Raime: Quarter turns over a living line – Blackest Ever Black LP01
This great 2×12” gatefold record is an intense body experience, so listen as loud as possible! London duo Joe Andrews and Tom Halstead make beautiful, deadly done/ambient/noise soundscapes. The 40+ minutes open with the excellent grating track ‘passed over trail’, and most of the tracks demonstrate a powerful intermixing of machine noise elements and live instrumentals of walls of distortion and guitar and cello acoustics like on ‘your cast will tire’. ‘Exist in the repeat of practice’ offers hypnotic loops and soft drum patterns that create an extremely paranoid landscape. Definitely recommended!
Robert Hampson: Signaux – Emego 148.1
This vinyl release features microscopic sounds, alien terrains, glitchy patterns that flow in an out of each other. Made from only analog electronic sounds, Hampson emphasizes texture, process, undulating pathways and lots of mystery. Seems like an excellent space age soundtrack for total escapism.
Hyena: Atrabile – Dark Industry I
The net label Dark Industry’s first release by Hyena offers 10 tracks of genre bending music making for an intense listening experience. The 9th track ‘opium eaters’ is a contemplative ambient noise track journeying into dark recesses, while the 8th track ‘civilization of death (animal liberation now!)’ uses hard-step beats to increase the anxiety then moving towards a more glitchy idm style. Tracks like ‘furore’ go in a totally different direction than expected, and ‘tanzhall 666’ is the most dance oriented. All the tracks are really diverse offering unusual programming and layers of dark melodies and noise.
Ancient Methods: Seventh Seal – Ancient Methods 07
This green marbled 12” has all the staple sounds of pounding techno of the previous AM releases. The first track ‘knights and bishops’ is fine, but a bit conventional, while A2 ‘kings and pawns’ offers up more industrial-techno sounds and experimental construction that is quite interesting. B1 ‘when all is said and done’ industrial ebm clanging tempo is slow moving at first but gets going in the buildup; ‘castling becomes inevitable’ is the most hard-edged track with some nice grinding elements and staccato militant beats edging away from conventional techno mechanics. Good for some slower mixing as this release hovers at 124 bpm.
Katharsys: Filthcast 39
This excellent mix features all tracks either by katharsys or remixes of his tracks by other artists. With 55 minutes of non-stop hard drum n’ bass, this is by far the best filthcast put out in some time. I’ve listened to this so many times, and I’m not tired of it yet! Download immediately if you didn’t catch it when it was first released!
Darkmatter Soundsystem digital releases
Long-time darkmatter crew member Resurrector releases are relatively few with one split 12”, a track on DM12004 12”, and the dm cd split with minion, but Resurrector has lots of outstanding tracks that should be put out immediately, especially for everyone who can’t see him play live at darkmatter parties in Los Angeles! Dmdigi001 ‘disconnected ep’ remedies the situation with 5 newer tracks. Resurrector opens with a melodic classical infused string orchestration that sets the tone. Track two ‘no tomorrow’ showcases the melodic synth lines and stomping beats and intense atmosphere that make for an unconventional dancefloor ruckus. Track four ‘aneurysm’ amplifies everything, and in the last third the sheer build up and tight programming leave you out of breath. Track five ‘upset the setup’ is my absolute favorite, with hard hitting beats, metallic noises and complex evocations. Dmdigi002 ‘remember ep’ by WMX is a five tracker of storming genre breaking madness. WMX is the newest member of dm, but has been making music and djing for years with So Simple Sound, is in the band Bestial Mouths, has released on the digital label Form & Structure, and will have a forthcoming split 12” with Bombardier on Void Tactical Media. WMX makes his point by naming all the tracks to commemorate important digital information freedom fighters, who have been imprisoned or persecuted by the American government. The ep opens with the track ‘assange’ which presents the hard hitting, in-your-face attitude, while track two ‘manning’ starts out more contemplative but has a desperate quality with stuttering beats and rapid industrial programming. Track three ‘hammond’ shows wmx experimenting uniquely with various genres prominent in the la music scene, and track four ‘swartz’ has intense industrial sounds and relentless pressure, and track five ‘weatherhead’ is more restrained and still offers up stepping rhythms to round out the ep. DMdigi003 “tools for tomorrow ep” by Fiend is released in October 2013.
