Ostgut Ton Techno | Minimal | Tech-House 23 Items

Fünfzehn + 1 is a commemorative compilation celebrating 16 years of Ostgut Ton – and the first glimpses of light at the end of a long dark tunnel for parent club Berghain.

Originally planned for release in 2020, the music focuses on the interwoven nature of the label and the club in its multitude of different spaces and musical facets. Ostgut Ton artists and close affiliates worked together in pairs to make music dedicated to five different floors, each represented by a specific 12" vinyl. The result is a diverse selection of sometimes functional, other times more abstract sonic tributes; musical homages to spaces they have both influenced and been influenced by.

With the pandemic having forced the club to close temporarily, the collaborative nature of the 5x12" boxset represents an attempt to transcend varying degrees of isolation and to wrestle with memories of music and space that had been inaccessible. But certainly not forgotten.

Fünfzehn + 1 is a commemorative compilation celebrating 16 years of Ostgut Ton – and the first glimpses of light at the end of a long dark tunnel for parent club Berghain.

Originally planned for release in 2020, the music focuses on the interwoven nature of the label and the club in its multitude of different spaces and musical facets. Ostgut Ton artists and close affiliates worked together in pairs to make music dedicated to five different floors, each represented by a specific 12" vinyl. The result is a diverse selection of sometimes functional, other times more abstract sonic tributes; musical homages to spaces they have both influenced and been influenced by.

With the pandemic having forced the club to close temporarily, the collaborative nature of the 5x12" boxset represents an attempt to transcend varying degrees of isolation and to wrestle with memories of music and space that had been inaccessible. But certainly not forgotten.

Giving form to a broad personal project of continuous inquiry and existential expression, A World Of Service marks the Ostgut Ton debut of Spanish producer, DJ and artist Jasss aka Silvia Jiménez Alvarez.

The evolution of A World Of Service has curved around genre collapsing and unexpected metamorphoses. Formerly the name of the monthly radio show Jasss hosted in Berlin, and soon to be the title of her expansive multi-sensory touring concept in collaboration with Ben Kreukniet, here A World Of Service is powerfully concentrated in sonic form. Throughout the album Jasss muses on the especially current human and technological barriers to interconnectivity; both lyrically and musically she deconstructs the self, unmasks anxieties and interrogates the insufficiencies of language as applied to gender, identity and interpersonal relationships. Forming her own fluid, nuanced lexicon in response, Jasss seeks a deeper understanding of her multiple selves, emerging through unbridled adolescent rage and the wisdom of maturation, traversing liminality with abstract electronics and baroque industrial pop. Visually this is underscored by Matt Lambert’s uncanny floral cover portraiture, as well as the record’s distinct scent of wet earth, flower and woods developed for the album by Meri Bonastre and applied to the vinyl innersleeve.

Following the imaginative nostalgia of Weightless, her 2017 debut album for iDEAL Recordings, as well as her blistering dancefloor 12” for Whities / AD 93, A World Of Service folds personal and societal concepts in on themselves, not seeking answers but rather luxuriating in the unique friction that questions create. Jasss is intensely focused yet musically unbridled; this is reflected in tonal shifts of A World Of Service. Through the computerised yearning and bruising of a heartbreak on “Luis”, to the jagged and wordless tundra of “Vapor Dentro”; the intriguing juxtaposition of warm, alluring Spanish vocals against rigid pillars of industrial heft and bass grind (“Camelo”), and the soaring maximalist industrial pop of the album’s closer, “Wish.”

As intensity rises through the pandemic-era trip hop of the album’s title track “A World Of Service”, Jasss sings: “Pleasure / Is nowhere to be found inside this world of service / I call to be my life.” Pleasure may remain elusive to her, but in the determination to make peace with her various identities in this technological age, Jasss offers a compelling glimpse into an essential type of artistic voice.

Etapp Kyle returns to Ostgut Ton with Nolove, a project encompassing a four-track EP, short film and forthcoming web exhibition focusing on Western Ukraine. Specifically, the music and artwork home in on the cities of Kamianets-Podilskyi and Chernivtsi in Bukovina, where Etapp Kyle grew up and developed his interest in electronic music. Although now part of Ukraine, Bukovina had previously been part of Moldova, the Habsburg Empire, the Russian Empire, Romania and the Soviet Union. Its turbulent history and position on the border of Romania and Moldova have resulted in an extremely varied tapestry of cultural influence, as featured in the video for title track “Nolove”. There, youth, fashion, music culture sit side-by-side next to religion, violence and war – and larger political struggles. The EP gives shape to the musical developments Etapp Kyle has made in both the studio and DJ booth since the release of 2017's Alpha, his latest 12" for Ostgut Ton. In contrast, Nolove's four tracks are minimalistic, detailed electronic ventures inspired by personal reflections on Chernivtsi and Ukrainian cultural identity. Forward-facing in rhythm and melody, the EP offers meticulously-produced leftfield dancefloor impressions of the region’s past, present and future.

