Downbeat | Electronica | Leftfield 328 Items

Praise A Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds) takes us beneath all the bedazzled glam stardom as Yves journeys through the limbo of life and love, escaping toxicity to get higher and holier. From the raw, unapologetic drawl of 'God Is a Circle' comes a mercurially shifting tracklist where Yves picks apart their psyche, discerning lovers and enemies both spiritually devoted to. 'Lovely Sewer' captures the incendiary spark of love, heart racing to the red flags under sunset coloured new wave guitars; a total flipside to the later sultry sighs and strong shuffles of 'Echolalia', where heat rises from the spiralling synths and funky dance grooves.

Wendelbo's whispery vocals are sung in both French & English, calling to mind Jane Birkin & Francoise Hardy. The alluring, tropical warmth of Wendelbo's vocals is juxtaposed against the duo's signature icy cold, ultra-modern synth sounds.

Guiding weary travelers through an enchanting interdimensional odyssey, Work The Peripheral’s debut long player ‘Like Lava’ finds a treasured home on Companion. Building on the foundation of four exceptional self-released EPs, WTP continues his exploration into the world of ambient trance. ‘Like Lava’ unfolds across nine tracks that expand and contract through imagined astral landscapes, showcasing WTP’s deft ability to create deep and absorbing techno trips. Hypnotic in manifold ways, ‘Like Lava’ is a release made for getting lost in. Each track referencing the next, this hour-long journey glides through blissful realms of trance, ambient techno and house - deep basslines, muted breaks and spacious subdued percussion are unified by WTP’s characteristic ubiquitous and sparkling atmospheres.

This is an expert expression of the Companion ethos. By drawing inspiration from the likes of Robert Leiner, Speedy J and Index ID, WTP wields the language of tripped out 90s electronica to allow spellbound listeners the time to contemplate, space to travel and a place to dream.

AmiciMiei is very proud to announce the release of 42'37'' composed by Wladimir Schall 42’37’’ is forty-two minutes and thirty-seven seconds long Track 7 is named Sept 42’37’’ is filled with sounds and silences Track 4 is named Quatre 42’37’’ is an imaginary musical seascape where time floats One can listen to 42’37’’ for 34’22’’ or any other length

William Basinski's reputation as the foremost producerof profound meditations on death and decay has longbeen established, but on his new album, Lamentations,he transforms operatic tragedy into abyssal beauty. Morethan any other work since The Disintegration Loops,there is an ominous grief throughout the album, and thatsense of loss lingers like an emotional vapor.Captured and constructed from tape loops and studiesfrom Basinski's archives - dating back to 1979 -Lamentations is over forty years of mournful sighsmeticulously crafted into songs. They are shaped by theinevitable passage of time and the indisputablecollapsing of space - and their collective resonance isinfinite and eternal.

It is hard to believe, but Waldeck´s signature album “Ballroom Stories” is 10 years old. The people at Dope Noir Records feel that this marks the perfect occasion to celebrate its anniversary with the release of a legitimate successor going by the name of “Atlantic Ballroom” - due later in 2018.
For those curious what the new album might sound like the wait will be sweetened by this very “Stay Put” EP available on 150 gr vinyl & digital formats.
Four brilliant downtempo tracks, all of them featuring Waldeck´s new chief-chanteuse Patrizia Ferrara whose extraordinary vocal performance will give you goose bumps right from the beginning all the way through.
Ferrara, being half Sicilian & half Austrian spent the better part of her musical career in Brooklyn, NYC. Asked for a comment Waldeck simply smirks:
“She is a real million-dollar baby”
As with previous releases this one once again hits the spot and highlights Waldeck´s ability to create a whole new sound universe. “Electro-Blues” meets “James Bond- in Casablanca”.
The first track “Stay Put” is quite obviously inspired by the legendary blues & swing icon Fats Waller and captures the mood of the early days of swing, when Al Capone allegedly hi-jacked Waller for a couple of days to play exclusively on one of his private mob parties.
Followed by “So it shall be” – a real beast - that lures with a snake charming seductive Ethiopian groove.
With “Rough Landing” Waldeck then time travels to the 21st century. It could well serve as a title song to the yet to be finished Bond movie “James Bond in Casablanca” (2024).
The last song “Je t´aime beaucoup” is a super slow downtempo blues that haunts you with a longingly whisper for love. A late night in Paris…. no questions asked.
Waldeck dwells on smokey Jazz riffs & bluesy piano lines. He likes to keep the overall electronic feeling subtle, but yet present.

