Downwards Vinyl, CD & Tape 13 Artikel

Pivotal, peerless DJ/selector and Minimal Wave overse’er Veronica Vasicka serves her solo debut on Downwards in ‘From Here’, a dank industrial-pop workout recorded in 2004 and now issued for the first time, backed with sick remixes by Regis, Paul Kendall (Depeche Mode, Nitzer Ebb) and Robert Hampson (Loop, Main) in his lesser-spotted Chasm alias.

The debut LP from this mysterious duo can only be described as astonishing. “Auferstehung” is like a terrifying and intense howl from the core of the deepest winter forest. Cold but warm, this wonderful debut album provides listeners with a truly poetic and emotional dark sound.

UK techno heavyweights Karl O’Connor & James Ruskin whip out a deadly new OVR session on DownwardsArriving 2 years since their ‘Easy Prey’ 12”, OVR’s 3rd studio release is defined by its spacious mixing and layered detail in three powerful dancers plus two handy locked grooves.

Karl O’Connor (Regis) revives his cult CUB project with Simon Shreeve (Mønic) now in tow for three stripes of dark and dead sexy techno.

In pursuit of hardcore techno ballistics and mutant metal alloys, The I Is Nothing marks five years of Samuel Kerridge releases on Regis’ Downwards with a dread-fuelled, nerve-stepping procession from the steaming rollige of The Silence Between Us [2017]. Balancing blank-eyed industrial torpor and dancefloor lust in four forceful designs, Kerridge firmly pushes forward with a style that owes as much to ‘90s tech-step and current minimal D&B as the Brummie deviations of Mick Harris and Karl O’Connor, or the original underground ‘80s movements of Nocturnal Emissions, Bourbonese Qualk and Muslimgauze.

Regis’ Downwards label presents an album of heavy hearted industrial songs from Ora Iso, making a kind of windswept, slowed-down and gothic pop variant that’s essential listening if yr into HTRK, Tropic of Cancer or Clay Rendering. Ora Iso are an NYC-hailing band revolving around Indonesian-Australian, Kathleen Malay and New Yorker, Jason Kudo. Building on the rubbly ground of their Bathcat debut for Ba Da Bing!, the duo’s mutual sense of entropy and ennui results in a classically scorched sound in Image Certifies, one laced with scornful sarcasm and a general dissatisfaction with the world, and yet somehow bolstered by the slightest promise of hope.

Regis compiles a killer Downwards label survey for 2017 featuring excluisve new material from DVA Damas, Autumns, Grebenstein, Sefried and Layne, veering from dank EBM to collapsing industrial structures.Downwards send their new vanguard on road with The Immortal Eye; the mood is intensely depressive and pessimistic throughout, but, in the classic sense of gothic industrial music, the impeccably maintained atmosphere conversely acts as comfort or redemption to those need it. Berlin’s Jan Grebenstein remerges with Seefried on the tunnelling Wufferfraction only months after their excellent Strong Proud Stupid and Superior 12”. Imagine an anxious HTRK or ToC have just run out of downers and the technoid tension becomes palpable... before, the uncomfortably stark, empty-stomach concrète churn of Layne’s Love will put you back face down again. Autumns have flirted with Clan Destine and CF Records since their Downwards debut of eviscerated shoegaze in 2014, but they enter the B-side with a markedly different silhouette, framing spectral electronics and unheimlich voices in acres of negative, miasmic space before slipping into a pulsing techno trajectory, whilst LA’s DVA Damas clear up with the erotic asphyxiation of Shortcut To X, which is effectively a crushing reduction of by now familiar sound...

The Roughness!

Sam Kerridge launches a major rethink of his style with the high-velocity tempos and razor-toothed bite of The Silence Between Us.Toiling somewhere between Ueno Masaaki’s Vortices for Raster-Noton, the pitching pelt of La Peste for Hangars Liquides, and the machine convulsions of Somatic Responses, he goes balls-to-the-wall with the breakneck momentum of Possession/Control, harnessing reverse-edited kicks, helter-skelter EBM bass and spectrographic noise ghouls in a surge of searing rave energy.Flipside, those knotty, strobing pulses keen thru empty stomach inversions and bursts of tangled EBM synths on Ascension, which is effectively a snappier edit of the A-side, whilst Radical Possibilities of Pleasure sounds like a field recording from a french hardtek invaded by dildo dibble in choppers and riot gear railing lasers against any unlucky dancers.

Among Downwards’ most recent wave of new flesh, Grebenstein emerged as one of the legendary label’s most sullen mutants on a crushing, eponymous debut in 2014, and now again with this highly stylish, unrepentant brace of drum ’n synth noise pressure. This one’s a total killer, especially recommended if you’re into HTRK, Raime or Fever Ray.

The gifted producer behind Mønic and Kryptic Minds returns to Downwards under his own name with a crushingly physical testament to his knowledge of soundsystem dynamics and how to sustain knife-edge atmospheric tension. The Lust Product EP offers four tracks of stare-down halfstep techno and grubby rolige that’s patently a product of so many years manning a DJ booth and dancefloor.

New Kid on the DN/Downwards label roster on Clear white vinyl, printed sleeve.

A return to C 86, Jesus and Mary chain meets Joe Meek and Ride head on!.indie kids rejoice. 180 gr Vinyl + double sided insert + postcard shrink wrapped. Limited!