ULTIMAE SHOWCASE | Particules – 23 June 2016
Join us at the record shop this Thursday from 6pm for the Before of the last ATOME parties organised by PARTICULES with special performances by De Santi and Lacroix
More info on this event (en Français!)
Join us at the record shop this Thursday from 6pm for the Before of the last ATOME parties organised by PARTICULES with special performances by De Santi and Lacroix
More info on this event (en Français!)
Mirror’s Edge Catalyst is out now with a soundtrack composed by Solar Fields.
If you’re not familiar with the game, it is a first-person action-adventure in which the player takes control of Faith Connors as she progresses through a futuristic city named Glass. Similar to the original Mirror’s Edge, players traverse the city using aspects of urban exploration and parkour movements to complete missions and evade or fight enemies.
Solar Fields is launching his new website at the same time and will be performing on 18th June for the game release party. Keep an eye on www.facebook.com/solarfields If all goes well Magnus will try to setup a live stream from the gig.
The Original Sountrack will be released this summer, more to be announced soon..
The “Icebergs” project is an exploration, a new way of perceiving and living music through an 8 hidden speakers installation in the Garden of Les Dominicains de Haute Alsace, each speaker broadcasting its own channel. Either walking or quietly sitting down in any part of the garden, one will be immersed in a wide-spread acoustic experience, far from our usual stereo / frontal approach. This 50 minutes vegetal infused musical work develops a game of harmonies, as a question / answer type of rebound, at times imperceptible, playful, sometimes introspective.
The music de-composition and re-structuration is based upon 4 works by Dutch composer Martin Van Rossum aka Martin Nonstatic, “Albedo Effect / Granite / Liquid Air / Out Of Silence” published by Bine Music and Ultimae. Each individual sound was separated and put aside to create wide-spread brand new remixes with one purpose in mind : redefine the harmonious focus and plant its seeds in the Garden.
A research on the theme of liquids operates to bind the diverse mixed chapters. Special microphones (hydrophones) were placed in the well of the convent to seize the liquid soul of the places. Personal recordings of diverse seas and beaches were filtered and slowed down to create the illusion of glaciers slowly colliding. Some sequences extracted from Arctic documentaries were also used. Being very attentive, one could even hear storks slamming their beaks during a lunch break on the ice floe: a purely Alsacian wink to these icy lands! Hopefully this installation will play your senses – in this redefined space and on-ice time.
Vincent Villuis | May 2016
Following collaborations with The Future Sound of London, Mark Morgan, working as Audio director for NIVAL, a Russian game developer and composing music for various TV Series, Vladislav Isaev, music composer and sound sculptor from Moscow, known as Scann-Tec releases his third opus Unyt on Ultimae.
We’re delighted to announce that the album will be available on Thursday 16th June, not only in an outstanding packaging but also digitally and for the first time in our release history in 5.1 format.
Pre-orders start now, listen to the extracts and support the artist!
Nietzsche once said: ‘I would only believe in a God who could dance’. The 2nd The Gods Planet LP, simply titled LP2, is ample proof that you can trust in Claudio PRC and Ness to make you dance. Built upon pieces of music purposely made for a live presentation at Paris´ well-regarded Concrete club, it sees the Italian duo of techno producers applying a willingness for inner and outer discovery, and a more human outlook to the brand of thoughtful, detailed, yet emotional and powerful productions, which they have built their name upon. New machines, techniques and skills are dexterously applied to the foundations displayed on the 1st album, from 2013, making it more direct and overtly danceable, not as experimental but certainly as explorative as before. It is the sound of two artists further more at ease with their standing in the scene, taking stock of their surroundings, before further ventures into the unknown, but still as interested and skilled as ever in telling stories. And what´s presented here is a compelling story of self-discovery woven into Claudio and Ness´s vision of techno and house music.
It is about accepting your darkness and light, past and present. Dreams, wishes, prayers and poetry created years back are now finally released so that new flowers can blossom inside the heart and soul. Spreading seeds that will grow into still unseen creations.
Swedish composer Fjäder present her first album Shades Of Light on Emanuele Pertoldi‘s imprint, Shaded Explorations.
Recorded partly in Senegal with local musicians playing traditional instruments, Landscapes Of The Unfinished is Piano Interrupted‘s 3rd album for German experimental label Denovali.
This album sees pianist Tom Hodge and “electronician” Franz Kirmann explore a more introspective approach to their sound. The sonorities and recordings the pair brought back from West Africa are deconstructed, mangled and texturised, turned into a pointillist landscape until only a faint and distant souvenir remains. These beds of pulsating soundscapes and earthy textures serve as base for Hodge’s delicate piano phrases and intricate compositions, interlaced with long-time collaborator Tim Fairhall‘s fluid double bass playing. Harsher territories are also visited during the 9 tracks that compose the LP; fuzzy Senegalese radio voices and the distant memory of African percussion collide with distorted bass and buzzing drones or screaming textures battle with screeching double bass sounds and tortured piano strings. The overall tone of the album reflects the duo’s desire to musically translate the experience of the Dakar trip (where Franz Kirmann grew up), but also to break away from the first two albums’ intricate programming and editing and instead go towards a writing and recording experience directly inspired by their live experience. Hodge’s clarinet, an important facet of the Piano Interrupted live show, is captured on record for the first time.