The Keplar label presents the next instalment in a series of reissues from the catalogue of Sasu Ripatti’s seminal Vladislav Delay project. Originally released on Mille Plateaux, the vinyl edition of »Entain« from 2000 omitted two shorter tracks and included all others in an abridged form. With this reissue, the full album as it was pressed on CD is finally made available on vinyl. Besides a new remaster by Kassian Troyer, it was also given new cover artwork by Marc Hohmann that picks up on that of the »Whistleblower« reissue, released in early 2023 by Keplar. This serial visual approach highlights the conceptual continuity between those masterful explorations of the interplay between dub techniques, noise, and repetition. Ripatti himself had reworked material from 1999’s »Ele« album for the release of »Entain,« which means that it can be considered the debut album proper of his Vladislav Delay project. It saw the Finnish artist aim more vigorously for abstraction than in his earlier releases as Vladislav Delay for labels such as Chain Reaction, which were collected on the iconic »Multila« compilation in 2000; another milestone from his back catalogue that has been reissued by Keplar in recent times. To mark this special occasion, »Multila« will be repressed by Keplar with a new artwork that matches the new design of »Whisteblower« and »Entain«. »Multila« and »Entain« correspond with each other conceptually as much as they seem to differ on a musical level. The material on »Multila« was clearly indebted to the Berlin dub techno sound, marked by its grainy and at times abrasive sonic aesthetics. From the very first moments of the 22-minute long opener »Kohde« however, it becomes clear that »Entain« takes things further away from the dancefloor, aiming less for physical impact than for intellectual stimulation. A sort of electronic minimal music, it was primarily interested in letting discrete elements freely come into play with one another. Much like »Multila,« however, »Entain« highlighted the subtle differences embedded in what only feels like repetitive music. Of course the massive bassline and ghostly dub riddims that permeate »Notke« as well as the deconstructed beat at the core of »Ele« still hint at Ripatti’s roots in beat-driven music. However, they also make his artistic transformation audible by turning their sources of inspirations into something entirely unheard of. »Entain« took the dub techno formula further than any other record before it—onwards into the realms of pure abstraction.

2001’s »Anima« was the third album released by Sasu Ripatti under his Vladislav Delay moniker and marked a turning point in the stylistic development of the prolific producer. Clocking in at roughly 62 minutes, the single piece draws on dub aesthetics while working with Musique concrète-like methods through the liberal use of samples to create a dreamlike logic. Muffled voices, lush chords, subtle rhythms and indefinable sound events are not so much integrated into a composition with a predetermined outcome but rather engage with each other freely in a constant sonic flow, forming constellations in one moment before moving on to connect with other elements in the next one. »Anima« marked the first time Ripatti was using a DAW in his working process, creating a piece constantly in motion that subtly evolves over time. This vinyl reissue on the German Keplar label follows up on the 20th anniversary edition of 2000’s »Multila« and will be complemented by a ten-minute long version of the original piece, previously only available on the CD version released by the artist on his own Huume label in 2008.

After the release of his »Ele« and »Entain« albums in 1999 and 2000, respectively, Ripatti took the 1998 independent movie »Hurlyburly« as a conceptual starting point to experiment with different gear and production methods. »Until then I had worked with an old Msq-700 Midi sequencer and an Ensonic Eps16 sampler/sequencer that had one or two MB of sampling memory and mixed the music live on a Mackie, which was very limiting arrangement-wise,« says Ripatti. Loading a slightly shortened version of the film into his DAW however allowed him to play along to it with the DrumKAT Midi controller, triggering and playing all the sounds that can be heard on »Anima« while also contributing synths, bass and other sounds during repeated playthroughs before mixing a total of six stereo tracks together. »This way, after I had edited out most of the few parts that had music in them, I was in the movie; almost like an extra character playing music,« explains Ripatti. »This was certainly the most organic way in which I have ever made music, and I have never again approached another record like this.«

While »Anima« sounded like an unusual Vladislav Delay record at the time of its release, it also prefigured many of the developments Ripatti would go through in the course of his long career. Combining visceral immediacy with a sense of abstraction, it is far more than a mere missing link in his discography but rather a conceptually and musically outstanding piece of work that remains as engaging as it was 21 years ago.

