Downbeat | Electronica | Leftfield 328 Items

Excellent Ambient Techno/House album

Fashion Flesh is a sort of bedroom version of "The Art of Noise." However instead of sampling, most of his sounds are birthed from the guts of hand built exotic electronics and audio devices. Fashion Flesh transcends genre. According to the man himself, "Easily Categorized is predictable. Predictable music is most often boring...Now is the time to illustrate the beauty of confusion and anxiety. Predictability will be used only when it's least expected..."

4 heavy remixes by General Elektriks, Chinese Man, Boom Bass and Bost & Bim!

Material Object is the main production alias of veteran Australian producer Andre Ruello. His focus is on the most psychedelic forms of techno and ambient. As well as his own productions he has collaborated extensively with Uwe Schmidt (Atom™) and the late Pete Namlook, including releasing on Namlook's Fax label. Ruello has performed and DJed live all over the world, including a number of appearances at Japan's Labyrinth festival. The summer of 2024 sees him give his debut live performance in the UK.

Mastered by Uwe Schmidt, Colour is a set of six single take studio improvisations that explore the boundaries of what can be achieved with a single instrument in the hands of a skilled musician.
Old Technology Records is Surgeon and Dan Bean's record label, focussing of psychedelia in all its varied forms.

Haunting melancholic songs, indie pop with cinematic flair, presents the first collaboration between the Italian composer Daniele Luppi, known from various film and TV soundtracks, and singer Greg Gonzalez, frontman of the band Cigarettes After Sex. Having worked with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Danger Mouse and Norah Jones on various projects, Luppi has now found the perfect voice for his bittersweet songs in Gonzales. For fans of Rufus Wainwright and similar delights.

First ever reissue of this groundbreaking ambient work
Produced in full cooperation with Yoshimura’s estate
Remastered for vinyl and pressed at RTI
Unseen original handwritten track notes by Yoshimura.

Barely known outside of his home country during his lifetime, the late Japanese ambient music pioneer Hiroshi Yoshimura has seen his global stature rise steadily in the past few years. The 2017 reissue of his lauded debut, Music For Nine Post Cards, along with a slow building cult internet following has helped ignite a renaissance in his acclaimed body of work, much of which has never been released outside of Japan. Known for his sound design and environmental music, Yoshimura worked on a number of commissions following the 1982 release of Music For Nine Post Cards, including works for museums, galleries, public spaces, TV shows, video art, fashion shows, and even a cosmetics company.

Originally released in 1986, GREEN is one of Hiroshi Yoshimura’s most well-loved recordings and a favorite of the artist himself. Recorded over the winter of 1985-86 at Yoshimura’s home studio, the compositions unfold at an unhurried pace, a stark contrast to the busy city life of Tokyo. As Yoshimura explained in the original liner notes, the album title in the context of this body of work is not meant to be seen as a color, but is rather used to convey “the comfortable scenery of the natural cycle known as GREEN”—which perfectly encapsulates the soothing and warm sounds contained on the album, although it was created utilizing Yamaha FM synthesizers, known for their crisp digital tones.

This edition marks the first reissue of the highly sought-after and impossible to find album. It features the original mix preferred by Yoshimura himself, previously available only on the initial Japanese vinyl release (a limited edition remixed version of the album, with added sound effects, was released on CD in the US). Additionally, this release is the first in our ongoing series, WATER COPY, focusing on the works of Hiroshi Yoshimura.

•7" vinyl •Lyric insert •Blue and pink swirled 7" •Download card

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.

Pingipung and Future Nuggets present Cosima, a Bucharest based artist, with two wonderfully poignant songs. Cosima Opârtan is widely known as one half of "Raze de Soare" (Future Nuggets). As a solo artist, she files her music under the genre widow pop - melancholically reaching out to the past and the future in one gesture. She sings like someone addressing a beloved but faraway audience, or a trusted, distant relative who can only be seen through someone else's description. Cosima has a background as an architect which she shifted to designing sonic treatments for various spaces such as sound studios. She is also a founding member of the Queer Night, a series of itinerant parties engaging the local LGBTQ+ community and part of Corp., a Bucharest based platform dedicated to supporting and promoting female & female identified musical talent. "Ploaia" has been co-composed and produced by Ion Dumitrescu, known to all Pingipung afficionados for his 7inch as Ion Din Dorobanti (Pingipung 056) who also runs the never failing Future Nuggets label. On the flip side, the two team up with Horațiu Șerbănescu, an artist from the Future Nuggets roster releasing music as "Plevna".