Oh, lovely appearance of death, No sight upon earth is so fair; Not all the gay pageants that breathe, Can with a dead body compare.– Charles Wesley, A Funeral Hymn for a Believer, 1780. So begins New Atlantis, the fourth full-length album by longtime Berghain resident Efdemin aka Phillip Sollmann. The words, sung by 60s California art icon William T. Wiley and embedded in glowing drone swells, set an otherworldly tone for Sollmann’s first solo release on Ostgut Ton. Over eight tracks, New Atlantis oscillates between fast, kaleidoscopic techno, multilayered drones and acoustic instrumentation, fusing for the first time Sollmann’s deep dancefloor productions as Efdemin with his sound art and experimental music projects. The latter include 2017’s Harry Partch- inspired Monophonie performance and 2018’s Panama / Suez EP with Oren Ambarchi and Konrad Sprenger. Long drawn to utopian musical traditions, Sollmann took inspiration for New Atlantis from Francis Bacon’s unfinished 17th century novel of the same name, which describes a fictional island devoted to social progress through the synthesis of art, science, technology and fashion. In the story, Bacon imagines futuristic ‘sound houses’, which contain musical instruments capable of recreating the entirety of the sounds of the universe; a 400-year-old prophesy of today’s digital sonic reality. Through Sollmann’s lens, Bacon’s vision ebbs and flows over 50 minutes in varying speeds and colors, emerging as a tapestry of different utopian musical traditions – through billowing synth lines, early Detroit techno, resonant wooden percussion, trance, droning organs, dulcimer, electric guitars, hurdy-gurdy, just intonation, poetry, hymns and murmuring voices. Sometimes they merge into epic, rhythmic journeys like the 14-minute long title track; other times they appear as a briefly open sound portal (“Temple”), or in the forlorn human voice on “Oh, Lovely Appearance Of Death”, calling to be freed from jail of the human body and pass into the afterlife. Like previous Efdemin albums on Dial, New Atlantis veers off the techno path to explore other musical territory. Here however, Sollmann occasionally abandons the club entirely, returning only to push its boundaries with other instruments, mythologies and psychedelic story telling.

After a seven-year hiatus, the longtime Berghain resident Norman Nodge is back with four new tracks of deep, narcotic techno. Hailing from Brandenburg, Nodge spent the 90s as a DJ, promoter and mentor to the likes of Marcel Dettmann and Marcel Fengler before becoming a Berghain resident in 2005. Since then he has occupied a special place in Berlin techno with a sound that is at once forceful, dubby and hypnotic, evident not only on his Berghain 06 mix and various 12”s and compilation contributions for Ostgut Ton, but also on EPs for Dettmann’s MDR imprint.

Terence Fixmer’s path through the changing techno landscape of the past 20 years has been anything but direct. Indeed, the French born producer, musician and Planete Rouge label founder has long been influenced by the periphery of continental European dance music subgenres from electronic body music, new beat and acid, before combining them into his own pioneering hybrid of futuristic, EBM-inflected techno with classic releases such as 2001’s Muscle Machine or the collaborative Between The Devil LP with Nitzer Ebb’s Douglas McCarthy as Fixmer/McCarthy. While the sound in recent years has been rediscovered and recast in diverse contexts by a new generation of producers, Through The Cortex sees Fixmer gravitating toward a different kind of industrial-tinged electronics, led as much (or more) by analogue sequencers, melodies and ultra-saturated sounds of synthesizers than drums and percussion. Across eight tracks at a compact but varied 40 minutes, the LP touches on an aesthetic hinted at in recent Ostgut Ton releases (2016’s Beneath The Skin EP and 2017’s Force EP), revealing a sonic narrative through noisy, screaming synth/vocal riffs with a jagged, guitar- like post-punk sensibility. Through The Cortex is techno with a voice – or rather multiple voices – guiding listeners through hypnotic, space- and social-themed terrain as a kind of dark soundtrack to darker days. The result ranges from the slow John Carpenter-inspired Escape From Precinct 13 funk of “Expedition” and the patient yet muscular stomp of “Fury” to the mesmerizing Suicide-like pop of single “Accelerate”, where Fixmer, using his voice as an instrument, chants the track’s ambiguous title in an invocation of systemic change/collapse. Elsewhere, the story is told with more abstract and wailing vocals like on “Shout in A Black Hole”, or in the warm, entrancing chords floating across the stereo image in ostensibly changing time-signatures on “A Halo Somewhere” – the LP’s uncharacteristically kosmische musik come-down. The track, and Through The Cortex as a whole, reflect what can be described as Fixmer’s idiosyncratic take on both techno subgenres as well as the larger pool of electronic music in general. This broad approach translates into a sound that is not only difficult to pin down, but also one that lends itself to multiple listens.

