18 November 2017

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Albums and Singles

"Once encountered, the exquisite, low-key charms of Craig Tattersall, Andrew Johnson, and Nicola Hodgkinson's band, Remote Viewer, leave an impression that lingers long after their records stop playing.

A decade since departing with I Can't Believe It's Not Better (2008), Other Ideas recalls their lower case sound as you've never heard it, presenting ten previously unreleased songs drawn from minidiscs "before the last functioning MD player in Prestwich gave up the ghost," and pressed it to vinyl.

Perhaps the greatest champions of drizzly, Lancastrian mood music ever known, Remote Viewer formed as a splinter group from Leeds-based Hood with their eponymous 1999 debut, taking the opportunity to pursue a fragile, downbeat strain of electronic song-craft and experimentation that quietly held steady against the grain of much electronica during that era.

Over the course of four albums and four EPs, they addressed ambient pop music's barest essentials with a succinct blend of miserablism and refined, adroit technicality that they could safely call their own, and more or less sprang a whole scene of copycats in their wake. Us. In Happier Times is the Remote Viewer's typically ambiguous title for this collection; ten grainy and richly evocative pieces of haptic scrabble and jaded gestures as inviting as a warm brew and a two-bar heater on a piss wet night. It's the sound of glacial English valleys after-hours, finding them animating ambient embers and wilting pop hooks with clipped, Teutonic glitches, and subby pulses. The results form a curious and emotionally intelligent adjunct to then-contemporary dance or pop music, a sound best received on punctured sofas in small coffee shops and living rooms, one which will forever be reminiscent of wet mornings back at the turn of the century.

With the flickering fizz of "Tonight It Feels Like Spain," you hear all three members in intimate dialogue, opening a session that variously takes in SND-like garage minimalism and what sounds like Muslimgauze fever-dreaming in two-step on "Complaining Of Feeling Unwell," or a pre-echo of autonomic D&B in the Arovane-esque nerve pinch of "The Sound Of Old Helmshore," whereas "This Old Face Dates Me" is like a prickly Arran to the suave, cashmere gentility of To Rococo Rot, and the crackling group harmonies of lullaby closer "When It Was Over" forms possibly the loveliest finale to any record you'll find in 2017."

-via Forced Exposure

US Release date: December 15, 2017

16 November 2017

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Albums and Singles

San Francisco, CA – Gearing up for the release of its first full length album in over seven years, (they released a tour-only EP last year) seminal electronic band MEAT BEAT MANIFESTO (MBM) is ready for the release of IMPOSSIBLE STAR on January 19, 2018 via Flexidisc distributed by Virtual Label.  The album will be available for preorder through iTunes (http://apple.co/2hR3DYb), Google (http://bit.ly/2hZ3vpy) and Bandcamp (http://bit.ly/2xj1uLi).

Often using politics and cultural events as a starting point, MBM mastermind Jack Dangers connects the current climate to the creative direction of Impossible Star. "I suppose it would be similar to an MC Escher optical illusion which spirals around and around and never seems to end, which can be used as a metaphor of many current events and other pertinent things right now," he says.

Minimal, textural and cinematic in scope, Impossible Star follows the music innovator deeper into more experimental territory. From the thick and discordant soundscape of “One” to the cut-and-paste pastiche of “Bass Playa” to the downtempo of “T.M.I.”, Impossible Star is a layered exploration of sounds and rhythms. 

"MBM has always gone in many different directions," Jack explains. "'I Am Surrounded' and 'T.M.I.' represent the paranoid xenophobic 'so-called' fake news cycle we are living in.  But seriously at this point, I really wouldn't know what to say. We've entered a world of surrealism which is uncharted territory for me… or maybe it's territory we've been through before in the '30s?  What do I know… Further explorations are in the pipeline!


