Downbeat | Electronica | Leftfield 302 Items

Director David Lynch once said "I long for a kind of quiet where I can just drift and dream. I always say getting inspiration is like fishing. If you're quiet and sitting there and you have the right bait, you're going to catch a fish eventually. Ideas are sort of like that. You never know when they're going to hit you." Inspired by this quote in both name and spirit, Hollie Kenniff's The Quiet Drift is an ambient gallery of cloudlike synths, seraphic strings, echoing guitars, and other celestial textures guided to cohesion by Hollie's own wordless singing. Though the album certainly creates (and originates from) the kind of space where Lynch's proverbial "fish" can be caught, The Quiet Drift is a fitting title for Hollie's own history, both recent and distant. During the course of the album's creation, Hollie and her family moved cross-country from an island in Washington state, to an island in Maine before ultimately relocating to Canada. "As a child I visited Ontario year-round," she explains in her own words. She continues "More than any other landscape, I think the lake, rivers, and woods there left the most enduring impression on me. The landscape and pace of life of these places will always stay with me." But the reverberant spaces Hollie crafts need no physical headquarters. Instead of conjuring views of nature at the ground level, her sound more readily evokes a top-down perspective, with the distinct features of the land shrinking underfoot as the listener becomes untethered from geography altogether. The Quiet Drift belongs more to the liminal spaces between life and afterlife, memory and fantasy, landscape and dreamscape, than any mappable locale. Describing her formative years, Hollie says "As a dual US/Canadian citizen who spent my childhood in a rural town-- one that I haven't returned to in many years - I have a sense of not entirely belonging anywhere. When I was a teenager my close friends were male musicians, so I was also an outsider to the degree that they were wild and anarchic in a way that I wasn't. I was a quiet book reader and avid music listener who enjoyed being around a creative group. I was also a radio DJ for alternative and punk music throughout high school." In this light, The Quiet Drift attests that creativity is placeless, and calls into question the stereotype of artists as scene-centric city dwellers. Having come of age in the absence of metropolitan sensory overload, Hollie learned to spot the muse in nature, and within herself, instead of the echo chamber of a frenzied peer group. On The Quiet Drift Hollie Kenniff wholly escapes from such pop-culture feedback loops into transcendent, shimmering realms, and she brings the listener along with her. In this age in which we have all been called to reevaluate our relationship to indoor spaces, and seek refuge in the great outdoors, The Quiet Drift provides an apt soundtrack for such rebalancing.

Techno isn’t a genre that has birthed many consistent albums, and the dub techno subgenre even less so, but one indisputable classic is Porter Ricks’ debut ‘Biokinetics’. Originally issued on the legendary Basic Channel sub-label Chain Reaction in 1996 following a trio of 12″s, ‘Biokinetics’ was the first of the label’s album releases, and still stands as its crowning achievement. Porter Ricks are Thomas Köner and Andy Mellwig, and between them they re-framed the techno sound, imbuing the spacious ambience pioneered by label bosses Mark Ernestus and Moritz Von Oswald with a frosty, isolated experimental bent, and combining it with the sort of haunted minimalism of early Plastikman. What separated ‘Biokinetics’ from other albums at the time was its unwavering narrative - the exact sound has been interpreted countless times since, but the immersive qualities of this singular record have rarely been touched. Maybe it is down to the silvery underwater concept that ties each track together - the bubbling pads, sub-aquatic basses and muffled kick drums. But as with any great album, it’s hard to exactly put your finger on what makes it a classic. Simply put ‘Biokinetics’ is one of the most important records in the genre and one of techno’s finest albums. It has been re-released ten years ago by Type Records, and now Mille Plateaux is celebrating Porter Ricks’ and Biokinetics’ 25th anniversary with this sumptuous double viny edition.

The Bug aka Kevin Martin, and producer/vocalist Dis Fig aka Felicia Chen, refer to their style on `In Blue' as "Tunnel Sound"; a foggy, melancholic meltdown of narco-dancehall-soul and dread-drenched, electronic dub. The 2018 prototype rhythms for this album were a continuation of Martin's ongoing quest for a futuristic dancehall mutation, but more sci-fi, aquatic and smokey than before. An obsessive search for the right sultry 2AM voice to ride his syncopated walls of sub, fuzzed out white noise and infinite echoes eventually led him to Dis Fig's torched soul-jazz glow, and 20 months of subsequent lab exchanges have resulted in the deeply sensual pulsations and lyrical long shadows of `In Blue' - an album that shares shades of King Midas Sound's wrecked lovers rock, alongside the bass immersion that The Bug has become infamously known for. Just as Martin took a stylistic swerve on `In Blue', so did Chen. Previously known for experimental noise onslaughts and emotional exorcisms, she opts here for threatening intimacy and hushed confessionals, concentrating on bittersweet vocals and seductive surprises that are all the more potent for their inferred narratives and delicate delivery. Mixed during lockdown, the sense of claustrofear, escapism and tension throughout is palpable. With the bewitching croon of Dis Fig directing the flow, carnality and violence merge under the turbulent, cinematic surface of an hypnotically addictive album.

