Downbeat | Electronica | Leftfield Tape 421 Items

Hand-numbered edition, 250 copies signed by Wolfgang Müller, with download code.

Die Tödliche Doris were always an outlier, a performance art / music project that originally surfaced in early 80s Berlin, on the outer reaches of the post punk / new wave scene that included acts like Einstuzende Neubauten (Collapsing New Buildings) and Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft.

Inspired by post-structuralism and modern / post-modern philosophers, they deconstructed the accepted popular format of both the mainstream and the underground with their second release, "Chöre & Soli". To confound the vinyl obsessives of the day, what appeared to be an LP box-set, in fact contained eight tiny plastic toy-records, with their own player. Each disc contained 20 seconds of low grade sound. "We want to become the most independent band of all independent bands–even independent from a usual record player." Wolfgang Müller stated "But also independent from music reviews and critics, which want to put you in her sound- and identity-system."

Kashual Plastik take up Müller's dogma and re-present it for our times, where these issues seem only more compounded. Once again to flummox their audience, old and new, the tape comes as a kit of separate parts with assembly tool - a mini screwdriver. You can listen with the download code as you work. Now that's what I call outsourcing.

The Kashual Plastik tape, digitally enhanced, features contemporary producers including, among others: Aaron Dilloway, Brandstifter, T.V.S.T., Hugo Capablanca, ML, Beau Wanzer, Nika Son, Laura Not, or Saskia Lavaux. They followed a call from the modern-day social network spheres, where Die Tödliche Doris asked the world to reshuffle some old original tape recordings. Out of the millions of submissions, Doris selected works that together shape the Doris of today for a brief moment of time.

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.

Based in the South Moravian city of Brno, Finnish multi-instrumentalist Simo Hakalisto aka Shakali crafts surreal terrariums of strings, synthetics, wood, and wind, teeming with bio-electronic synchronicities. Rihmastossa further finesses the project’s eclectic lexicon of electro-acoustic world-building, utilizing a gallery of instruments both ancient and advanced: solar-powered sine wave generators, singing bowls, metallophones, microtonal synths wired into tree slabs, lap harps, amplified found objects, percussion filters, flutes.

This is world music in the most naturalistic sense – subtle spatial ecosystems of climate, vibration, landscape, and species, as alluded to in the track titles about fungal colonies, extinct birds, rare worms, and pine forests. Hakalisto’s work in various exploratory duos (Gnäw, Lunar Horns, Thistle) has honed his instincts for atmospheric improvisation, but when alone he embeds even deeper into the terrain, acting as conduit as much as creator. Across seven free-flowing fugue states of texture and resonance, his touch simmers beneath the surface, guided by shifting light and hidden hands.

The start of something remarkable... Broken Videos is here to make his mark. A must listen to all classic synth lovers. :)

"In 1978 I started making experimental home recordings with my old schoolfriend Alan Clark. We both had Akai 4000ds reel-to-reels, which made for easy swapping of locations and ideas. We would meet most evenings to record – for the best part of two years. Much of the music on this tape comes from those experiments.

Some of my solo pieces on this cassette were on a compilation cassette I made for my friend Brad Day, who in 1979 was working at Beggars Banquet record shop in Earl's Court. He happened to be playing it in the shop when co-manager Peter Kent walked in and asked who it was. From that I was offered a 7" release on the Axis label Peter was starting with his colleague Ivo Watts-Russell, and my first gig was organised at Mayhem Studio in Battersea, supporting Vice Versa. With another schoolfriend, Steve Player on guitar and Stylophone 350s, my 16-year-old brother Peter Knight on backing tapes and backing vocals, and me on Vcs3 and vocals, we put a set together within a week. The filmmaker John Maybury projected Super-8 films over us at the gig, and suggested we call ourselves The Fast Set – as all three of us were rooted static to the spot with nerves. The name stuck, and it now seems appropriate to retrospectively apply that name to our previous untitled endeavours.

This cassette release is a 'patchwork' I constructed back in 1980 of the late-70s home recordings – both solo or with Alan. There were two projects back then – the experimental pieces, and the electronic 'pop' songs. This release consists of the former, which I feel age has been kinder to. The tapes had remained untouched for over 40 years until I baked and transferred them recently, so please excuse the hiss, distortion, pops, crackles, and wobbles, as I wish to maintain the integrity and home-made feel of the original recordings." – David Knight, London, 10 January 2024.