With tour dates being planned for next year, MBM will be performing one show on this side of 2018 at Cold Waves LA – Day 2 on Saturday, November 11 at The Regent Theater in Los Angeles (headlining with Revolting Cocks and MC900 FT JESUS).  Those familiar with MBM's mind-blowing live performances are fully aware that the visual component combines a sonic electronic assault with their stunning and often political video mash-ups. The visual “battles” waged between mastermind Jack Dangers and MBM partner-in-crime Ben Stokes will undoubtedly be uproariously provocative and incredibly timely with video samples culled from news reports and found footage.


MBM's consistent musical invention has led to all forms of electronic musical experimentation over its 30 year history, from jungle to techno to industrial to dubstep to jazz fusion. Its long string of influential futuristic classics includes such groundbreaking tracks as "God O.D.", "Strap Down", "Psyche Out", "Helter Skelter", "Radio Babylon", "Edge of No Control" to "It's The Music". The single, "Prime Audio Soup"(from the album Actual Sounds and Voices) was featured in the sci-fi fantasy blockbuster The Matrix and on its platinum-selling soundtrack.


An acknowledged and celebrated innovator in the electronic music scene (his remix of Tower of Power's "What Is Funk?" was nominated for a Grammy in 2006), Jack Dangers continues to stretch sonic boundaries and influence new generations of sound activists. As a premiere remixer, producer and sound designer, he has played a seminal role in defining tomorrows' music today. Past production/remixing projects include: Public Enemy, David Bowie, Orbital, Nine Inch Nails, David Byrne, Bush, Depeche Mode, and Tower of Power. 


Looking ahead to 2018 and the release of Impossible Star, Jack is cautious at best for what's in store. "Well, I am afraid at this point it looks like it's going to be fear… more fear… I got the fear… happy new year! <mis·in·for·ma·tion> is all we are gonna get now."

Impossible Star will be released on January 19, 2018 via Flexidisc with distribution by Virtual Label.

11 November 2017

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Albums and Singles

On-U sound are proud to present the re-release of Dub Syndicate's first five albums: The Pounding System, One Way System, North Of The River Thames (with Doctor Pablo), Tunes From The Missing Channel, and an album of all previously unreleased dubs, Displaced Masters.

All formats are available for purchase here!

Last Chance to buy tickets for Sherwood at the Controls, at the Jazz Cafe.

09 November 2017

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Albums and Singles

05 November 2017

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Albums and Singles

Norway’s Benjamin Finger plunges the listener into a pulsing, sparkling disorienting world in For Those About To Love.

Part collage, part dream; by turns joyful, sombre, heartfelt and playful this album is a layered and diverse journey into the mysteries of the heart.

Out November 20, 2017 on Flaming Pines.

04 November 2017

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Albums and Singles

The self-titled single from the upcoming Post Self album.

Post Self will be released on Avalanche Recordings on November 17th, 2017.

More information will eventually appear here.

04 November 2017

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Albums and Singles

Cassette produced in an edition of 150 by Dauw (Ghent, BE) with dried flower, hand-assembled package, and an original Polaroid taken by Thomas Meluch.

Recorded at La Berceuse (Seattle, WA) in 2017 with guitar, bass, voice and magnetic tape; field recordings from Iceland, France and the United States.

More information can be found here.

04 November 2017

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Albums and Singles

Home Age is the first proper Eleh full length since 2012's Homage To The Pointed Waveforms. Packaged in a deluxe gold on black heavy duty letterpress jacket made by Studio On Fire in Minneapolis. Edition of 500. Also available simultaneously is a new split LP between Eleh & Christina Kubisch.

These three new pieces seek to expose the inherent musicality of pure electrical currents via high resolution Serge STS synthesizers. Like early Eleh work, Home Age is inward looking and deliberate but also slowly emotional and revealing as if peering blurry eyed through a window. Melody, harmony and counterpoint are suggested but not revealed.

More information can be found here.

