Electronic

Limited coloured vinyl

IDM / Experimental / Drone, for fans of Oneohtrix Point Never, Lorenzo Senni, Squarepusher.

2LP Gatefold 2LP Vinyl, 500 copies limited. Genre: Avant-Garde, Experimental, Electro Acoustic, IDM, Techno, Ambient, Drone. compilation around the Japanese ENSO-Festival, which is dedicated to the more experimental and deeper sides of electronic is dedicated to music.

On his third Pole album, 3, producer Stefan Betke moves further toward ambient minimalism without forsaking his dub-techno approach

The second Pole full-length, 2, is similar in style to its numerical predecessor, which actually had been a compilation of previously released material. So while the two albums are similar in style, 2 is more consistent in approach, if perhaps less interesting on account of this. Regardless of your preference -- be it consistency or variety -- both 1 and 2 are first-rate ambient dub-techno in the grand tradition of Basic Channel and Chain Reaction

Stefan Betke's nine variations on damaged dub minimalism recall the best of Basic Channel techno while steering well clear of the monotony factor. As with Pole's first singles, these tracks materialize out of a haze of stuttering fuzz, bouncing thin shimmers of echoing synth off of ambiguous rhythms and taught, bulging bass. An excellent debut.

Summit meeting of the great visionaries of more abstract electronica: Mika Vainio (+, Pansonic), Ryoji Ikeda and Alva Noto

Matmos has a playful nature often lacking in other electronic compositions, bristling with a palpable sense of wide-eyed discovery undiluted across 25 years as a band. M.C. Schmidt & Drew Daniel are long-known for their practice of unusual sampling & experimenting with conceptual restrictions. The Consuming Flame: Open Exercises In Group Form is both a tongue-in-cheek rebuttal to the backlash against “conceptronica”, & their most ambitious project to date. The record is oriented around a deceptively simple commitment. 99 different musicians were asked to contribute: they could play anything that they wanted, but the tempo of any rhythmic material had to be set at 99 beats per minute. The resulting album is a three-hour-long assemblage that’s a kaleidoscope of genre, mood and density, while all synchronized to a constant underlying tempo. There’s a relentless forward-motion keeping more with traditions of pirate radio and mixtapes than the traditional album form

Clicks & Cuts & Rocanrol

The latest collaboration between minimal piano star Ryuichi Sakamoto and electronic star Alva Noto

The latest collaboration between minimal piano star Ryuichi Sakamoto and electronic star Alva Noto

Carsten Nicolai aka Alva Noto is one of the best-known representatives of contemporary electronic music and has often worked in collaborations, here with the French sound artist Chaton.

A compilation of unreleased material from the Light Sleep and Voice Hardcore sessions alongside specially recorded new material, including a cover of “The Void” by The Raincoats. Both formats include a 20 page zine designed by Studio Tape Echo featuring photography from Masayuki Shioda and writing from both Disciples and Phew. It follows on from a limited edition cassette and digital release of Phew’s music on Disicples called Vertical Jamming, which compiled some of the cult Japanese artist’s longform drone works. “This album is an unconscious sound sketch. It was recorded in Japan from 2017 to 2019, a closed and obstructive time. It is not a presentation of a worldview, but a personal documentary music of the late 2010s. The hidden message of this album is: What a terrible world we live in, but let's survive.” - Phew Phew is a legendary figure in Japanese underground music. Starting out in 1978 fronting one of Osaka's earliest punk groups, Aunt Sally, and going on to collaborate with a whole host of notable names as a solo artist in the 80s, including Ryuichi Sakamoto, Conny Plank, Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit of Can, Alex Hacke of Einstürzende Neubauten, and Chrislo Haas of DAF. In recent years she's made music on record or live with Ana da Silva of The Raincoats, Jim O'Rourke, Oren Ambarchi, Ikue Mori, and Yoshimi of OOIOO / Boredoms / Saicobab. For Disciples however, the most interesting aspect of Phew's work is the fact she has made her strongest musical work in the last few years, working entirely on her own. There's a lot of interest from crate-digger type labels in her early 80s new wave oriented work, and the names she's worked with are impressive, but there's no doubt in our minds that her two most recent records, Light Sleep and Voice Hardcore, are modern classics. It’s this period of her work that we were keen to explore with these releases, a contemporary archive of incredible and unique music. - Specs: 6 panel double disc digipak with 20 page photo + album essay bookle