Recorded over the course of March 2020 in Bandung and Amsterdam, ‘Poe’ is a collaboration between Jonny Nash and Teguh Permana. Permana is a renowned player of the Tarawangsa, a two-stringed instrument used in the sacred Tarawangsa music of Sunda, Indonesia. Poe’, meaning ‘Days’ in Sundanese, is a meditation on death and rebirth as reflected in the passing of time and the changing of the seasons. Permana is also active in the group Tarawangsawelas who released their debut album on Morphine records in 2017.

This is the new instalment of Soul Jazz Records’ ground-breaking Deutsche Elektronische Musik series, ‘a near-definitive guide to some of the world's most extraordinary music’ (The Guardian).

This latest edition features many of the classic German electronic and Krautrock groups from the 1970s & 80s – including Can, Amon Duul II, Harmonia, Conrad Schnitzler, Agitiation Free, Roedelius – as well as a host of lesser known artists such as Dzyan, Klauss Weiss, Gruppe Between and many more.

Deutsche Elektronische rarities unearthed on the album include Kalacakra (whose fan-base included the great Moondog!) and their superb ‘Nearby Shiras,’ taken from their super-rare spiritual/psychedelic private press concept album Crawling to Lhasa, from 1972.

Deutsche Elektronische 4 includes a wealth of German electronic experimental artists – the seminal pioneering group Harmonia (Roedelius, Moebius and Michael Rother), avant-garde guru Conrad Schnitzler as well as lesser known synthetic artists such as Klauss Weiss, Deutsche Wertarbeit, E.M.A.K. (Electronische Musik Aus Koln), Gunter Schickert and others.

Finally, the album also features an array of heavy and progressive German cosmic rock groups – Dzyan, Virus and the amazing Turkish/German tripped out sound of Alex’s ‘Patella Black’, recorded at Can’s Inner Space in 1973, produced by Holger Czukay and Jackie Liebezeit.

Deutsche Elektronische 4 comes with extensive newly commissioned sleevenotes by David Stubbs, author of the seminal books ‘Future Days: Krautrock and the building of Modern Germany’, ‘Mars By 1980: The story of Electronic Music’, and ‘Krautrock: Cosmic Rock and its Legacy’.

This album comes as a heavyweight triple vinyl edition with full colour inner sleeves, as well as a deluxe double CD edition with outsize booklet and slipcase. Both formats include full liner notes and extensive rare photography.

The 5Rhythms movement practice founder Gabrielle Roth’s dance meditation soundtrack from 1996.

A classically trained dancer, Gabriel Roth was involved with the early ’60’s counterculture movement as a dance instructor for therapeutic workshops at the legendary Esalen Institute in San Francisco and Arica School in New York. These facilities and groups played key roles in the Human Potential Movement in psychology which later led to Transpersonal Psychology and the New Age Movement.

Through direct encounters and training from the era’s noted psychologists, philosophers, anthropologists, and spiritual gurus, she single-handedly rediscovered and redefined the ancient shamanic technique of ecstatic dance, establishing a method she named 5Rhythms in the late 70’s.

The practice of 5Rhythms consists of five movements: Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical and Stillness. Through this dance sequence difficulties and obstructions in life can be identified and ultimately overcome. The sequence of the rhythms helps create waves that allow the dancer to reach a point of inner stillness. It is a globally recognised movement meditation practice with over 400 qualified teachers in more than 50 countries. Though Gabrielle Roth passed away in 2012, her spirit and legacy have been passed down through her family and extensive followers. It is still being practiced today.