Discover PIANO INTERRUPTED | Landscapes Of The Unfinished (Denovali)
Tiny Birds is the new work by Marc Ostermeier. A resident of Baltimore, Maryland, Marc works as a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Johns Hopkins University. He also happens to be the co-founder of Words On Music and the Tench record label.
He defines much of his music as being ‘skeletal piano melodies’ which seems pretty accurate given the sparse nature of ‘Tiny Birds’. Yet, amongst the gorgeous little melodies at play here, there is a careful depth of sound design from a variety of found sounds and field recordings. Apart from the simplicity of his piano structures, there is a tellingly beautiful contribution from violinist Christoph Berg (Field Rotation). It is just the kind of album we love around these parts: namely, a work that takes its time to develop as it sees fit, without any need to rush to its restrained conclusion.
At The Turn Of Equilibrium is a very absorbing and imaginative album that’s been driven by Dundov‘s eternal quest of translating sound into emotion. Developed like a well-constructed DJ set, the album has not only been designed to invoke personal insight for music to be the catalyst for understanding but also make sense as a listen, highlighting Dundov‘s unparalleled talent, depth and versatility as a DJ/producer.
140-gram 4xLP, heavyweight package including CD. One time pressing of 500 copies worldwide.
Two years ago I played at Studio 9 in Vilnius, Lithuania. The following day I missed my flight home and ended up spending an extra day, which gave me a chance to explore the city with my friend Linus, who took me to the Contemporary Art Centre. It was there I spotted a book named ‘Rojus‘, that Linus told me translated as ‘Paradise’. The word and striking cover of the book stuck in my mind.
A few days after returning home, I turned on to a National Geographic documentary named ‘Designed To Dance’, explaining the courtship rituals of Birds Of Paradise. As I watched, i jokingly began drawing similarities between these birds’ attempts to captivate and impress the opposite sex with dance, and the way strangers try to attract one another in clubs and interact on the dance floor. This gave me the idea of creating a record of functional club music, sequenced as if it were a club night, from doors to closing, using samples of these Birds Of Paradise and their habitat. Thus, Rojus.
Discover LEON VYNEHALL | Rojus (Running Back)
Meet us on the Bellona river boat this coming Sunday from 4:30 pm for the Indoor / Outdoor : PH4S : Particules x OFF event. Plenty of good music and stalls!
Mark Beazley, Anne Garner and James Murray gathered at Slowcraft Studio in August 2015 without preparation or expectation. First Flight emerged unforcedly in a single sitting and is presented here exactly as played without edits or overdubs as Tetherdown‘s debut recording.
Magical, mystical and straight from the heart: after Until then, goodbye and A day in the life, the Hamburg based art curator, dj and producer Lawrence releases Yoyogi Park – the third part of an album trilogy for Mule musiq in collaboration with artist Stefan Marx.
The album explores unknowingly relations between his very own ambient productions, acoustic sound experiments and the driving force of the dancefloor. The artwork is showing a 360° degree view of the Yoyogi Park in the heart of Tokyo, that Stefan Marx created for a fanzine for the printed matter nyc book fair in 2015. Known to all people in tokyo and worldwide, the yoyogi park seems to be just another gorgeous everyday green life spot. But behind his beauty and anonymity you can find much craziness and mystery, too. it’s like the latest ten tracks by Lawrence: behind his abstract beats and compelling functionality you will discover parts of magic with a full-colour palette of mind-expanding sounds.
As both a producer and the helmsman of the Outis Music label, Dino Sabatini has carved out a distinctive musical style that shows a great reverence for both ancient archetypes and future possibilities for change (see, for example, his Mnemosyne’ co-release with Edit Select, in which each track is dedicated to a separate Greek goddess).
With one foot planted in a mysterious past and the other foot planted in a world yet to arrive, Sabatini‘s works are carefully realized emotional journeys that intertwine shimmers of optimism with undercurrents of poignancy or nostalgia. His latest full-length offering, Omonimo (that’s homonym’ for non-speakers of Italian), brings all of this to fruition on a record that demands (and rewards) deep listening.
Hello Friends, we are touched to finally present you Pampa Vol. 1. When we decided to go for a label compilation our main goal was: Every single song has to be a star! Almost 2 years we kept chasing and squeezing the best out of our good friends and admired artists until we now finally got what we dreamed of in the beginning: A Firmament of Stars. All tracks have been produced exclusively for this compilation and haven’t been released before! Enjoy!
We are pleased to announce the official physical release of AES Dana & Miktek’s third EP, The Unexpected Hours.
Now that the collection is complete, we are offering several ways to fully enjoy the music, the « FAR & OFF » wax pack for vinyl aficionados and the full pack for unconditional collectors.
Available in our Ultimae shops and Bandcamp page, do check the link below for a direct access to the releases.