Metrik’s highly anticipated third album ‘Ex-Machina’, on Hospital Records, is an exhilarating and flawlessly executed evolution of his unique sonic identity, filled with high-octane drum & bass frequencies and first-class dancefloor tear-ups. ‘Ex-Machina’ continues to elevate Metrik’s sound to new heights with his own vocals and songwriting taking centre stage throughout the 13-track LP, also welcoming features from Grafix and ShockOne. After 10 years shaping the face of dancefloor D+B through his technical precision and immaculate mixdowns, Metrik is firmly established by fans and peers alike as one of the most highly respected producers in the game. The album opens with ‘Automata’ - this techy bruiser triangulates meaty basslines, crunchy riffs and melodic highs. Metrik enlists label-mate Grafix for the drum & bass / rock hybrid ‘Parallel’, where the pair demonstrate their unrivalled production mastery through uplifting melodies and an anthemic hook. Metrik has teamed up with Australian bass music titan ShockOne on ‘Dying Light’ which sees euphoric vocal hooks sung by Metrik himself complete with an electrifying bassline, destined to power up sound systems worldwide. The album also includes his previous singles ‘Hackers’, ‘We Are The Energy’ and ‘Gravity’ that saw him packing out dancefloors during his tours across the US, Europe and Australasia. Having firmly established his dancefloor sound on an international scale, Metrik’s heavyweight drum & bass prowess sees support from the likes of BBC Radio 1’s Annie Mac, MistaJam and Rene LaVice. His powerful anthems have been spun by D+B legends such as Andy C, Sub Focus, Friction, Culture Shock and more, across clubs and airwaves worldwide. Metrik is previously known for his popular solo works ‘Want My Love’, ‘Fatso’, ‘We Got It’ and ‘Chasing Sunrise’, as well as his collaborative remix with D+B high flyer Wilkinson of ‘I Need’, that reached the BBC Radio 1 playlist in 2019. Having also previously held the esteemed role of BBC Radio 1’s year-long residency host, Metrik is no stranger to holding his own on the airwaves, and can be found during isolation hosting his own weekly ‘Ex Machina Sessions’ live and direct from his studio where the album was created.

A compilation of unreleased material from the Light Sleep and Voice Hardcore sessions alongside specially recorded new material, including a cover of “The Void” by The Raincoats. Both formats include a 20 page zine designed by Studio Tape Echo featuring photography from Masayuki Shioda and writing from both Disciples and Phew. It follows on from a limited edition cassette and digital release of Phew’s music on Disicples called Vertical Jamming, which compiled some of the cult Japanese artist’s longform drone works. “This album is an unconscious sound sketch. It was recorded in Japan from 2017 to 2019, a closed and obstructive time. It is not a presentation of a worldview, but a personal documentary music of the late 2010s. The hidden message of this album is: What a terrible world we live in, but let's survive.” - Phew Phew is a legendary figure in Japanese underground music. Starting out in 1978 fronting one of Osaka's earliest punk groups, Aunt Sally, and going on to collaborate with a whole host of notable names as a solo artist in the 80s, including Ryuichi Sakamoto, Conny Plank, Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit of Can, Alex Hacke of Einstürzende Neubauten, and Chrislo Haas of DAF. In recent years she's made music on record or live with Ana da Silva of The Raincoats, Jim O'Rourke, Oren Ambarchi, Ikue Mori, and Yoshimi of OOIOO / Boredoms / Saicobab. For Disciples however, the most interesting aspect of Phew's work is the fact she has made her strongest musical work in the last few years, working entirely on her own. There's a lot of interest from crate-digger type labels in her early 80s new wave oriented work, and the names she's worked with are impressive, but there's no doubt in our minds that her two most recent records, Light Sleep and Voice Hardcore, are modern classics. It’s this period of her work that we were keen to explore with these releases, a contemporary archive of incredible and unique music. - Specs: 6 panel double disc digipak with 20 page photo + album essay bookle