Stormfield: Collapsing System – Combat Recordings 33
This excellent remix record features the original track by Stormfield on a1, a great hybrid of idm/experimental/acid/electro. A2 ‘rebuild’ remixed by DeFeKt constructs a nice, seamless grove for the dancefloor. B1‘collapsing system’ remixed by Nonima is an excellent remaking of an already top original, with its melodic, dark synth lines creating an apprehensive atmosphere. B2 ‘collapsing system’ remixed by Errorbeauty starts out with a space age experimental intro and moves into some hard beats and hypnotic acid lines, making this the most hard edge dancefloor track. The vinyl features the original and 3 remixes, while the digital version has two other tracks by Stormfield. Highly recommended!
Katsunori Sawa: The Two Legs EP – Weevil Neighbourhood STAND
The Weevil people do it again with this experimental 12” white vinyl 200 limited release. This appears to be Kyoto based artist Katsunori Sawa’s first solo vinyl release, and is refreshingly weird and unknown. A1 ‘augurs’ features slow moving repetitive techno beats with interesting atmospherics and noise. A2 ‘black sugar’ is more abstract with off kilter loops and beats. B1 ‘phenomenon’ starts out with a slow, more minimalist feel, with the pressure increasing through interesting use of siren sounds and scraping sounds. The last track ‘NGM’ is the most abstract with soft, flowing noise, abrasive static and clicking with dub elements. Weevil Neighbourhood also released Steven Porter ‘LR’ ep 12”, which is Sawa and Yuji Kondo.
Stazma the Junglechrist: Chaos Propaganda – Peace Off Limited 25
This 200 limited red vinyl is Stazma’s first 12” release, and definitely captures the intensity of his live performances. Exactly what you’d expect from Peace Off, this record is mashed up breaks (A1 ‘mash up the place), with hardcore, jungle, breakcore and whatever else put through the grinder to make any dancefloor turn wild. All the tracks go in the same direction and execute a similar idea, and B3 is a remix by stazma of dj skull vomit’s track ‘antigoon’.
Fausten: Fausten – Ad Noiseam 167EP
Monster X and Stormfield collaborate on their highly anticipated project Fausten, and have released the first s/t 12”, which features four tracks, a cd with those plus 7 more tracks of which 3 are remixes by Oyaarss, Dadub and Ontal, a brutal horror s/m video, and a mix for electronic explorations. The 12” comes with the cd, since cds are so cheap to produce now, it meets the needs of many djs who want the digital as well as vinyl, and the package 12” + cd can fetch a slightly higher price than a 12” alone. Dark, oppressive, and constrained, the 12” isn’t like each artist’s individual more dancefloor oriented productions. A1 ‘evisceration’ features stepping programming. A2 ‘punishment’ with its repetitive bass, illbient feeling and noisey atmospherics is an interesting track, but doesn’t unfortunately really develop in any way. B1 ‘stahlblumen’ is the strongest track with a complex construction of excellent downtempo groove, complex sounds layers with noises reminiscent of cloaks/3by3 terrain.
Kareem: Porto Ronco (Vinyl Edits) – Death of Rave 03
This is by far Kareem’s most experimental record to date featuring slowly evolving ambient noise soundscapes. The original piece is 45 minutes, but has been cut down to 3 tracks totaling 30 minutes for the vinyl (clear or black). The bside is more interesting with piercing, flowing reverberations that conjure up images of traveling to the underworld.
V/A: Spin Echoes – Spin Dynamics 02
This new label from Mainz, Germany is putting out some interesting cross-genre music, check out the first various record ‘the building principle’, and Spin-D3 and 4 have been released in 2013. A1 by Ykair starts things off with a dark tribe acid track. A2 ‘voodoo’ by Synth1feyed is reminiscent of tracks that came out of rome in the early/mid 90s with its dark industrial broken beats, and therefore is an excellent dancefloor contribution to the 12”. B1 by Dziki Kot is a hypnotic acid experimental track; B2 by DCIDHM is called ‘shivers from a dark mystic’ and accurately describes this great, moody experimental industrial beat oriented track that ends the record with some real foreboding feeling.
V/A: Mutant Dancefloor EP – RXSTNZ02
The Milan label RXSTNZ presents a new various artist picture disc 12” featuring excellent dystopian images of collapsing buildings by Vins Gross and graphics by a034 on each side. Opser, who we’d really like to see more releases from, contributes ‘NoNostante’ on A2, a hard hitting, grinding, scraping mid-tempo track full of bass great for experimental enthusiasts. Manual destruction’s B1 titled ‘Electric Bass Monster’ is creative electro with lots of humor from the melodic intro leading into the vibrant, dance inducing loops. B2 by Mbst8 contributes a nice broken beat number. This 12” is extremely varied in terms of technique, music genres and approaches to disrupt the dancefloor.
Reviews by Nemeton