recommendations 
Thursday, 24 May
SND / DOPPLEREFFEKT / ELEH
Festival Elecronica En Abril: 2003-2012
La Casa Encendida
Deluxe 2LP Box Set // £19.99
Cat. Number: LACASABOX
Album of the Week
**Beautifully packaged boxed/double LP pressing including exclusive, previously unreleased material from Eleh, Thomas Koner, SND, Dopplereffekt, Farben, Matmos, NSI, Maja Ratke and much more. Comes pressed on two gorgeous semi-opaque/white LP's housed in a special printed canvas box with cross-woven fibres creating different colourways depending on the angle of view** Madrid's Festival Electrónica en Abril celebrates ten years of commitment to modern electronic music with a collection of ten exclusive tracks from Eleh, SND, nsi., Dopplereffekt, Thomas Köner, Matmos, Farben, Radian, Maja Ratje, … Read more
Album of the Week
*Much needed reissue of this early computer music classic, recorded between 1977 and 1980 and one of the first albums to feature music produced almost entirely with digital synthesizers. Remastered from the original tapes and cut to vinyl at D&M Berlin - made in an edition of 700 copies only, initial copies come on strictly limited white vinyl* Digitalis dig deep to unearth and reissue one of the first albums to be produced almost exclusively on digital synthesizers. The work of Canadian composer and video artist, Jean Piché, his densely layered and harmonically rich 'Heliograms' was pieced together between 1977-1980, inspired by the… Read more
Album of the Week
**Gorgeously printed edition of 550 copies with silk-screen jackets** Beautiful split side featuring a new, 20 minute Eleh piece 'Empty Summer Endless', and the filigree subtlety of Duane Pitre's 'Feel Free Installation'. Trying to describe an Eleh track often inevitably leads to us saying the same thing, so we'll simply say it's another immense, immersive excursion into the near-subsonic abyss. Duane Pitre's side meanwhile, is best described by the label (if you ask us; it's lovely): "Feel Free is a new composition by Duane Pitre that currently has three possible manifestations: solo performance , group performance, and sound insta… Read more
Album of the Week
*Following that KILLER debut back in 2010, this amazing project featuring members of Astral Social Club and High Wolf return for another dose of heavy, squashed and bass-heavy Techno malfunctions* Neil Campbell (Astral Social Club, Vibracathedral Orchestra) reunites with High Wolf for a 2nd LP of amazing spiralling cosmic loop orchestration and Techno f*ck-ups. Lest we forget, their first, eponymous vinyl was a highlight of 2010's psych scenery, sounding like little else before or since. For Weird Forest, their 'Hespherides' adopts a more gradual, unfolding approach than its predecessor's motorik onslaught, preferring to wade thr… Read more
CD // £11.49Album of the Week
At long last available for public consumption - Johnny Jewel and co make their loooong overdue return with a gorgeous new album. It's now five years since 'Night Drive' triggered an avalanche of copy-cats and even a film - Nicolas Winding Refn's 'Drive' - and although we were all blessed with Johnny Jewel's sumptuous 'Symmetry, Themes for an Imaginary Film' earlier this year, the Chromatics proper have been noticeably absent save for 2010's fan-appeasing 'In The City' EP. So yeah, it's great to have 'em back. 'Kill For Love' was worth the wait, greeting us with 16 songs pushing Ruth Radelet and Adam Miller's vocals front and centre … Read more
Single of the Week
**Edition limited to 500 copies on 140g black wax** Camella Lobo's cultish Tropic Of Cancer make a very welcome return with an exquisite 12" on Rome, Italy's Mannequin imprint. Their flawless formula of starched drum machine, plangent jangle and wrist-slitting synth romance is resolutely unchanged and that's completely fine by us. Title track 'Permissions Of Love' is achingly gorgeous, Camella's opiated glossolalia following the sanguine contours of a dystopian, droning lead synth and a nightshift drum machine pattern made for bedsits and cruising light industrial zones at 4am. On B-side, 'Beneath The Light', a tinny w… Read more
Album of the Week
"Clone Classic Cuts continues their re-issues series for one of the most influential techno acts ever with a second volume in the Deep Sea Dweller reissue series. The second selection of tracks includes favourites such as ‘Bang-Bang’, ‘Positron Island’, ‘Anti Vapour Waves’ and ‘Journey Home’, complimented by some lesser-known and even previously undiscovered tracks. Raw, uncompromising music made with soul and creativity..."