04 November 2017

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Albums and Singles

Musique Hydromantique is the second solo album by Tomoko Sauvage archiving many years of her performance-based practice on the waterbowls – the natural synthesizer of her invention, composed with porcelain bowls filled with water and amplified via hydrophones (underwater microphones). While her first album Ombrophilia (released on and/OAR in 2009) was studio-recorded /composed work, Musique Hydromantique is about experimentation and improvisation with the environment – acoustics affected by the architecture, temperature, humidity and the human presence.

For more than ten years, Sauvage has been investigating the sound and visual properties of water in different states, as well as those of ceramics, combined with electronics. Water drops, waves and bubbles are some of the elements she has been playing with to generate the fluid timbre. Since around 2010, hydrophonic feedback has been an obsession for the musician – an acoustic phenomenon that requires fine tuning depending on the amount of water, a subtle volume control and interaction with the acoustic space.

"Calligraphy" was recorded in a genuine echo chamber, with about 10 second reverbs, situated in a former textile factory. Like an endless exercise to draw perfect curves and forms floating in the air, the subaquatic feedback frequencies are pitch-bended with the mass of water sculpted by a hand changing its quantity. "Fortune Biscuit" is about the singing bubbles emitted from the pieces of 'biscuit' (porous terra-cotta). Depending on the texture of the surface, each biscuit makes different sound : insect and animal voices in a forest, motors, crying babies changing pitches and rhythms while absorbing the water… "Clepsydra" (meaning "water clock") features Sauvage's classical technique, a random percussion with dripping water. She tunes the waterbowls by adding and removing water, making flowing glissando, to find the balance point in ever-changing tonalities.

Just as the flow of water is subject to a number of variables such as temperature and pressure, water clocks mark a time that is shifting and relative. However, slowness dominates throughout the album as a result of favoring the full resonance of the instrument, leading to a path to experiencing timelessness.

Hydromancy is a method of divination by means of water. Unpredictable bubbles and water ripples become oracles. Evaporation and acoustic space constantly play a chance operation. Through primordial materials and ritualistic yet playful gestures, Musique Hydromantique questions contemporary divination.

All the tracks are live-recorded without electronic effects or editing. They were recorded during the night or very early in the morning and the whole album is to be listened to during that period of a day.

More information can be found here.

29 October 2017

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Albums and Singles

An expanded 2xCD edition of the classic album from Tuxedomoon member Blaine L. Reininger, originally issued by Crepuscule in 1984 and now newly remastered from the original analog tapes.

Night Air was recorded in Brussels in 1983, shortly after Reininger left Tuxedomoon, in collaboration with former Sleepers guitarist Michael Belfer. Other guests include Steven Brown and Winston Tong of Tuxedomoon, and Marc Hollander of Aksak Maboul. The final mix was supervised by Gareth Jones, famed for his work with Depeche Mode, Einsturzende Neubauten and Wire.

The part-instrumental album offers a sequence of bittersweet expatriate vignettes. "I suppose I should be grateful to the capital of Europe for providing the seed around which so much of my spleen could crystallize for so many years," explains Reininger, who hailed from Colorado via San Francisco. "Brussels provided me with such a rich source of melancholic poetry."

The 10 core tracks on Night Air include popular single Mystery and Confusion, as well as Birthday Song (originally performed by Tuxedomoon), the elegiac Ash and Bone, and the exquisite baroque pop of A Café au Lait for Mr XYZPTLK. The 6 bonus tracks on Disc 1 include Windy Outside (a collaboration with Mikel Rouse), The Sea Wall (performed with Durutti Column) and two versions of Crash, written by Reininger and Belfer in 1980 for Tuxedomoon, and subsequently remixed by The Residents.

Disc 2 preserves a previously unreleased live recording from Bologna, Italy, on 19 March 1984. Billed as the Spiny Doughboys Review, the 14 song set includes songs from Night Air and Broken Fingers.

The deluxe 2xCD set is housed in a 6 panel digipack. Cover photography is by Charles Van Hoorick, with liner notes by Reininger, Belfer and Gilles Martin.