Stroboscopic Artefacts Techno | Minimal | Tech-House 20 Items

Whereas many electronic producers aim at being the most prolific in their genre, or the most extreme, Lucy and Rrose have wisely chosen to be the most consistently curiosity-provoking representatives of their craft. Their decision to team up as a production duo for the newest Stroboscopic Artefacts EP may have seemed inevitable, given their shared responsibility for shifting techno’s focus towards the facilitation of profound psycho-acoustic effects. And yet, even those who saw this coming will still be in for a wild ride.

The release is 2x180g vinyl in a gatefold cover with luxurious gloss print and a free download.

Lotus Eater is a duo consisting of Luca Mortellaro (Lucy) and Seth Horvitz (Rrose), techno artists just as comfortable operating in the uncharted area of experimental music who have gained a cult following, both influencing and challenging the direction of contemporary electronic music. Eschewing the typical instrumentation of techno but still inhabiting its archetypes, Lotus Eater uses synthesised sound and feedback as fundamental sources to generate both textural and percussive elements. A sense of tension and weight emerge from sources that cannot be easily pinpointed. Each release forms a complex narrative from a paradoxically simple and restrained set of sound sources. Officially formed in 2017, Lotus Eater came to life through several collaborations over a number of years, and finally blossomed with the release of its critically acclaimed debut album "Desatura," which Lotus Eater toured live in 2018 - 2019. 2022 sees the release of the second Lotus Eater album "Plasma" and a new audiovisual live project to accompany it. "Plasma" unfolds with exacting precision by exhibiting a point of focus and expanding on it. It uses a single, throbbing pulse to generate a constellation of sounds and rhythms that form around it like a volcanic eruption in slow motion. Playing with our sense of time and weight, "Plasma" feels simultaneously slow and urgent, spacious and immense. Lotus Eater zooms into the infinite abyss and finds not just light, but fire at the end of the tunnel. Will we be saved, or will we burn?

Serendipities surround the collaboration between Berlin's Stroboscopic Artefacts label founder Lucy and their most recent record with Malaysian Bangkok based emerging artist Wanton Witch. The release culminates in the reimagining of WW debut LP as seen and felt through the lens of Lucy. This is a follow up full-length album by Lucy not approached as a usual remixes record, but instead a fully fleshed out new body of work with the WW material being an integral part of Lucy's sonic palette.

Despite the label hiatus during the first year of lockdowns, the isolation of the pandemic helped create a fertile ground for a back and forth between Wanton Witch and Lucy's own distinct sound palettes to collide. With the normal every day pressures of touring lifted and enlightened by WW's sonic world, Lucy has seen this as a positive opportunity to manifest new pathways of connectivity and process a phase of personal growth. Not simply about the breaking of gender lines, but also about the blurring of creative boundaries, especially when making music.

Lucy's original patronage of Wanton Witch and her relatively fresh and new voice in the electronic music scene can be seen as a contribution to this idea of dismantling industry norms. In more than a decade of SA operations this is a reset moment for the label's mission focusing on empowering new talent, refreshing and growing with them, presenting a dynamic two-way process bewtween the label as a whole and the individual artists output.

Lucy's personal revolution has coincided with Wanton Witch's own discovery of her musical voice and their paths have created a synchronicity. This osmosis of thought and feeling, even through massive distances, can be so real and tangible. Lucy's new album is a testament to the power of connective tissue in collaboration. It is this catalyst of realisation that has allowed the creative work to flourish under the toughest of pandemic conditions.

'You Are Eternity' is the third album to be released on Stroboscopic Artefacts and comes from two of the minds who have shaped the label since its earliest days: Dadub. Recorded over a period of two years, but containing fragments and ideas that stretch back a decade 'You Are Eternity' has been mixed together to form a continuous piece rather than twelve discreet tracks. The effect? An immersive journey that encompasses the descriptors brutal, ferocious, ambient and aqueous.

Having already proven that he is capable of maintaining sonic quality and distinction over the course of a full original program, Chevel (a.k.a. Dario Tronchin) now makes his LP debut for Stroboscopic Artefacts. His other S.A. contributions (including the inaugural entry in the label's singular Monad series, the "One Month Off" EP, his participation to the label's five-year retrospective series) have already hinted that a more complete exposition of his unique inner world would surface, and here it is at last. Over the course of his young career, Chevel has gained a mastery over several compositional elements: Polaroid-like slow melodic fades, sharp ricocheting beats, and simply making one's headphones feel like a viable means of physical transportation. All of these elements come into play shortly after the needle hits the grooves of 'Comb' a euphoric introductory track marked by a spectral panning sequence and by beats chopped with a culinary expert's sense of elegance. The drum kit sounds that feature throughout are used sparely but – either because of this or in spite of this – provide maximum impact upon the listener's nervous system. The almost 'far Eastern' use of 'block' percussion on 'The Windrunner' and 'Low Roof' perfectly complements the synthetic sheen produced... more