Album of the Week
Modern minimalist hero and boss of the Line label, Richard Chartier, debuts his new guise Pinkcourtesyphone with one of the best things we've ever heard from the label - the outstanding 'Foley Folly Folio'. It's still purely electronic and relatively minimal in the wider sense of the word, but compared with his most stringent, process-based output, it could easily be deemed "maximalist", or perhaps most suitably, Pop Ambient. It's ostensibly a comfortable, luxurious, lounge-ready ambient exploration, but suffused with an unheimlich atmosphere manifesting in the same way that Lynch and Badalamenti, or even Boyd Rice's subv… Read more
Album of the Week
*Six tracks of KILLER body-working rhythmic dynamism and uniquely contoured edits from the mighty Pomassl* Franz Pomassl presents new, original material and tracks from his 2007 CD 'Spare Parts' on vinyl for the first time. The Austrian electronic innovator and craftsman has near-peerless, incredibly diverse credentials - from releases on Raster Noton and Sex Tags Mania to collaborating with Kodwo Eshun - and it's this duality of hi-end conceptual electronica and more base, grooving instincts which lie at the core of his music. Released through his long-running Laton imprint, 'Surplus Ships' breaks down as six tracks of body-working … Read more
CHARLEMAGNE PALESTINE
Alga Marghen
LP // £15.99
SOUNDTRACKS / LIBRARY / EARLY ELECTRONIC
Cat. Number: PLANA-P ALGA038
Album of the Week
**Limited edition of 380 copies of these incredible, seminal recordings** For your pleasure and enlightenment, Alga Marghen have pressed up two seminal, radical and previously unreleased realisations by Charlemagne Palestine. These 'Two Electronic Sonorities' are both products of his influential and personal Golden Research period in the 1960s, and with hindsight now confirm how advanced his approach to sound was for that time. The incredible 'Crown Chan' was first created for a dance by Gus Solomon in 1970 and Palestine clearly relished the opportunity to challenge the dancers with his experimental electron… Read more
Single of the Week
Girl Unit returns to the Night Slugs mothership with an EP hefty enough - six tracks - and rewarding enough to be described as a mini-album. We'd almost forgotten how good this fella is, and 'Ensemble (Club Mix)''s boogiedown synths and deadly drum programming instantly set us straight. 'Cake Boss' is quite simply mental, seeming to re-imagine 909-bashing techno brutalism according to the jagging, stop-start demands of a grime dance, and 'Plaza'' is a ghetto-electro bouncer for the jeeps, while 'Double Take' strips away the feelgood synths and pushes the same rhythmic template deep into 'floor-crushing abstraction - it almost wouldn'… Read more
THE HUNDRED IN THE HANDS
Keep It Low (Andy Stott / Patten / JD Twitch Remixes)
Warp
12" // £7.99
Cat. Number: WAP335
Single of the Week
*Includes a KILLER remix from Andy Stott, plus essential reworks from Patten and JD Twitch* The new single from Warp pop outfit Hundred In The Hands exceeds our expectations, thanks largely to what is honestly some of the heaviest sub-bass we've heard all year; wistful vocals, airy synth lines and ringing guitar complete the picture. The real draw is the remixes: Andy Stott breaks down and reconstructs the track according to the precise, airtight aesthetic of his landmark Passed Me By and We Stay Together LPs, using the original's vocal judiciously for a surprisingly anthemic climax.… Read more
Single of the Week
**First edition with picture sleeve** Slackk (aka Patrice & Friends) makes his first move of 2012 with the eagerly anticipated 'Raw Missions' for Local Action. Named after a former East London pirate station, this is effectively Slackk doing Grime instrumentals from his insider/outsider perspective - he ran the legendary Grimetapes facility from Liverpool for years - and it's effing deadly. Paying tribute to the ranks of Ruff Sqwad, DJ Oddz and Waifer, the EP rolls shoulders from trilling claps and seasick folk/road melodies on 'Blue Sleet' to the bare bones acidic syncopation of '90 Years' on the A-side, thru the G-Funk styles of '… Read more
Single of the Week
**Hand-stamped white label** Blank Mind - the label what dropped those maaad soca bits from Adrian Lenz/Sandman - do y'all a favour by pressing up two long-out-of-print, late '90s Juke aces from 'The Honorable' DJ Clent. Face up it's the weirdly wired '3rd Wurle' from Clent's 1st 12" on Dance Mania; an hydraulic Ghetto pumper with wheezee horns and glute-pummelling bass. Face down, 'Hit It From The Back' plays inside-out with herky-jerky claps and needling hi-hats locked on a percolating bassline. Original's would cost you a good deal more than this = don't be daft: cop dat!
