how weirdly this contrasts with my previous releases, i kinda came back to the mentality i had while making the tunes that would end up on 'eye kid', with their fast-paced and playful style, but neater and better produced, because eye kid was made when I was like 15-17 years old and anything that sounded whack i would fix by putting distortion on it lol in the end i'm happy because this release, regardless of its quality or importance, is so far the one that most honestly represents myself, both musically and personally. many aspects of my current life are reflected on this music, i think. quarantine made the outside world feel weird and less real than the digital world sometimes, but also more vivid and priceless. a lot of stuff was changing for me while creating this music, and it still is while this album is coming out. i didn't want to (nor could i) do some super ambitious perfect project or anything crazy, i just wanted to condense my personal taste for colorful glitch music into an lp. this is the most time i've ever spent working on an album and i only hope y'all find some of it cool thanks for listening and supporting and reading and yeah :)
"One of the UK’s most brilliant and boundary-pushing electronic producers." – The Guardian "A map of James’ own complicated emotional terrain, one in which signposts of Eastman’s work reappear like symbols in a dream." – Pitchfork Celebrated UK producer Loraine James joins Phantom Limb for breathtaking homage to vital NYC composer Julius Eastman, reinterpreting, reimagining and responding to key works for a brand new album. In 1990, the composer Julius Eastman quietly passed away, out of the spotlight, a young man. By his death substance-addicted, homeless and broke, he was unforgivably overlooked in his lifetime. Still, the legacy of creative work he leaves is far more befitting to celebration than destitution. Only a portion of his music remains - a deeply regrettable sidenote to an already heartbreaking story - but this work represents a glorious and beautifully hued depiction of a composer totally in step with any modern great we could name. Phantom Limb are long-term fans of both Eastman and Loraine James. Using their rare, fortuitous connection with Julius’ surviving brother Gerry, the label began this new project in summer 2021, hoping to continue the current tide of efforts to reinstate Eastman’s rightful place in 20th-century composition. Loraine was offered a zip drive of Eastman originals (courtesy of Gerry Eastman), Renee Levine-Packer & Mary Jane Leach’s illuminating biography Gay Guerilla (University of Rochester Press, 2015), and transcribed MIDI stems (courtesy of Phantom Limb A&R James Vella), and the resulting album Building Something Beautiful For Me carries the Eastman torch with finesse and sensitivity. Loraine employs samples, melodic motifs, themes and imagery, and inspiration from Eastman’s canon, slicing, editing, pulling apart and playing samples like instruments to craft a stunning album that venerates Eastman’s genius while adhering to her own. Speaking in similar tongues as young, gay, Black, independent creatives in a challenging environment, the two musicians are bound closely together, despite a six-year gap between their lives ever intersecting. James includes the original Eastman title in many of her tracks, appending the source material in parentheses to mark the lineage of the work - a clear, traceable thread from the heavenly to the sublime. In keeping with key Eastman codes, Phantom Limb engaged Black creatives to complete the record, including acclaimed designer Dennis McInnes for the album packaging, which is inspired by Eastman’s marginalia on his own (surviving) manuscript pages: “we sought to visually convey the complexity of what we may see as beautiful, how beauty is misunderstood and often lies beneath the surface.”
It feels right that *Magic Pony Ride* came out in 2022. For one, it’s the 25th anniversary of *Lunatic Harness*, an album whose sweet-and-sour mix of breakbeats and nursery-ready melodies helped define late-’90s electronic music. But it’s also Mike Paradinas’ first μ-Ziq album in nine years, a period during which he turned his attention to his label, Planet Mu, and put out some of the more pertinent, conversation-shifting stuff in 2010s dance: the Chicago footwork compilation *Bangs & Works*, DJ Rashad, Jlin, RP Boo. So, consider *Magic Pony Ride* a homecoming. The music has its wild moments (“Turquoise Hyperfizz”), but it’s generally a mellow, domesticated affair, the sound of IDM and drill ’n’ bass seen through the rose-colored glasses of middle age (“Picksing,” “Elka’s Song”). The lunatic has settled, and the harness hangs in the closet like a set of old spurs—but the spark remains (“Brown Chaos”).
Previously unreleased Skee Mask tracks that were made between 2015 and 2019, all unmastered. "DIY Letterbox" was included in the Electronic Beats TV feature from 2017. 10 thousand Euro were raised with this release and donated to various humanitarian relief organisations. Thanks to everyone who participated, the donation action has ended!
