DJ Kicks | Marcel Dettmann (!K7 Records)

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Marcel Dettmann has mixed the latest edition of the highly respected DJ-Kicks compilation series. Whilst Dettmann is well-known for his incendiary sets at his residency at Berghain, his DJ-Kicks mix is crafted for listening, and displays a more reflective side of the DJ and producer. The mix explores a wide array of selections from various subgenres; ranging from the a new vocal-led Strictly Rhythmrelease, to rapping on Clarence G‘s 1991 release ‘Cause I Said It Right‘, recently reissued by Clone Records.
Over the course of its 1hr 14 duration, Dettmann reveals multiple new original productions; most notably a collaboration with Levon Vincent, ‘Can You See It’. The pair have collaborated once in the past, releasing ‘Vengeance‘ on Levon‘s own Novel Sound label towards the end of 2015 to critical acclaim. ‘Can You See It‘ sees the duo venture into darker territory; a stripped back, sub-bass laden affair, the quality of this production immediately stands out in the early stages of the mix. Dettmannalso collaborates with MDR affiliate Wincent Kunth on ‘Possible Step‘. In addition to five brand new original Dettmann remixes and edits, there’s an unreleased remix of Marcel‘s ‘Let’s Do It‘ from Ostgut Ton labelmate Rolando.

Discover DJ Kicks | Marcel Dettmann (!K7 Records)

ALTARS ALTARS | Small Hours (Home Normal)

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The work of Moritz Leppers, the man behind the Altars Altars moniker, makes music using a variety of instruments running through his faithful old reel to reel machine. Much has been made of reel to reel in recent years it has to be said, but when you come across an artist who uses its limitations and beautiful randomness to such effect, it always stirs something deep within me. It is very refreshing to hear someone who makes simple, melodic, and inherently soulful ambient music, and it is a reminder of how rare it is to listen to such music and really feel connected when people play around far too much with computers, software, and plug-ins. Taking a few steps back and letting the music breath in such an organic way really has much deeper meaning for me. Through these limited means, Altars Altars has created a sun-drenched beauty of an album, that hums, buzzes, and whirs away its innocent melodies in a childlike dream world.

Discover ALTARS ALTARS | Small Hours (Home Normal)

SHIFTED | Appropriation Stories

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Shifted‘s debut for Hospital Productions following an album for sublabel Bed Of Nails in 2013. Integrating his more searching work as Alexander Lewis and his increasingly introspective work asShifted while eloquently addressing his past, ‘Appropriation Stories‘ is a comprehensive statement of intent and Brewer‘s finest, most mature work to-date. Guy Alexander Brewer is involved in several projects taking in techno, noise and experimental electronics overlaying a once-hidden past in drum’n’bass. Having shunned his previous work inCommix, more recently Brewer has learned to look back, even making sideways stabs into breakbeat territory with his Covered in Sand alias. The process grows more intricate and subtle on his new album for the Hospital Productions imprint helmed by Dominick Fernow (aka Prurient, Vatican Shadow). Here rigorous processing and studio treatments transform classic breaks into deeply hidden components that add new layers of character to his highly-developed techno sound.

Discover SHIFTED | Appropriation Stories (Hospital Productions)

MONOLAKE | VLSI (Imbalance Computer Music)

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Robert Henke is back with a new album under his Monolake alias. Instead of simply being a collection of tracks, it has a deeper story. Here it comes:

* In the late 1970s, a series of significant enhancements in technology further accelerated the evolution of the digital age. Graphical interfaces, networked computers and new software tools allowed to design and manufacture integrated circuits with tens of thousands of functions on one chip; a process called Very Large Scale Integration – VLSI. The structures became so complex, that for the first time computers were needed to build the next generation of even faster computers.
* As a result of that evolution, the heart of a computer could now be put onto a single chip – the microprocessor was born. It made possible the move from large mainframe systems to personal computers, allowed teenagers to build systems in garages and become billionaires, gave birth to the game industry, and also enabled the creation of completely new electronic musical instruments: digital sound generators, drum machines, samplers and effects.