The Unexpected Hours | Ultimae Shop
The Unexpected Hours | Bandcamp Shop
Far & Off – The Wax Pack | Ultimae Shop
Far & Off – The Wax Pack | Bandcamp Shop
Far & Off – The Full Pack | Ultimae Shop
Far & Off – The Full Pack | Bandcamp Shop
The Unexpected Hours associates the works of AES Dana and MIKTEK, the third chapter in a series of three.
Dedicated to these time-lapse moments, when the Big Clock suddenly seems to stop, when we are entirely free of any burden, enjoying only the current flow and the simple pleasure, in a timeless and undefined cocoon.
These 4 new & closing tracks continue to paint sturdy contrasts, conflicting and paradoxical emotions through grainy and liquid Drum works, magnetic soundscapes, blurry interferences and rushed audio switches.
Welcome to the final intersections.
Fumiya Tanaka has been regarded as one of the legendary DJ/artists in Techno over 20 years. He has been doing numerous projects such as his private label Torema Records, Op.Disc, Sundance and his famous party ‘CHAOS‘ (in Tokyo and Osaka). Through his long running career, he has been successfully expressing the possibilities of music.
While he’s barely paused for breath in the last decade, it’s still been eight years since Fumiya Tanaka delivered his last album, Unknown 3. The epitome of long overdue, You Find The Key is his fourth album. Interestingly, it sees the 44 year-old, Japanese producer tweaking his now familiar bass-heavy minimal techno blueprint. Thrillingly, the bass lines are bolder and jauntier, and the beats jazzier, resulting in an altogether funkier take on the minimal techno style. Of course, there are still moments that recall his previous work – see the deep and dubby “Swallowed Memory” – but it’s those that take a sideways step towards funk-fuelled pastures (“Munich Uncertain“, “The Only Your Researching“) that stand out.
This is minimal master Ricardo Villalobos‘ second full-length release for the Perlon label.
Following the last two 12″ Vasco releases featuring “Minimoonstar,” “Electonic Water” & “Amazordum” (containing remixes on the B-sides by Shackleton, San Proper & Baby Ford), this CD contains the full-session mix of “Minimoonstar” (32 minutes long!) as well as a CD-exclusive bonus track entitled “Skinfummel“.
This is quite possibly Villalobos‘ most experimental dance music to date, driving home his ever-widening philosophy that when styles have fallen into oblivion, when dance is subliminal, when positions don’t matter, when discussions have faded, when every substance has been dropped, when everyone is free of inert mass, when the set-up is cleared of significance, then mindset and music will float freely. There’s enough space to place countless seeds of sense, causing the joint communication between the players of the jam to flower out. The players of these jams are the many spirits of Ricardo Villalobos. His philosophy of the flow of absolute sound is in full evolution here, and this is 70 minutes worth of pure bliss.
Dartriix is a sporadic but permanent collaborative project between two of Op.Disc‘s label heads, Fumiya Tanaka and Yoshihiro Hanno aka Radiq. After 6 years of absence, Dartriix finally makes their return with this intensive double pack LP Flying One Hand, which is a good surprise to us.
During recent years, Berlin-based Fumiya Tanaka has established himself as one of the most impressive figure in Europe’s minimal scene after successive releases from Perlon. His tireless DJ touring rewarded in the form of impassioned supports from audiences in Germany, UK, France, Italy and Romania. On the other hand, with a number of quality releases like Eastern Hemispheres EPs on Euro-Moroccan imprint Cosmo Records and highly acclaimed 2013 double pack Vida Noir on Op.Disc, Yoshihiro Hanno aka Radiq have made reputation as a master of carefully arranged, funk-infused minimal.
6 years of break seems fairly enough for them to re-mature perspectives on their collaboration project. Between Paris and Berlin, they exchange ideas and basis of tracks to elaborate their images on respective tracks. In consequence, those countless interchanges made this Flying One Hand album a deep yet intricate piece of work. Simply put, his album offers up an indivisibly-united ideas and techniques from two of most illustrious producers of Japan’s modern minimal music.
As one half of the pioneering duo Vex’d (alongside Jamie Teasdale aka Kuedo), Roly Porter was intrinsic in the development of what would come to be known as dubstep. When Vex’d decided to go their separate ways in the mid 00s Roly pursued a solo career in an attempt to escape the genre constraints he felt had become a restriction.
With two solo albums behind him (Aftertime and Life Cycle Of A Massive Star), Roly‘s output has primarily been fuelled by a desire to write beatless music, something Roly is keen to specify he doesn’t view as being the same as ambient music. Roly‘s music isn’t about ‘day to day’ life. Instead it’s an opportunity for him to contemplate ideas outside his personal experience which in turn has had a profound impact on how Roly is able to see his own life and that of others around him.
Third Law is about combining everything Roly has loved and missed about producing sound-system music, with the compositional ideas he began to explore in his solo work. While Third Law is related to his past, for Roly this album represents a coming to terms with his goal of leaving dance music as it is, free to explore ideas of rhythm, bass and sound design within his own world without having to shape any of these elements to fit preconceived ideas or rules.