The third release of Kay Suzuki’s Time Capsule imprint rejuvenates Bill Laswell’s dub reinterpretations of Ethiopian singer Gigi. The story of Gigi - Illuminated Audio Following reissues of Japanese fusionist Yuji Toriyama and Italian new age visionary Il Guardiano Del Faro, the third Time Capsule is a body of dub reinterpretations by celebrated producer Bill Laswell of Ethiopian singer Gigi. Curated by Tokyo record collector, music researcher and seasoned reissue supervisor Ken Hidaka, it is the first time Illuminated Audio is pressed to vinyl after its CD release in 2003. Ejigayehu Shibabaw was born in 1974 in Chagni, northwestern Ethiopia and by pursuing a career as a singer, went against her father’s strict, traditional gender roles. As Gigi, she embraced the same musical freedom she had strived for in her personal life, incorporating the Ethiopian church, funk, hip-hop, West and South African music into her work. She first settled in Nairobi, then Addis Ababa, where she quickly established herself as one of the city’s leading singers. A move to San Francisco in 1998 led to a long and fruitful creative partnership with bassist and producer Bill Laswell. Around the same time, Chris Blackwell had stepped away from Island Records to start the art house film company and label Palm Pictures. He took an interest in Gigi and together with Laswell, pulled together an all-star cast of musicians for her self-titled US debut album, including Herbie Hancock, Pharoah Sanders and Wayne Shorter. It won international critical acclaim, not just for its musicianship but for making Gigi a “defining voice for the Ethiopian expatriate community”, as journalist Tyran Grillo praises in his Time Capsule liner notes. From the nation-defining 1896 victory over Italian invaders to the quiet revolutionaries who wear simple shemma garments, Grillo believes the themes in Gigi make it “a shower of sunlight on her homeland for those ignorant of its struggles.” After its success, Blackwell encouraged them to go back into the studio to rethink the album and Illuminated Audio was born. “Anyone can make a voice sound worldly”, Grillo remarks, “but rare are those who can make one sound inner-worldly.” Gigi was clear with Laswell to give her vocals a minor role “because it’s already been done.” Instead her Amharic verse is fleeting, exhaling through the textures like ghostly fragments, soaring yet muted. Yet the album is still titled under her name, an assertion by Laswell of her central role in the album’s creation. Not only was it a fully endorsed project by Gigi, but she would be present throughout its development, giving feedback on half-finished ideas as Laswell played them back in the Orange Music studio in New Jersey. “It works perfectly”, she reflected after the album’s release. “We wanted to capture the whole spirit of each track, and Bill’s remixes create a different music language that really puts you in a pleasant place”. This new vocabulary takes its lead from a technical approach that Laswell had been perfecting during a furtive creative period at the turn of the millennium. Much like his ambient interpretations of Miles Davis (Panthalassa, 1998), Bob Marley (Dreams of Freedom, 1997), and Carlos Santana (Divine Light, 2001), Laswell approached Illuminated Audio by returning to the original multi track masters. Gigi wasn’t just reworked, but recomposed into an expansive lattice of instruments, submerged in a watery ambience of dub and trance undercurrents. Sonically, this new language that Gigi refers to, is manifested by the original album’s more understated parts being pushed to the fore. Explaining his contrasting methods, Laswell saw Gigi as being “put together in a way that fits”. Contrastingly, in Illuminated Audio “a lot of things that I featured in the remix weren’t as audible in the original.” Instrumentation laying near-dormant, deep in the mix are brought to the fore: the acid rock guitar and Wayne Shorter’s saxophone on ‘Tew Ante Sew’, Graham Haynes’ flugelhorn on Nafekeñ, Laswell’s bass on ‘Kahn’, the melodica in Mengedegna or the floating synths and talking drums in ‘Gud Fella’. Brought to his attention by mentor DJ Nori, Hidaka describes Illuminated Audio as a “masterful sonic exploration into ethereal ambience and dub” and made sure this reissue also contained a full remaster to give much better dynamics and density in the overall sound. To the dub album non-believers this might seem like a prolific producer imposing himself on another artist’s work, with eternally developing rearrangements that never quite get to its destination. But that’s missing its true power and triumph. As Grillo asserts, this is “more than the reissue of a remix of her masterstroke”. Illuminated Audio refers to the illuminated manuscripts that comprise the major part of Ethiopian art and its new compositions stand in proud solitude as a rare body of reworks that both informs and enhances their originals