Single of the Week
Essential remixes of Conrad Schnitzler by Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer. Sprawling, side-long workouts by Villalobos are no longer a novelty by any stretch of the imagination, but believe us when we say that the 'Sorgenkind-mix' of Schnitzler's 'Zug' genuinely counts among the finest productions of the Chilean's career thus far. He and his studio partner Loderbauer (Sun Electric, NSI, Moritz von Oswald Trio) bring the same exploratory yet forensically focussed approach to this project as they did to their reconstruction of the ECM catalogue last year. Once again, the tech… Read more
Recommended release
**One-time pressing of 330 copies only** "Issued for an art event recently presented at the Galleria Milano in the first week of April 2012, the recordings on this LP edition represent a very specific and intimate moment in the creative sound production of Davide Mosconi with NADMA associates Inez Klok and Gustavo Bonora. For Davide Mosconi and for all the artists and musicians involved in the groups he founded (the legendary NADMA, Organic Archestra, Il Quartetto, Alea), improvising sessions were a daily practice that founded their very idea of music: a constant flux, a spontaneous research as important as li… Read more
Recommended release
*9 classic Saturn LP releases from Sun Ra on 7 CDs in an individually numbered box set limited to just 500* All these albums are great, all of them quite different from one another and all featuring a lot of electric keyboards and Moog from the boss. The albums are: Disco 3000, Sleeping Beauty, On Jupiter, Beyond the Purple Star Zone, Oblique Parallax, Horizon, Nidhamu, Dark Myth Equation Visitation The Antique Blacks. All beautifully packaged in three-fold digipacks.
Recommended release
Daniel Savio - the man credited with christening Skweee and one of its most prolific protagonists - turns 'em out on MYOR. You get both sides of the man's character here: his floor-gratifying groove instincts are flaring on the rude bump and swing of 'Asscs Denied', whereas 'Make It Personal is cuter, lowlit and seductive.
Recommended release
*Three pieces from the Rotating Assembly's Craig Huckaby (brother of Mike), produced by Theo Parrish and Pirahnahead* From instrumental killer 'S.T.F.U.' to this ace, Theo Parrish's crucially contrary Sound Signature label presents three pieces from Rotating Assembly member Craig Huckaby (yep, brother of Mike). On 'Black Music' a close mic'd Huckaby lays esoteric narrative over Parrish's Weldon Irvine-sampling production, while the flip features a tripping, percussive Pirahnahead production set to the dubbed-out poem 'Squirrel', which is also included in a capella. Dope artwork, lyrics on rear of sleeve, limited copies!
Recommended release
Pasteman & Tanka hold it down for 877 Records with two 808-driven Electro/House rollers. 'Camaro' is the big one - all escalating arpeggios, ass-tapping cowbells and booming bass for your mum's Suzuki jeep. B-side 'Torino' plays it cooler with strutting, dubbed-out House vibes sounding like Wbeeza if he did a record for Swamp 81. Big twelve!
Recommended release
This is a bit of a treat – somehow 4AD have finally seen sense and gathered together everything ever put out from legendary electronic pioneers Colourbox and bundled it all together into a couple of releases for our pleasure. The band (made up of brothers Martyn and Steve Young and Lorita Grahame) were always an oddity on the 4AD label, even back in 1983 when their breakthrough EP (like all their other records, simply titled ‘Colourbox’) hit the shelves. To this day the band are still best known for contributing to M/A/R/R/S ‘Pump Up The Volume’, but their earlier material is far more exploratory and unpredictable. Jumping from the elect… Read more
WEST NORWOOD CASSETTE LIBRARY / PANGAEA
Coming On Strong (Pangaea Mix)
WNCL Recordings
10" // £7.99
Cat. Number: WNCL010
Recommended release
WNCL rolls out a cool and bumpy New Jersey House sound with 'Coming On Strong', backed up by a smart Pangaea remix. Ruddy acid bass locks hips with bouncing toms and sticky sax bleats on Bob Bhamra's (WNCL) tidy original, but if you want some grit swing look no further than Pangaea's clipped, body-tight flex on the flip!