In the words of Gabrielle Roth: “I have found a language of patterns I can trust to deliver us into universal truths, truths older than time. In the rhythm of the body, we can trace our holiness, roots that go all the way back to zero. States of being where all identities dissolve into an eternal flow of energy. Energy moves in waves. Waves move in patterns. Patterns move in rhythms. A human being is just that, energy, waves, patterns, rhythms. Nothing more. Nothing less. A dance.” A classically trained dancer, Gabriel Roth was involved with the early ’60’s counterculture movement as a dance instructor for therapeutic workshops at the legendary Esalen Institute in San Francisco and Arica School in New York. These facilities and groups played key roles in the Human Potential Movement in psychology which later led to Transpersonal Psychology and the New Age Movement.

Through direct encounters and training from the era’s noted psychologists, philosophers, anthropologists, and spiritual gurus, she single-handedly rediscovered and redefined the ancient shamanic technique of ecstatic dance, establishing a method she named 5Rhythms in the late 70’s.

The practice of 5Rhythms consists of five movements: Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical and Stillness. Through this dance sequence difficulties and obstructions in life can be identified and ultimately overcome. The sequence of the rhythms helps create waves that allow the dancer to reach a point of inner stillness. It is a globally recognised movement meditation practice with over 400 qualified teachers in more than 50 countries. Though Gabrielle Roth passed away in 2012, her spirit and legacy have been passed down through her family and extensive followers. It is still being practiced today.

In the words of Gabrielle Roth: “I have found a language of patterns I can trust to deliver us into universal truths, truths older than time. In the rhythm of the body, we can trace our holiness, roots that go all the way back to zero. States of being where all identities dissolve into an eternal flow of energy. Energy moves in waves. Waves move in patterns. Patterns move in rhythms. A human being is just that, energy, waves, patterns, rhythms. Nothing more. Nothing less. A dance.”

Infinity is the new release by Melbourne-based Leo James, and the second Patience production. Leo scratches a longstanding itch and delivers two sidelong excursions that inhabit a similar sonic space but spin off in opposite directions on the continuum.
Desert Nightflower hums with vitality in a seemingly lifeless landscape. Impressionistically tracing the lifecycle of a flower’s bloom in the desert night – from the searing afternoon sun through dusk’s chill, the midnight blossoming and symbiotic relationship with travelling bats, through the blue hour comedown to first light – Leo employs vibrant, buzzing electronics, plaintive strings and levitating clarinet to illustrate beauty’s brief conquest of nature’s harshest environment, with vividly evocative and deftly moving results.
After Desert Nighflower floats completely off the grid, an ever-present kickdrum drives Infinity’s near 20-minute trip into timelessness. Sharing Side A’s subliminal synthesised hum and free-form clarinet, Infinity moves fast and firm down a dub techno dirt road towards the end of time. As elements drop in and out of the mix, Infinity builds momentum to a pulsing, cathartic peak of poignant piano, ethereal keys and lucid clarinet expressions.
As an avid nature enthusiast, spatial awareness looms large in Leo’s work. His solo releases on Berceuse Heroique, Neubau and his own label Body Language have been inspired incarnations of techno, EBM, industrial and wave.
Patience is a new outlet for exploring further beyond the break than usual. Inspired by the music perpetually on rotation at HQ – with E2-E4 representing the format’s high tide mark – each release will be one artist’s deep dive down one inspirational wormhole spread across two sides of vinyl, or two side-long sojourns making full use of a round 12” piece of plastic. Set and forget, zone out to tune in.
Releases will be available via the regular digital platforms.

We also offer the limited yellow colored edition.