Transmitted directly from the scuzzed Appalachian wastes outside Pittsburgh, TOBACCO is back with a new rotten IDM fantasy. Skids and Angels is a beige shower of deranged data beamed straight into your boombox. The palettes are familiar – syruppy synths, fuzzy drum samples, garbled tape hiss – all shattered and fractalized on the tile floor. Cobbling together disjointed breakneck braindance notions with signature Allegheny analog waves, Skids and Angels is a certified headphone freakout. This collection of (mostly) instrumentals shoves the classic TOBACCO production methodologies to their twisted, chopped, and warped limits. Far from the more pop-oriented spaces TOBACCO has gone, Skids and Angels spelunks deep and dank downtempo into the beatmaker cave system and opens up its own high fructose boutique. A collaged smear of sneering melodies, kaleidoscopic drum and bass fragments, enchanting murmurs, and ratched hi hats, all coated in a charred sugarcrust gloss. Fans of classic electronic backpack pioneers like Boards of Canada and Cheetah-era Aphex will recognize the jargon and vocabulary, but TOBACCO injects this collection of beats and ambient drifts with his signature sibilance and slime. Pushing the envelope directly onto your tongue, Skids and Angels is a flash of glitched out wizardry; spun out and strange, arpeggiated and ready to be dunked directly in your deck.
For Hyperdub founder Kode9, aka Scotland-born, London-based producer Steve Goodman, dance music and futuristic philosophy are inextricable, and their bond appears especially tight on *Escapology*, his first album since 2015’s *Nothing*. The LP serves as the soundtrack to Goodman’s evolving multimedia project *Astro-Darien*, a science-fiction narrative about British colonialism, Scotland’s history in the slave trade, and the future of space travel. Though those themes may not be immediately apparent in the music itself, there’s no mistaking the avant-garde nature of Goodman’s off-world fantasies. Where Kode9 has historically danced on the fringes of styles like dubstep and UK funky, here he largely leaves the club behind, teasing flickering stretches of footwork-inspired rhythms (“The Break Up,” “Angle of Re-Entry”) and then letting them dissolve in glistening pools of beatless, atonal synths. Rather than causing whiplash, though, these unexpected transitions only draw you deeper into the album’s labyrinthine dimensions, bringing Goodman’s imaginary world vividly to life.
‘Escapology’ - Kode9's first album since 2015's ‘Nothing’ – is the first audio document of a wider project, Astro-Darien, ongoing since last year. His most ambitious work yet as a multi-disciplinary artist, ‘Escapology’ is the soundtrack album to the sonic fiction Astro-Darien, which will be released in October on Hyperdub’s sub-label Flatlines. The music reconfigures Astro-Darien's tense, off-world atmospheres into slices of high definition, asymmetric club rhythms, woven through thrilling sound design and vertiginous sonics. ‘Escapology’ is just one entry point into of the Astro-Darien universe, which had begun to surface in 2021 as a two-week audiovisual installation on the main dance floor at club space Corsica Studios in South London, and as a multi-channel diffusion on the 50 speaker Acousmonium at the invitation of INA-GRM in Paris, the institution founded in 1951 by the musique concrète pioneer Pierre Schaeffer, composer Pierre Henry and the engineer Jacques Poullin.
Jamie Teasdale’s music as Kuedo has always struck an interesting balance between the physicality of the big beat and the drifting, icy quality of early-’80s synth music: think Vangelis’ *Blade Runner* soundtrack or Tangerine Dream circa *Risky Business*—with drops. Where 2011’s *Severant* drew on the rhythms of dubstep and UK bass, *Infinite Window* sounds closer to American hip-hop: the galloping trap of “Time Glide,” the stabbing synth pads of “Harlequin Hallway.” That Teasdale’s other professional work includes sound design and composition for brands like Fendi, Bulgari, and Iris van Herpen makes sense: Even *Infinite Window*’s most propulsive moments don’t evolve so much as hover like luxury objects on crystal pedestals—sleek, beautiful, alluringly out of reach.