Villete aka Amsterdam based producer Anne Korteweg returns to Scissor and Thread with a brilliant new EP. Her debut 12″ ‘Girl Next Door’ was released on Scissor and Thread in the fall of 2016 and sold out quickly. Now here with the new EP Dawn is Mine, we are treated to seven tracks of understated, floating beauty. On her new release she explores the more abstract sides of electronic music.

Limited edition LP run of 100 on sapphire blue Colored Vinyl in full colour jackets with OBI strips and shrink wrapped.

Personal Computer Music for the Third Millennium. A compilation of hits from 2018-2021 alongside upcoming, unreleased and unreleasable music.

Somewhere Between: Mutant Pop, Electronic Minimalism & Shadow Sounds of Japan 1980–1988 hovers vibe–wise between two distinct poles within Light In The Attic’s acclaimed Japan Archival Series—Kankyō Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980–1990 and Pacific Breeze: Japanese City Pop, AOR & Boogie 1976–1986. All three albums showcase recordings produced during Japan’s soaring bubble economy of the 1980s, an era in which aesthetic visions and consumerism merged. Music echoed the nation’s prosperity and with financial abundance came the luxury to dream.

Sonically, Somewhere Between mines the midpoint between Kankyō Ongaku’s sparkling atmospherics and Pacific Breeze’s metropolitan boogie. The compilation encompasses ambient pop, underground electronics, liminal minimalism and shadow sounds—all descriptors emphasizing the hazy nature of the nebula. Out–of–focus rhythms wear ethereal accoutrements, ballads are shrouded in static, and angular drums snake skyward on transcendent tones. From the Avant–minimalism of Mkwaju Ensemble and Yoshio Ojima, to the leftfield techno-pop of Mishio Ogawa and Noriko Miyamoto (featuring members of Ymo), and highlights from the groundbreaking Osaka underground label Vanity Records, these are blurry constellations defying collective categorization.

These tracks also exist in a space of transition when the major label grip on the Japanese recording market began to give way to the escalation of independents. Thanks to the idyllic economic climate and innovations in domestically–manufactured music gear, creators on the edges were empowered to focus on satisfying their artistic visions in the open headspace of home studios. While labels like Warner Music and Nippon Columbia explored new sounds through traditional channels, it was possible for Vanity, Balcony and other indie labels, not to mention self–released artists like Ojima and Naoki Asai, to publish their work via affordable media such as cassettes, 7" vinyl, and flexi–discs.

Expertly curated by Yosuke Kitazawa and Mark “Frosty” McNeill (dublab), Somewhere Between is a collection of music, much of it released for the first time outside Japan, that is bound more by energetic vibration than shared history, genre or scene. They are the sounds of transition and searching—a celebration of the freedom found in floating.

Note: The track “Days Man” by Yoshio Ojima is only available on the LP and Cassette versions.

The Psychedelic Side of Kosmische Musik Fellow humans, Bureau B invite you on an expedition to Silberland, a singular span of spacetime created by Germany's sonic futurists of the seventies and eighties. Embracing the early electronics and tape experiments of the sixties' avant-garde, these artists aimed to boldly go, eschewing small steps for giant leaps into a nebulous and novel sound.

My Own Mirror To Stay is a brand new and first-ever compilation from the Sure Thing label. It finds them carefully curating six new artists and welcome them to the family, each with their own personal reflections of the dance floor. Lukas Urban kicks off with supple, seductive and stripped back techno while Soreab layers up prickly percussive layers and Sanguine sinks you into a dream state with his lush ambient pads and skeletal rhythms. The flip side features three more elegantly designed and meticulous bits of techno sound sculpture. The always exceptional Neel has mastered this one too.