London-based musician David Knight has been a member of/worked with: The Fast Set, Five Or Six, Shock Headed Peters, Left Hand Right Hand, Arkkon, The Amal Gamal Ensemble, The Stargazer's Assistant, and Lydia Lunch. He wrote and recorded with Danielle Dax throughout the 1980s, and currently works with Stephen Thrower (Coil, Cyclobe) in UnicaZürn.

Recorded between 1978 and 1980 in Battersea, London on an Akai 4000ds and later a Teac 3300sx. Instruments used: EMS Vcs3, Roland System 100, Hohner K4 String Machine, Dubreq 350s, Piano, Guitar, Percussion, Roland Re201 Space Echo, Colorsound Ring Modulator, EHX Small Stone Phaser, Ibanez Standard Fuzz. Written, recorded and performed by David Knight and Alan Clark. Compiled and mastered by David Knight.

Artwork by Danielle Dax.

Trjj, Trjj & Trjj again - we can't get enough of this artist's stuff here. TIP!

Cass (90) Ukrainian/Estonian archival label Shukai extend unmissable introductions to Valentina Goncharova's incredibly free synthesis of electro-acoustic, noise and new age tropes in a frankly jaw-dropping first compendium of her work -highly recommended to disciples of Pauline Oliveros, Deathprod, Daphne Oram, Michael Ranta, Keiji Haino

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.

Live From The Gonsch showcases Sydney head (and O.T.I.S. label boss) Hugh Burridge aka Hugh B’s lesser known domestic dub mode, low-slung and low volume, tracked on headphones during hidden hours, often with his daughter strapped to his chest. The album’s eight cuts are built from rhythmic modular loops layered with snaky bass, swampy guitar, and occasional hazed vocals, dub-mixed to 2-track cassette through hand-built FX (Burridge runs a boutique delay pedal business). The mood throughout is loose, soupy, and slippery, shaded in echo and spring reverb, glimpsed through tall grass.

The title alludes to Burridge’s recently retired Skylab radio show, “Mornings From The Gonsch,” which repped a spectrum of home recorded modes, from bedroom dub to hybrid new age to lost synth songcraft. Here he blends these muses into a woozy fusion all his own, dub-adjacent daydreams of time, money, stasis, and absence, hummed and half-heard beneath a bleached blue sky.

Pulled straight down, deep beneath the twisted megastructures of the Lost, in search of an unreachable answer. To turn his back on everything, and pay the ultimate price.

Disappearing into a dimension of unknowable size where time ceased to exist, his mind fractured into pieces.

Embraced by reflections, old voices, memories and nightmares disguised as dreams, he vanished.

The Void takes many forms.

Who knows what you’ll witness, where souls come to bear their all.

A Huge moment for NRW. Presenting the debut album from Pylot. Axiom is a power-packed project that harnesses many facets of synth and delivers them with glorious, well rounded execution. Boasting encapsulating melodies and rhythms, Axiom is an album that all synth enthusiasts and Audiophiles will enjoy. Pre-Order Today!

Originally released in France in 1998, Vibractance is one of the most unique and haunting titles in Merzbow’s vast catalog. It’s unique drone, noise, almost ambient like qualities makes this a great starting point for adventurer ears but also an essential album for the initiated. A true journey into the unknown where pulsating sonar waves swim between a sea of eerie beauty and tangible dreams. Celebrating it’s 25th anniversary, Aurora Central Records proudly presents its first ever vinyl and cassette release.

When Russian musicians Vladimir Karpov (X.Y.R.) and Dmitriy Borodin began making hushed, liminal, ASMRbient dream pop together in the late 2000’s, the underground landscape was thick with artists using mystical monikers, so they chose to troll in the opposite direction: 2muchachos. Although the original intent was to filter out listeners “who judge by name or cover,” they were soon joined by Aleksandra Evseeva (aka Andra Ljos), rendering their banner even more incongruous and comical.

Titles aside, the collaboration was fruitful, spanning nearly half a decade of steadily refined activity. Natura 2009-2012 collects 76 minutes of the trio’s most cloaked and bewitched recordings, evolving from the “northern environmental folktronica” of their early years through to the whispered fairytale ambient voyaging of 2012’s haunted swansong, Forest Is Not What It Seems.

The tracks are sourced from an array of digital singles, compilations, and self-released CD-Rs, mapping a non-chronological odyssey of the group’s skeletal, subliminal songcraft. Karpov’s signature Soviet Formanta synth weaves within windswept guitar, fragile percussion, and field recordings of forest birds and endless steppes, occasionally accented with Andra’s glimmering, ghostly voice. It’s music of isolation and introspection, poetic and remote, murmuring through mists and long winters, flickering with the color of springs yet to bloom.