Hot on the heels of his preliminary EP on Stroboscopic Artefacts, Embryo, which paved the way to the present album, and two years after the landing of his 2016-released inaugural LP, Montagne Trasparenti, Mannequin helmsman Alessandro Adriani returns with his highly anticipated full-length debut for SA, Morphic Dreams. Throughout eleven cuts painstakingly executed but lacking not an iota of the fresh, spontaneous oomph that made his sound stand out of the crowd of techno producers to have emerged over the past decade, Adriani lays the foundations to a suspended sound imaginarium, governed by its own rules and principles of gravity. Revolving around the notions of sublimation and quest for inner balance, Morphic Dreams is comprised of four distinct sequences, conceived and designed as reflections of four mental states, each of them linked to the four alchemical elements i.e. Water, Earth, Air and Fire here represented by the A, B, C and D-sides. Fluid and enveloping, the A-side bathes the listener in some zero-G uterine vortex, pitching and rolling from the slo-burning exotic sensuality and tribal spell of The Tropical Year to the trunk-bending, arpeggiated fast-track pulse of Storm Trees, through Raindances feverish electro swing. Entering a further abrasive, minerally rich phase, the B-side unleashes Adrianis dark side with optimum conviction. Deeply anchored in earthly materiality, this new evolution stage starts off to the frantic Italo bass of Dissolving Images, rushing headlong into a kaleidoscopic maelstrom of fractured reflections and nasty Giallo-like ambience. The delirious body stretch sequence then rather abruptly swerves onto a calmer flux with Dust/Mist, a much enticingly hip-swaying collaboration with Simon Crab, ex-member of the seminal 80s UK industrial-experimental band Bourbonese Qualk, before Casting The Runes engulfs us into a tormented world of swollen eeriness and disquieting esoterism. Back to a widescreen showcase of droney distortions, nasty acid swashes and other quirky drum programming, Hors De Combat opens a new chapter, shortly followed by the playful bass intricacies and modular jeu-de-piste of Invisible Seekers, featuring Avian affiliate and longtime friend Shawn OSullivan. A further mind-expanding piece, C-side closer Crow deploys its blackened wings wide and high as a chaos of martial percussions and liquefying synths slivers crash past the red-hot skyline. A fluttering melodic interlude, Things About To Disappear blazes a clean trail for Make Words Split And Crack to flourish, slowly but surely blooming into a nonstop grandiose twelve minute-shy finale geared up with the stirring cacophonic force of a Ligetian symphony and something of an epic-scale Kubrickian soundtrack.

A Download code is included. The Malaysian-born, Bangkok-based producer delivers an 11-track strong release that flows like a complete soundscape. Employing caustic electronics and diverse sound textures, she challenges traditional track conventions by deconstructing elements of IDM, experimental, hardcore and rave.

Sharing the same forward-facing approach to techno music, it was about time that Roman DJ and producer Adiel lands her debut EP on Stroboscopic Artefacts. Following on from an array of 12-inches on her own imprint, including a recent joint effort with Anthony Linell, 'If Not Now When?' is an ode to the all-enveloping strangeness of eternal nights that cuts a path of ecstatic light in the dark.

The second release to be pressed into Totem's slabs of 10-inch vinyl is from techno impresario Luke Slater's L.B. Dub Corp moniker. Slater has been operating as a pioneer, with a full deck of aliases, throughout the genre's many corners since the days when techno was a newborn phenomenon. The stripped back sounds of L.B. Dub Corp's last releases on the imprint have resounded naturally within the psychotropic space carved out by Stroboscopic Artefacts.

A download code is included. The release comes on 180g heavy weight vinyl in a deluxe matte-finish Gatefold cover. Flowers From The Ashes is the latest multi-artist project to bear the acclaimed Stroboscopic Artefacts imprimatur. Silvia Kastel, Andrea Belfi, Marco Shuttle, Ninos Du Brasil, Alessandro Adriani, Chevel, Lucy, Lory D, Caterina Barbieri & Neel

The Tel-Aviv centered Yotam Avni officially joined forces with Stroboscopic Artefacts last year, turning in a sensual an invigorating entry for the Monad series. Thanks to his personalized fusion of esoteric and worldly sound elements, Avni immediately made a case to deliver more work to the label, and now he has done so with "Perlude to Dybbuk," the second in a new series of S.A.

The Israeli producer Yotam Avni, though not one of the main players in the Stroboscopic Artefacts story to date, nevertheless shows that he is definitely here for a reason: having contributed with an entry in the Monad series back in July,he returns with a new set of tracks that fit perfectly into the label's overall aesthetic of evolving hyper-reality, while also being a strong personal statement.

The remixes are by Paula Temple, Lee Gamble, Perc, and Minor Science.

Zeitgeber is a project that sees Lucy and Speedy J exploring roots and limits.

This new release makes good on each producer's talent for working with epically unfolding tracks, maintaining a strong command of both 'drone' and melodicism, and envisioning sound as a kind of inter-dimensional mass transit.

Jonas Kopp / Dadub / Eomac / Chevel

Maybe the most varied collection of ‘Chapter V’ material yet, leaving a lasting reminder of the depth and quality of artists SA have accrued.

Zeitgeber and L.B Dub Corp split the second in Stroboscopic Artefacts' series of fifth anniversary records.