Started as the so called “Krautrock Guerrilla” in 2012, six years later the Berlin combo Camera are releasing their fourth full-length album. Customarily associated with the likes of NEU! and La Düsseldorf it is
time to allow Camera to break free of the krautrock tradition and accept that they are very much doing their own thing now. Motto: “It's not repetition, it’s discipline”
For fans of nominative determinism, there can be few more apposite appelations than Michael Drummer. He is the catalyst, the chain mail vapour trail linking everything together as he crosses the soundscape of everything captured on Camera. The band’s moniker Camera, meanwhile, is an altogether more capricious
calling card. Camera obscura. Camera lucida. From daguerrotype to digital, self-induction to selfies. The song title Super 8 offers a potential clue to the
camera in their mind’s eye. When Super 8 was introduced in 1965, it was one of the few film formats to accommodate a sound track, occupying the
space between the edge of the film and the image area. Perhaps this will serve as a nice analogy when pondering where Camera’s music comes
from. Emotional Detox is the fourth full-length album by Camera, now a quintet, following two albums as a trio and one as a duo. The line-up on ED comprises Steffen Kahles, Michael Drummer, Michel Collet, Andreas Miranda and Timm Brockmann, all more or less based in Berlin. Drummer is the only constant through all four phases. Keyboarder Timm
Brockmann, who left the group in 2014, returns to the fold. He and Franz Bargmann, who left Camera the year before him, released a Brockmann //
Bargmann LP entitled Licht on Bureau B in 2017, a celebration of keys, guitars and effects which, at times, emulated the ferocious potential of Camera. By the time Steffen Kahles joined the band, Brockmann had
already departed, so the new ensemble adds another twist in bringing together two keyboard players from different Camera phases for the first time. The Brockmann Drummer reunion, meanwhile, completes a circle tracing back to early Camera experiences shared in 2010/11, playing on the streets of Berlin (literally).
Paradoxically, the new, expanded Camera line-up sharpens the focus of the tracks running through Emotional Detox. With Drummer not so much joining
the dots as hammering them home with a nail gun, the stronger framework allows even greater freedom for the musicians to express and ultimately align their disparate creative interests. Throw a single stone into a pond and concentric circles will ripple outwards into infinity. A swoosh of parallel lines. Boundless symmetry. The soundscape assumes the quality of a cinematic loop, like watching the same film over and over, yet discovering new things each time it plays. As a mythological Mancunian once said before the fall: it’s
not repetition, it’s discipline. Customarily associated with the likes of NEU! and La Düsseldorf perhaps it is time to allow Camera to break free of the krautrock tradition and accept that they are very much doing their own thing now. The “Krautrock Guerrilla” tag was cute and catchy for a while, but the flanged depths of
Himmelhilf sound more Bloody Valentinesque, less like echoes of Cluster or Harmonia. The motorik origins of the band documented on their debut album Radiate! (2012) and the nods to history and William Burroughs on the sophomore Remember I Was Carbon Dioxide (2014) gave way to Commodore 64 playfulness on Phantom of Liberty (2016). A spirit of experimentation still abounds on the new LP, but there’s also evidence that the group have taken a confident step towards something more “pop” – without tearing up the tangled roots beneath the surface of Camera’s studio floor. The reference points are there, but Emotional Detox is not dependent on them. We live in an age when everything happens at the same time – all of your music in one place, instantaneous streams on mobile devices, encyclopaedic references checked in seconds. The
temptation to see connections everywhere can be overwhelming, the speed at which information
travels slows us down. Emotional Detox encourages us to disregard these multiple distractions.
That’s when detoxification kicks in.

Technical innovations in musical instruments and the development of tonal language have been continual subjects for deliberation from the 19th century onwards at the latest. Additional brain power is necessary to conciliate the two elements with the endless possibilities of electronic sound. In the end, the two factions cannot resolve on a conclusive opinion and the question remains as to whether art always results from skill.
Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassíou, or Vangelis for short, always worked with the newest synthesizer equipment and pushed his cascades of sound to the very edge, right up to the point of electronic overkill. In contrast to many other electronics experimentalists of his time, Vangelis likes to »create important melodies and to develop them further, without going under in the technical equipment« (Stereo Review). Distant human voices, siren-like lost calls lead into oriental dance. A song – far removed from its era – somewhere between Gregorian music and antiphony – a will-o‘-the-wisp, shimmering sound. Polyphonic playing on the Bösendorfer reminds one that every form of musical expression from over the sands of time is welcome. Each listener must discover for himself what sounds heavenly or hellish. But let it be said: musically speaking, the one cannot be imagined without the other.

This Speakers Corner LP was remastered using pure analogue components only, from the master tapes through to the cutting head. More information under www.pure-analogue.com.
All royalties and mechanical rights have been paid.

Recording: September 1975 at Nemo Studios, London, by Alan Lucas
Production: Vangelis

Pellegrino presents his new project “Zodyaco”. Inspired by the ancient mythology of the stars and their deep influence on the sea life, the record is the result of nocturnal jams in the wake of the Italian jazz-funk tradition, exotic fusion and Mediterranean mysticism. A tribute to the stars and their reflections on the sea.

After the release of the EP "Audio Track 5" and his live shows at the Strelka Institude in Moscow, Barbican Centre and Tate Tanks in London, iconic British musician and producer Darren Cunningham aka Actress joined forces with the London Contemporary Orchestra to release at Ninja Tune an album declined from their collaboration entitled "LAGEOS".
The project, which is originally a performance at the Barbican in 2016 commissioned by Boiler Room and the LCO with the support of Arts Council England and Ninja Tune and in which electronics and acoustics were in perfect synergy, not only from a harmonic point of view but also in the way in traditional instruments were reworked to give rise to hybrid instruments. The show which was a massive success, announcing full very quickly pushed them to decline this project in the form of an album.