The 2x12” sees the renowned selector and longtime Berghain resident in explorative form, combining compact experimental techno vignettes with writhing, dubby and distorted long- form dancefloor portals – as well as a stoned and unexpected turn into house territory. At 22 minutes over 6 tracks, Test-File is a series of sonic contrasts united by Dettmann’s uncanny intuition for patiently shifting, improvisational dance music. 3-minute opener “Test-File” bangs in with rapid fire kicks and tape-delayed electric zaps, reversing midway into a kind of electronic palindrome. The momentum is sustained on standout single “Ascending”, where an overdriven basswave surges through a tunnel of industrial noise. The EP then emerges into the arch, squishy house of “Autumn77”, filled with sirens, pads and sampled vox/laughter. The second vinyl returns initially to rhythmic experimentation with the 3-minute “Torch” lurching forward rattling and machine-like, interspersed by passages of groan and hiss. “Error (1st Take)” bubbles along dub-wise, tripping atmospherically though a haze of out-of-synch synth bursts. Closer “Metalloid” wraps it all up with a hypnotic, rubber band acid line and smudged 808s clavs.

Black strikes back. Pom Pom. Boom Boom. Ja Ja.

Answer Code Request returns with his sophomore album Gens on Ostgut Ton, entering darker but equally bass-heavy territory.

Having remixed Depeche Mode and DJ Hell as well as releasing a new Fixmer/McCarthy single with Douglas McCarthy (of Nitzer Ebb), 2017 has already proven to be a productive year for Terence Fixmer. With the new Force EP, the Berghain resident follows up on 2016's Beneath The Skin EP (O-TON 97), offering four stylistically different but congenial Techno scenarios for club use.

Vinyl with a couple of light scuffs. Cover close to NM

“We all dance away our lives to the tune of the sovereign pleasure-pain axis.” – David Pearce, The Hedonistic Imperative

Pleasure-seeking and pain-avoidance as a rave metaphor fits the music of Sam Barker. The Berghain resident and Leisure System co-founder has spent the last few years exploring the euphoric potential of altering key variables in dance music formulas.

This was especially true on his 2018 Ostgut Ton debut EP Debiasing, which was flush with unconventional rhythmic chord stabs, melody and percussion but devoid of kickdrums. What seemed like an experimental exercise on paper was in reality equally geared towards the club: tracks that worked for the floor but resisted the genre categorizations that kick drums often provide. This has come to define Barker’s sound.

Now, on his debut solo LP Utility, Barker turns his focus toward melding experimentation and dancefloor pragmatism with the psychology behind the musical decision making process. In his own words: “After ‘Debiasing’ it occurred to me that my musical decisions were often unintentionally utilitarian, following an instinct to maximize pleasure in one way or another. It’s sort of unfashionable to admit, but by removing elements that have strong genre associations, this became a natural consequence.”

Accordingly, Utility is a playful but non-ironic musical approach to a whole spectrum of utilitarian and transhumanist ideas: from models for quantifying pleasure and “gradients of bliss” to abolishing suffering for sentient beings (not just people) through the ethical use of drugs and nanotechnology. Over nine tracks, Barker’s vision ebbs and flows through waves of deeply psychedelic musical vignettes; free-floating and futuristic melodies and rhythms as targeted brain stimulation. The sound draws heavily on modular synthesis, as well as self-built mechanical instruments and plate reverbs to create atmospheres that are at once alien and emotionally recognizable, functional and utopian.

Utility is by no means a concept album. Instead, it is an honest take on music as both pleasuremaximizer and consciousness-expander.