Cassette of 6 remixes by Ricardo Dias Gomes and Domenico Lancellotti from their recent albums. Domenico Lancellotti remixes Ricardo Dias Gomes and vice versa.
Praise FOR Domenico's Album 'sramba'
"Another absolutely brilliant album from the drummer and singer" Gilles Peterson

"A synth-samba fusion you'll learn to love" ★★★★☆ The Times

"Very Tom Zé" ★★★★☆ Mojo

"Full of wonderful sonic surprises" ★★★★☆ Songlines
Praise FOR Ricardo Dias Gomes Album 'muito Sol'
"...beautiful experimental mûsica popular brasileira on a strikingly confident third album" Jon Dale, Uncut 9/10

"...This album is massively enchanting, and I'm pretty sure when it's all said and done, Muito Sol will be my favorite recording of 2023" Dave Sumner, Bandcamp

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.

Expansion pack of Wave Temples transmissions accompanying the Panama Shift vinyl suite. Its creator contextualizes Portals as the first volume in a tarot-style card game of the same name, to be used for divining prophetic strategies. Each of the 13 pieces here unfolds like a glimpse to an inner realm – or a past life. Hazed vignettes of primitivist anthropological fantasia, warbly and windswept, suffused with déjà vu. Insects and macaws sing from the periphery, while beach fires glow along an abandoned coast, the tide like a language lost in the tunnels of time.

Alvars Orkester was formed in 1987 in Johannishus, a small village in the south-east of Sweden by a group of young boys interested in the mysteries of psychic sickness, mental institutions, industrial music culture and the power of sound. For the first very creative years, Alvars was very active within the independent cassette culture scene releasing their stuff (that quite soon drifted from the industrialism inspired by Test Dept, TG, SPK and z'ev to an atmospheric, psychedelic and quite ambient version of noise) on small labels in Italy, Portugal, USA etc.
Joachim Nordwall writes: "1990-1991. In the middle of all teen confusion going on, me and Zwarre had a long creative time together. Recording every weekend, connecting with like-minded (or at least we thought so) people around the world and trading tapes with whoever. Our world was analogue synths, Party Zone late Friday nights on MTV, zines and out-there experimental music. By then, we had a few tapes out and had "Nobody Finds Nothing" being released on the Italian super-label (in our opinion) Biotope Art Organization. We were in the midst of something and recorded "Nuthull" for another Italian top level label called Old Europa Café. However, they did not like it and the tape was abandoned and forgotten. Then years and years later, close to present time, Zwarre was in touch with OEC for some reason and had the master returned." - Joachim Nordwall, Gothenburg, 21 February 2023

теплота is the London-based duo of Grundik Kasyansky & Tom Wheatley. Their work interrogates the haptic, social and liberating relationships with technologies old and new; using feedback synthesizer and computer-acoustic bass, they fuse a spontaneous interplay orthogonally over cyclical structures, with techno as perpetual fulcrum.

Following their debut Heat/work on Cafe Oto’s TakuRoku label and the monthly ЭС research series, Skynned will be landing on Accidental Meetings. A match made in heaven with the forward-thinking label a perfect fit, adding to their already esteemed catalogue. Half techno, half free jazz, the music is both hypnotic and open-ended, relentless and ephemeral.

There’s nothing stopping us from automating something. Nothing is stopping us from being automated.

Form does not differ from emptiness, emptiness itself form. Sensations, perceptions, formations, and consciousness are also like this.

All beings & time are marked by emptiness; they neither arise nor cease, are neither defiled nor pure, neither increase nor decrease. Therefore, given emptiness, there is no form, no sensation, no perception, no formation, no consciousness, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind; no light, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind. Far beyond all inverted views, there is neither ignorance nor extinction of ignorance. There is nothing stopping us from automating something. Monocvltvremmxxii —- MonoCulture is a nomadic, shape-shifting act of retribution against the confinements of social enslavement. This ambient, improvisational variety of jazz-minded techno is a new project by John Swing of LiveJam Records & Gaia Tones. All tracks have been written, recorded and produced with the highest quality analogue equipment; mastered & cut by Simon Davey @ The Exchange, aiming to provide the best possible definition of sound for both the listener and the deejay. “Last” will only be available on vinyl and is exclusive to this 12” EP.

Recorded in London, UK, 2020. Limited to 500 copies.