Recommended release
*A ltd edition reissue in dramatic new, orange dayglo packaging of the double full-session version of the legendary Saturn classic* A single CD issue of the infamous Sun Ra concert recorded at the Teatro Ciak in Milan, Italy, on January 23rd 1978, Disco 3000 features playing from John Gilmore (tenor sax, drums and vocals), Luqman Ali (drums and vocals) and Michael Ray (trumpet and vocals) with Ra spreading himself between piano, organ, moog, "rhythm machine" and vocals. On Disco 3000 Sun Ra alloys his star-gazing free-jazz tendencies with the intoxicating rumble of electronic music, From the arping bloops and introductory ch… Read more
Recommended release
Three deep-fried Boogie-Step burners with heavy grime and a Brazilian influence. It's not a simple concoction, but it's one well within Swindle's means. A-side 'Do The Jazz' syncs strummed guitar, tickled organ and Bossa scat on the intro before flipping into synth-strike Boogie-Step and back again. B-side 'Under The Sun' runs from halfstep sway to taut double-timed kick drums and raving synths, while 'If I Was A Superhero' comes off like Roy Ayers with a copy of fruityloops.
Recommended release
Body High captains and all-round party-starters LOL Boys follow-up that ace Hot City collabo with a killer 23-track mix CD for spiritual brethren UTTU. With the exception of DJ Haus' 'ardcore infection 'Can't You See', Capracara's 'House Of Dolls' and a couple others, it's pretty much a perfect cross-section of their tightly knit US niche, crammed with tracks from DJ Soulja-Man, Todd Edwards, Nadus, Massacooramaan, DJ Funeral, Dubbel Dutch, DJ Dodger Stadium and, of course, theyselves. Starting out with Todd Edwards recent redo of Musical Youth, you know this is going to be stacks of fun and it doesn't disappoint, progressively he… Read more
Book // £26.99Recommended release
*130 page book bound in soft cover* A wild trip through memory lane to an era filled with sleazy films, loud garage rock and industrial music experiments. Between 1985 and 1988, Swedish writer and photographer Carl Abrahamsson published his own fanzine Lollipop. The FanzinEra book contains photos & text from some of the interviews. Included in the book: Iggy Pop, The Cramps, Gun Club, Sonic Youth, Joe Coleman, Lydia Lunch & much more
Recommended release
It's no secret how much we like Spectrum Spools over here, and this sort of release is really what separates them from many other labels of their ilk right now. Drainolith's 'Fighting!' is probably the most disarmingly confusing record to emerge from the Spools camp to date, and in that maybe the most rewarding. Sure on the first listen it might sound like three dudes jamming independently of one another, but as you let the layers blend together - the syrupy synthesizer tones, the Royal Trux-devoted blues guitar twangs and the hauntingly deadpan vocals, it starts to make perfect sense. Fans of Shadow Ring probably won't need this kinda… Read more
Recommended release
The Glaswegian producer behind last year's Joy Orb and Gilles P-tipped singles serves a classy mini-LP of pan-global riddims for Huntleys & Palmers. Informed by Kodwo Eshun's concept of Afro-futurism and an innate feel for plush, plump groove construction, the eight tracks of 'Future Rhythm Machine' hybridise UK Bass and Afro-Latin Highlife sensibilities with a seductive, succinct ability like few others. He's joined by Chilean vocalist Mamacita on a swaying moire of bleeps and hip-greased shuffle for opener 'Haven't Got Any Body' and the crafty balance of moody bass descent and Cumbia twang on 'La Samaria', while SA ex-pa… Read more
Recommended release
October & Borai give up some genuinely *Deep* House for Bristol's stalwart Applepips imprint. In contrast to the flood of by-numbers chugg-offs streaming from that city and unfortunately everywhere else, there's a keener sense of experience, craft and intention to these two aces which a lot of youngers could learn from. A-side 'I Didn't Mean To' arrives at a unique juncture of rumping Detroit beatdown, machine Boogie and swooping junglist torque, deftly re-entwining their shared pre-1990 DNA with precise, lushly floating and powerful effect. We'd imagine A Guy Called Gerald or 4 Hero to give nods of approval. Flipside 'Palma… Read more
Recommended release
*Classic album from 1972 finally gets a proper release via Light In The Attic, remastered from original tapes and including liner notes by Mikey ‘IQ’ Jones and never-before-seen archive photos* "Annette Peacock, the avant garde American composer, collaborator with Salvador Dalí, friend of Albert Ayler and Moog-synth pioneer, brought this seismically influential session out in 1972 – its synth-warped banshee vocals, morphed jazz ballads, Motown grooving and squelchy electronics were to touch many jazz and pop artists in that decade, most notablyDavid Bowie and Mick Ronson. Early on, Peacock's spacey, harmonically drifting pieces w… Read more