The first in a series of compilations by Jura Soundsystem is a blend of Dub, Ambient, Downtempo, Boogie and Proto House with a focus on music never before released on Vinyl, sought after out of print titles and some special versions edited specifically for the album.
The intention with this project was to delve deeper into the reissue pond and unearth some lesser known tracks and artists. Highlights include Smackos (AKA Legowelt) Ambient epic ‘We Can Watch Alf In The Hotel Room’, never before released on Vinyl, the Dub / Psych hybrid of Minus Group’s ‘Black Shadow’, Kash’s sought after ‘Percussion Sundance’ and special edits of Ken Dang and Tabou Combo. The end of the album includes some soothing Ambient tools.

Living legend Phew follows up her brilliant Light Sleep album with another masterwork - Voice Hardcore - comprised entirely of her iconic, instantly recognizable voice, twisted, folded and layered over six mesmerizing tracks.

Move D (David Moufang) and Jordan GCZ (Jordan Czamanski) are back again on wax after a hiatus since their 2015 live in Seattle album, on Further Records. Here they team up again for 2 ice hot and slow burning studio jams - recorded this year in Amsterdam ... immerse yourself..TIP!

Another shrouded in mystery album from the Pyramid label, produced by Toby Robinson in Cologne circa 1974. Kosmische and Head sounds with plenty of Minimoog, analogue synths / keyboards, effects, loops, tape manipulation, treated percussions, etc., courtesy of Galactic Explorers, an electronic, minimal, ambient krautrock trio featuring Reinhard Karwatky (Dzyan). Take a trip to the inner regions of your mind, see ancient solar systems forming and listen to cosmic winds and vibrations while sine waves of pure bliss will give you total peace of mind…

Following celebrated compilations from Motor City Drum Ensemble and Young Marco – and with the second edition of its limited-capacity festival in Croatia right around the corner – Dekmantel’s Selectors series now continues with an edition curated by Marcel Dettmann
.
Although he’s now known as one of the world’s most celebrated techno artists, even Marcel Dettmann had to start somewhere. Long before he ever held court at Berghain (or its predecessor, Ostgut), he was just another young boy in Eastern Germany, one whose earliest encounters with capitalism involved spending every penny he could scrape together down at the local record shop. In those days, it wasn’t techno that got him excited, but new wave, post-punk, industrial and EBM acts like Front 242 and Depeche Mode

“It’s music from my childhood,” says Dettmann. “It’s still relevant and still inspires me.” That inspiration can be heard across this edition of the Selectors series, as Dettmann has put together what he describes as a “pre-techno compilation.” Much like the previous Selectors editions, the compilation is not a mix CD, but a collection of tracks hand picked by Dettmann from his own vinyl archives. Freshly remastered – and occasionally reworked or re-edited by Dettmann himself – the songs here are undoubtedly vintage gems, but they also represent a very personal journey into Dettmann’s past.

“It was a great opportunity to dig deeper into my own musical outlook,” he explains. “The tracks come from a time before Marcel Dettmann became a DJ.” Simply put, the songs here are some of the building blocks upon which he’s built an incredibly storied career, and now he’d like to entrust them to future generations.

New 2xlp of grinding beat experiments from Black Dice's Eric Copeland. Controlled chaos, chopped sample mayhem, moments of beauty and destruction over four sides.

‘Beautiful People’, the lead track from Mark Pritchard’s latest and critically acclaimed album ‘Under The Sun’ gets a 12" relase!

The Future Sound of London's long and varied history stretches back almost 25 years and as such a vast amount of unrealised material exists in the FSOL Archives.

Archived 8 brings together another 12 such tracks; in some cases these are completed but unreleased songs from that time, in others the songs have been reconstructed or enhanced and then further mixed to form the journey. This album is not just a collection of random off-cuts. It is a fully realised album, worthy of sitting alongside the rest of the band's critically acclaimed work.

Did you know - The Future Sound of London were the first band to distribute their music via the internet, in 1994.

Did you know - The Future Sound of London were the first band to use ISDN technology to transmit their music via the internet and also to radio stations across the world - a system that has now been adopted by the radio industry worldwide.