Tofu Resistance returns with his new ep “Thorídur”, marking his 3rd release on Ynfnd after his full length debut “1//23“ in 2019.

This EP sits comfortably between both the world of beats and a more relaxed environment. Returning to his roots, Tofu Resistance aka Tobias Kleine remembers his early influences of sample based music and classy hip hop grooves.

The result is a sonorous sketch of deceleration, answering with bouncy rhythms to nod your head to. You can hear him playing the drums, guitars and various other instruments on this record. A beautiful blend of organic and electronic production, adding his unique Tofu flavor.

Upsammy enters the acoustic realm with her new side-project Sweepsculp. Five addictive tracks fusing minimalism, IDM, folk, krautrock and various styles of jazz - using only an acoustic guitar besides drums. Live recorded, digitally edited/sculpted and produced in her singular style.

Variophon is Philophon's newly established sub-label. As the name suggests, Variophon is designed to release variations, or more commonly expressed, remixes of songs taken from the Philophon catalog. The beginning on Variophon makes the all around the world beloved Jimi Tenor by remixing himself.

Jimi has chosen one title each from his two albums released on Philohon. From his first, "Order of Nothingness", it is the gently dancing "Myteria" and from his recently released "Aulos" the driving "Vocalize My Luv" (featuring Florence Adooni and Lizzy Amaliyenga). He electrified both pieces in his own very personal, subtle way in order to achieve what he does best: make people happily dancing!

Sundance presents three tracks from Mikio Kaminakamura.

Placid Angles, alias of seminal electronic artist John Beltran. Back to is roots on this one, tip!

Having launched Neighbour Recordings with the Life Is Rhythm EP from Base Pilot, the studio collaboration between label owners Birke TM and Quantec, the imprint now turns to the latter for a solo follow-up with the muchexperienced artist turning in the tasty Moments EP. A self-confessed lover of old-school synths and their lo-fi beauty and emotion, this child of the Eighties naturally gravitates towards deep, dubby, Detroit-esque vibes and much more besides.

/ 2 remixes

Microcorps, Alexander Tucker's mutant techno alter ego, presents "Macrocorpse – 2021-2024", an 8-track collection of tracks that stray into a mutated space where techno-based composition inhabits the same space as microsound time scales, drone and noise. Regular Tapeworm collaborator Savage Pencil lends his warped graphic visions to the cover artwork.

"I'd always admired The Tapeworm from afar and over the years The Tapeworm and I would often bump into one another at gigs and enthuse about Derek Jarman." explained Tucker, "I'd amassed all these tracks, some of which I'd forgotten even existed until they asked me to produce a tape. Each track is made with a specific system I had set up on the modular rig. I'd have all these processes feeding back into each other creating these dense fragmented bangers."

Across the album, machine technology sits next to Tucker's own voice, processed through electronics and granular sampling. Vocals are pitched beyond recognition and delivered in a wordless constructed language that attempts to create its own alien landscapes. Tucker's aim is for each track to set a balance between structure and disrupting processes that feed off one another, where core rhythmic elements rub up against fried textures that fold in and out of each track. Always keen to marry electronic systems and acoustic instruments Tucker also employs cello layers which are resampled into sonic drone debris.

He expands "I often want to have my cake and eat it with these tracks. My idea was is to place my love of experimental techno, drone, music concréte and composition into each piece, where all these elements can weave through each other and produce a hybrid area"
Tucker is joined on final track PYN by Luke J Murray (Nonexistent, Stonecirclesampler, Liquid DnB-like Ambient Grime 2) adding his gauzy drones and electronic drift.

Another amazing double-sided dynamite from the famous 7” Lego series.This bringing a hypnotic mid-tempo afro disco groove and it will turn heads and twist legs on the dancefloor!