Discover MONOLAKE | VLSI (Imbalance Computer Music)

PETER BRODERICK | Partners (Erased Tapes Records)

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Veteran Erased Tapes recording artist Peter Broderick set to release new studio album Partners on 19th August 2016. For close to a decade, Portland’s Peter Broderick has cut his own unpredictable path through the world of contemporary music. So far, his wanderings have led him from solo works into the realms of film, dance and documentary scores, as well as art installations. Now Peter takes that unpredictability one step further. For his latest album, a series of voice and piano recordings, he experiments with chance, surrendering an entire song’s composition to the roll of dice. As he explains below in an email to Erased Tapesfounder Robert Raths, it was John Cage’s tendency to remove himself from his music, to somehow automate his own process, which inspired the strange mechanics with which this record was created.
In the words of Cage himself, ‘the world is teeming; anything can happen.’

Discover PETER BRODERICK | Partners (Erased Tapes Records)

LEGIAC | The Voynich Manuscript (Dronarivm)

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After last year’s sophomore release, The Faex Has Decimated, on Tympanik Audio, the Legiac project is back, but this time on the Russian based Dronarivm label, where the new album feels more at home. This time, the electronic duo of Roel Funcken and Cor Bolten take on a more meditative approach to their mildly glitch-infused, modular explored sounds, weaving in ambient textures, field recordings, and vast soundscapes.

Discover LEGIAC | The Voynich Manuscript (Dronarivm)

MIKE & RICH | Expert Knob Twiddlers (vinyl reissue)

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A collaboration between Aphex Twin (Richard D. James) and µ-Ziq (Mike Paradinas), Expert Knob Twiddlers was made back in 1994. Richard edited the tracks into shape later in 1996 with his new Apple Mac computer and it was released later that year on Rephlex, the label he co-owned and which released the first two albums by µ-Ziq.

This new reissued version has been carefully cleaned up, re-edited and remastered from the original DAT tapes, put into a more fitting order and, more excitingly, seven new bonus tracks and alternative versions have also been added. The album was recorded over a few days during the 1994 World Cup, back when Richard lived in a big shared flat in Stoke Newington. Richard had tried to collaborate with a few other likeminded artists but something clicked when Mike and Rich worked together and the sessions have a unique feel, playful and at times actually drunk…

Discover MIKE & RICH | Expert Knob Twiddlers

PROJECT STS-31 | Spiralgalaxie (Hubble Telescope Series Vol. III) – CD/LP

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Celebrating Solar One Music‘s 40th release and 10th anniverary, this split LP sees two stars under various disguises, Heinrich Mueller (aka Der Zyklus and various other projects) and German producer Robert Witschakowski aka The Exaltics, back to back in a no return odyssey through the depths of the Galaxy.

Expect nothing but contemplative and cosmic electro beats using original outer-space sounds from the Universe. The final chapter of the series dedicated solely to Hubble and all the great scientists and engineers at the NASA and ESA, comes with a beautiful cover print picture taken by the Space Telescope.

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Scandinavian Swords II | Northern Electronics – 3×12″

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30 releases strong, Northern Electronics calls to arms for an entire army-strong release. Scandinavian Swords II collects new players next to the regular stable into a 3×12″ release, where the labels many facets gets showcased through the hands and minds of its artists. In this wonderful sonic mixture lies the trademark sound of Northern Electronics, buried deep into the minds of the forward-thinkers.

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TANGENT | Collapsing Horizons (n5MD)

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Collapsing Horizons is the third full length album from Netherlands based deep ambient duo Tangent. This album much like the two preceding it – 1mk2 (Mindtrick) and 20Transience (Tympanik) – is a sonic journey with arching atmospheres and themes. An aural representation of the formation of matter and it’s disintegration in unison. The music, much as the album’s namesake, could very well be the soundtrack to new universes being created on the ashes of collapsing ones. Ralph van Reijendam and Robbert Kok who are the two behind Tangent moonlight in a long list of paradoxical musical projects. Fire Walk with Us, Rob Klerkx and the Secret, Disavowed, and Synesis Absorption are all quite different from Tangent‘s sprawling yet steady ambience. Collapsing Horizons is available on CD & Vinyl format.