Kuedo is set to release his new album ‘Infinite Window’ on 29th July 2022 on the award-winning Brainfeeder record label. Blending synth-driven avant garde compositions and thunderous drum programming, the album sonics owe as much to modern R&B icons like Frank Ocean and The Weeknd as they do to legendary composers such as David Axelrod, Tangerine Dream and the sadly recently-departed Vangelis or contemporary breakbeat aficionados such as Sully and Jlin. “I’m split between thinking about what makes spacey synth driven music production work, what makes rap and UK jungle work, and what makes pop and R&B work,” explains Kuedo. “I found myself turning more to what I just enjoy listening to, or to what’s really endured through history, even if it’s new to me. I realised that old music can speak to the current moment as well or better than new music. Particularly in terms of ecological, planetary anxieties, and hopes too”. Renowned for his composition and sound design work for the likes of Fendi, Bvlgari, Iris Van Herpen and Nike, the release follows a 2017 collaboration with label-head Flying Lotus on the “Blade Runner: Black Out 2022” OST (directed by Cowboy Bepbop director Shinichirō Watanabe), with Kuedo also scoring Metahaven’s “Eurasia (Questions on Happiness)” and “The Sprawl (Propaganda About Propaganda)” films. Released is the new single “Sliding Through Our Fingers”, the first taster from the forthcoming album that showcases Kuedo’s mastery of emotive synth composition. “The music gives me a feeling of how time slides past us, how we try to hold it,” says Kuedo. “I thought of sand sliding through open fingers. And how time is such a blurry moving stream, like we dream of our future lives, that open horizon turns into memories, how the current time keeps recalling the past to us. How we just sail through time, no matter how we feel about that.” Notions of ‘time’ — of looking both forward and backward — run deep throughout the album and its recording process. The genesis for ‘Infinite Window’ began in early 2021 when Kuedo sat down to begin composing a full length album for Brainfeeder, but the finished record is a meticulously assembled collage of new composition and various demos and sound recordings, some of which stretch back almost 10 years. “Almost a third of the album comes from rough sketches I had written for a previous Kuedo album that never was.” he explains. ”Turning these into finished tracks and assembling them into a unified album, into something that moved as one body… that was a complex experience. It felt like negotiating with previous versions of myself, down corridors of time. It was a little odd hearing a much younger me trying to get better at playing keys, and then having the me now playing alongside that. It felt like time-travelling. In that process, I probably made some peace with that earlier version of myself too, for not having the confidence to finish it at the time” “I didn’t have a conceptual conceit when I made the tracks or sequenced the album,” he continues. “But whenever I needed an image to anchor or aim toward, the images that came were something about the world after all this, if we almost lost everything. Hot, dry landscapes, remnants of this time, the wonder of this current green world, our relation to future generations, the waves of time. When I was mixing it, I imagined it feeling weathered by time, or out of place in time, like something crash landed, or excavated, half buried in the sand.” The limited edition yellow vinyl LP features artwork by fast rising visual artists Monja & Vincent and sleeve design by Raf Rennie (Acronym, Prada, Nike). “Monja & Vincent and I met when they asked if I could contribute any music to their graduate animation short,” says Kuedo. They said their art style had been somewhat influenced by my music, which was incredible to me. I found the art they showed me so inspiring for my own music, it helped me write my own stuff. So I asked them if they would be interested in making an image for the album.” “I’ve been a fan of Raf Rennie since the mid 2010s, I’m really buzzed to work with him,” he continues. “We have a good shared language & understanding of each other. Some similar inspirations too, like the original Alien film. He developed the Kuedo logo into his own full typeface, “Geiger”. To me his work has a minimalist, composed, slightly detached vibe, in a Kubrick-like way. I really like how it works around a more relaxed and expressive illustration, like Monja & Vincent’s.” ‘Infinite Window’ is out on 29th July on Brainfeeder.
Planet Mu owner Mike Paradinas (a.k.a. µ-Ziq) wraps up 2022 with his 3rd release of new material this year. ‘Hello’ is the mirror image of the ‘Goodbye EP’. The intensity is heightened, the breaks more manic and melodies inhabit every corner. The material is the final chapter of the ‘Magic Pony Ride’ material and even includes a third version of that track. 'Iggy’s Song’ has a slowed down sample of Mike’s son screaming, ‘Ávila’ is an ode to his father’s hometown in Spain and ‘Green Chaos’ even includes a nod to RP Boo. On Side B things get more interesting. ‘Pyramidal Mind Dispersion’ slows things down while amping up the tension, Modulating Angel is at drum & bass tempo but with a choir of angels from hell in the background, while the final two tracks recall the experimentation and melodies of Lunatic Harness.