Discover TANGENT | Collapsing Horizons (n5MD)

SHIELD PATTERNS | Mirror Breathing (Gizeh Records)

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Manchester-based duo Shield Patterns return with a new album entitled Mirror Breathing. Released on band member Richard Knox’s own Gizeh Records label, Mirror Breathing follows on from the critically acclaimed debut album Contour Lines. Where it’s predecessors took a more stark, electronic and processed approach, Mirror Breathing is an altogether warmer, more cinematic record. The cello of guest collaborator Julia Kent (Antony & the Johnsons / The Leaf Label) introduces a new element and a new energy to the sound, pulling the songs into a more symphonic form. The electronics, drones and field recordings are intricately and painstakingly arranged by the duo, meandering between haunting vocal passages, clarinet swells and delicate synth phrases. The album ebbs and flows through hypnotic beats (Dusk, Blue Shutters, Glow), ethereal and tender piano-led songs (Bruises, Anymore) to more aggressive, heavily experimental, free-jazz elements (Balance & Scatter). Available on CD & Vinyl.

Discover SHIELD PATTERNS | Mirror Breathing (Gizeh Records)

BIOSPHERE | Departed Glories (Smalltown Supersound)

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It’s easy to forget that Norway shares a short stretch of frontier with Russia, right at the northernmost tip of the country. That region is where Geir Jenssen, the Norwegian electronic producer behindBiosphere, comes from, and where he has been composing his austere, disturbing and deeply textured ambience since the early 1980s. Biosphere has released many albums to date including Substrata, voted the greatest ambient album of all time on the Hyperreal website, and has collaborated with Arne Nordheim, Higher Intelligence Agency, Deathprod, Pete Namlook and Bel Canto. His 12th album Departed Glories is his first in almost five years and marks a new deal with the Oslo independent label Smalltown Supersound.

Discover BIOSPHERE | Departed Glories (Smalltown Supersound)

LUSTMORD | Dark Matter (Touch Music)

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This project is derived from an audio library of cosmological activity collected between 1993 and 2003. It was gathered from various sources including NASA (Cape Canaveral, Ames, The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Arecibo), The Very Large Array, The National Radio Astronomy Observatory and various educational institutions and private contributors throughout the USA. While space is a virtual vacuum, it does not mean there is no sound in space. It exists in space as naturally occurring electromagnetic vibrations, many well within the range of human hearing while others exist at different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum and these can be adjusted with software to bring them within our audio range. The recordings of these interactions in space come from several different environments including radio, ultra violet, microwave and X-ray data and within these spectra a wide range of sources including interstellar plasma and molecules, radio galaxies, pulsars masers and quasars, charged particle interactions and emissions, radiation, exotic astrophysical objects, cosmic jets and flares from magnetars.

Conceived and Produced by B.Lustmord.
Recorded in Los Angeles October-December 2015.

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PLANETARY ASSAULT SYSTEMS | Arc Angel (Ostgut Ton)

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With Arc Angel, Planetary Assault Systems departs to new musical frontiers by focussing on melody, but staying rooted in the purist values of Techno that Luke Slater shaped over his decades- and generations-spanning career. While the album title may sound like a reference to spiritual matters, it hints to rather secular affairs – piety is a relict of the past after all. Arc Angel is a postmodernist, non-comfortist Techno album first and foremost, catering as much for club contexts as for accessibility in new melodic terms.

Discover PLANETARY ASSAULT SYSTEMS | Arc Angel (Ostgut Ton)

MURCOF & WAGNER | Statea (Infiné) | CD & Vinyl

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Appearing unusual at first, this collaboration between Mexican Ambient figurehead Fernando Corona(better known as Murcof) and multi-award winning French classical pianist Vanessa Wagnersurrenders a sublime logic. Both classically trained, their career paths took different trajectories, but converged toward the same enthusiasm when it comes to minimalism. The project was initiated in 2010 at InFine‘s own creative retreat – the Workshop InFiné festival in Normandoux next to Poitiers in France. Six years on from that initial meeting, and many captivating performances later, they’ve crafted a unique studio album that captures the essence of their concert.

Discover MURCOF & WAGNER | Statea (Infiné) | CD & Vinyl