Much like his Afrofuturist duo Drexciya with the late James Stinson, Gerald Donald’s Dopplereffekt project is drawn to big themes. Working alongside fellow Detroiter Michaela To-Nhan Bertel, he’s channeled topics like fascism, eugenics, and particle physics into dystopian electro. On their first LP since 2017’s *Cellular Automata*, Dopplereffekt sound even more dour than usual on the austere opener “Epigenetic Modulation.” But there’s a newfound sensitivity in songs like the swirling “Visual Cortex” and the wistful “Neuroplasticity,” and Dopplereffekt’s music has rarely sounded more emotional than on the sweeping “Optogenetics,” whose pinging arpeggios hold their own against the Berlin school’s 1970s *kosmische* greats. A concept album about wordless communication, *Neurotelepathy* imparts an unambiguous message of wonder.
We’re extremely proud to present Leaving Time, a new 12" by Christoph de Babalon on Super Hexagon Records. The EP has all the menace and grit that the Hamburg-born, Berlin-based producer is known for, but packs a potent, dance-ready punch that breaks new ground. Leaving Time begins with the snarling subs ‘The Upper Hand’, and momentum builds through the panoramic breakbeats of ‘I Trusted You’ and dubwise groove of ‘Steps Into Solitude’ to reach the symphonic release of ‘Got to Let Go’. This record encapsulates everything we love about Christoph’s music – it’s doom-laden, introspective and crafted with intent. In short, it’s CDB on a 140 / fwd tip - fuck the chairs!
REMXNG 2.2 leads with UK producer Rian Treanor’s jagged, stuttering edit of “‘96 Neve Campbell.” Treanor blends underground dance music genres with the techniques of musique concrète, and computer music, slicing the slasher-themed track into a collage of stabbing jump-scares. James Acaster (who happens to also be one of the band’s favorite comedians) collaborated with Deerhoof’s John Diederich on a mash up of the band’s “She Bad” and “He Dead,” which is followed by a synth freak-out rework of “Run for Your Life” by Baseck (who frequently appears as a turntablist on Clipping albums). Next is Fire-Toolz’s hyperactive neon glitch symphony of “Attunement.” Egyptian producer ZULI gives “Make Them Dead” a crushingly heavy Drum & Bass flip, and akeyamasou’s mysterious “Something Underneath” remix atomizes its source into a dense cloud of IDM haze. The EP closes with a miniature for modular synthesizer and sampler by David Rothbaum—another frequent Clipping collaborator.
MC 024 One of the most forward thinking records of this decade! But if you need me to prove it….. Hi it’s me from 2030, this album, is indeed, the most forward thinking album of the rawring 20’s :3 Travel inside the radioactive microwave of chaos and chasms of bips and bops(!!) on “how are your cars driving?” With your tour guides River and Caybee, two stoners who have no idea where they are, or what to do with their guests! [spoiler alert: they picked the highest paying job on Indeed with no prerequisites] We will be trekking deep into the Forest of Wonky Wire and jump pot holes filled with psychic gelatinous mass, but do not be afraid my friend! In this world we sine waves call home, there is no such thing as death and nothing can harm you!! Yes, our ragtag tour guides aren’t the brightest but they can surely make for an entertaining time, mind if I offer you our classic radioactive slop? All of your fears of traveling into our Marvelous Majestic Microwave Mechanism are [REDACTED] In this one-of-a-kind album by Bagel Fanclub, be prepared for some maximalist loud portions with some quiet chiptune moments paired with melancholy and energy! Enjoy fragments of video game music you have never heard of while having chopped and screwed breaks scatter around your ears. The experience of listening to this is the closest we have to the sensation of soda and pop rocks in your ears. Within an hour you will find yourself humming along to the melodies… funny how something as noisy as this can become an ear worm, huh? [Album write-up by Effy Adshead]
Politically-outspoken Irish avant garde punk producer MERYL STREEK releases his debut album ‘796’ on Gallows’ owned Venn Records (High Vis, Bob Vylan, Witch Fever). For the most part a devastating condemnation of the shameful Catholic church abuse scandal in Ireland, penned following the findings of The Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation, forthcoming debut album 796 is an emotionally volatile and heart-wrenching collection of cutting edge punk that pushes genre boundaries whilst traversing extremely challenging political subject matter with aplomb and vitriol.