Leftfield / Experimental / Electronic Recommendations March 2016

Review: If you were one of the lucky few to pick up the illicit compilation A Few More Things From Ivan Smagghe (And Friends) the dapper French selector put out a few years ago you should be familiar with this one. "Civil Defense" by Danny Alias first emerged in 1984, a strange proto-everything-that-has-come-since track which was spun by the great Ron Hardy and has been a long term favourite of Smagghe and his KTDJ cohorts. It gets another lease of life thanks to Smagghe and Leon Oakey's always entertaining Les Disques De La Mort label with no less than five different versions to choose from, including a re-edit from the aforementioned Ron Hardy.

Review: Philip Demuth aka Rutes bursts through the scene with an EP for Sascha Mambo's Guillaume De Bois' Macadam Mambo, so its fingers on the pulse, and ears wide open on our end. The label has been amongst our favourites over the last three years, and we respect the fact that they only put out quality gear, leaving the hype for others. "Dance Exotique", as the name implies, is a deep and mystical journey through throbbing percussion and Eastern voices, but "Why Don't You?" moves to murkier, more funked-out territories that only hint at the present of house. On the B-side, this excellent - and warmly recommended - EP transports the listener through shades of forward-thinking boogie on "Tick Tack", and melodic, DDR-themed pseudo house with "Bi Bop A Lula". Quality.

Review: Having introduced Gigi Masin to a wider audience via the brilliant Talk To The Sea compilation back in 2014, Music From Memory is now attempting to do the same with Suso Saiz. Like Masin, Saiz was a new age/ambient pioneer in his country (in this case, Spain), releasing a smattering of obscure solo albums between 1984 and the present day. The material on Odisea - dreamy, stripped-back, evocative, occasionally breezy and largely built around vintage synthesizers and his own, Steve Hillage-like guitar work - is taken from those albums, as well as an obscure cassette-only release. As usual, the Amsterdam diggers have also included a number of previously unreleased tracks, drawn from the musician's extensive archives. It all ads up to another must have compilation from Europe's premier Balearic archivists.

Review: Emotional Response returns to Dusseldorf with a compilation of the music emanating out of the Diskant label over some 7 EPs between 2009-2014. Featuring the productions of The Durian Brothers, Harmonious Thelonious and Don't DJ, their unique polyrhythmic percussive sound of the label is highlighted across this special double album. Legend goes it was discovering the first Diskant release on the wall of Honest Jons store back in 2009 that became a prime influences in the creation of Emotional Response. Born out of the early years of Salon Des Amateurs, the Diskant label was set up as a vehicle for the music and member's music of The Durian Brothers, namely Florian Meyer (Don't DJ), Stefan Schwander (Harmonious Thelonious) and Marc Matter. Coming together from their own music backgrounds to explore a new experimental polyrhythmic para-funk via distorted electronics. Using specially prepared turntables, hypnotic rhythmic patterns, noise and sequencing they have created a dense and fuzzy excess that over four sides of vinyl is here now presented as a retrospective, but not an end, to highlight their unique sound.

Review: Having turfed up Boytronic classic Brylliant late last year, Dark Entries plunge once more into the darkest recesses of Hamburg's Reeperbahn district with a crucial 12" presentation of Wolfsheim's breakout hit. Formed of musician Markus Reinhardt and vocalist Peter Heppner, Wolfsheim emerged in early '90s Hamburg with The Sparrows and the Nightingales 12" on local label Strange Ways and remained active until 2009. Dark Entries focus on their synth pop sound in its most nascent form, gleefully remastering "The Sparrows & The Nightingales" and pairing it with a thunderous EBM-laced rework from crack remix specialist Ancient Methods.

Review: In interviews, Alessio Natalazia has freely stated his next album would be "very different" and "very intense". That album, his first for Powell's Diagonal stable, has finally arrived, and it's as ballsy, robust and full-throttle as he promised. While it contains nods to the woozy, shoegaze and ambient influenced soundscapes that have been a feature of his previous full-length excursions, these are well hidden behind clandestine fusions of techno and industrial, surging EBM-influenced workouts, post punk-goes-post rock explorations and atmospheric analogue electronics. For those well versed in his back catalogue, Animals makes for arresting listening. As for newcomers, they'll also find much to enjoy throughout.

Review: Prins Thomas doesn't do things by halves. Having recently released another triple-disc mix album - the rather fine Paradise Ghoulash - he's decided to make his latest album a quadruple-vinyl set. Intriguingly, it also sees him set aside "all conventional drums and drum machines" in order to create a series of epic, evocative, slowly evolving ambient pieces. These were seemingly equally as inspired by classic ambient house - think the Orb/Robert Fripp collaboration FFWD, early System 7, and so on - as IDM tracks of the 1990s. Whatever the exact inspiration, each of the 9 tracks is utterly beguiling, and hugely suited to horizontal home listening.

Review: KM Editions and Pleasure Unit are proud to anounce the launch of Pleasure Wave. A new imprint to release special projects.Our first release "Tarnished Idol comes from the multi faceted g-Marie a friend of ours for over 20 years. This mini LP was concieved over the first few months of 2015 after various travels around Europe and Asia and then recorded at his home studio in South London.

Review: In addition to his prolific output as Not Waving, London-dwelling Italian Alessio Natalizia has developed quite an interest in profiling the vast archive of music that surfaced from his motherland in the 1980s. After Strut tapped him to curate the Mutazione compilation back in 2013, Natalizia has taken to square his focus on more specific artists, with this Tapes retrospective following a similar profile of Daniele Ciulini last year. Selected Works 1982 - 1992 spans a decade of recordings from Tapes, aka brotherly pair Giancarlo and Roberto Drago whose style of industrial music absorbed the counter-cultural influence of William Burroughs or Throbbing Gristle, and the sci-fi dystopia of J.G. Ballard and John Foxx. The 21 tracks here will delight anyone with an interest in the obscure annals of European primitive electronics. Reissue of the week without a doubt!

Review: Having explored the world of 1980s post-punk on last year's brilliant [Cease & Desist] compilation, Optimo's JD Twitch has now turned his attention to cold wave and industrial from the same period. With So Low, Twitch has delivered a fine selection that encompasses both cuts from well-known names - think Tuxedomoon, Chris & Cosey, Front 242 and Conrad Schnitzler - as well as ultra-deep selections from formidably obscure acts. In general, the veteran Glaswegian's selections tend towards the darker corners of 1980s experimental electronic music culture, but it's that - plus the sheer surprising brilliance of his choices - that makes So Low such an essential listen.

Review: It all started back in late 2014, when we received the first chapter of the Cold Waves Of Color compilations. We were filled with joy, staggered at the quality of the rare track within, and left wanting more and more. Luckily, the larger-than-life Color Tapes have catered to our needs, and we're up to the third edition of the series now, another incredible collection of gems from expensive B-side singles, and God knows where else. All tunes emanate from those special 79-85 years, and there's plenty of proto-everything-shit in here, starting with the pseudo techno of "X-Cell" by Silicon Valley, right down to the distorted, off-kilter, lo-fi, and utterly visionary beat stumble of "Excerpt From Cassette No 7" by Stereo Machines & Kinesis. This is warmly recommended.

Review: Famously, Woo's Mark and Clive Ives began making music in their Wimbledon bedroom as bored teenagers, way back in 1972. Eventually, it led to a series of obscure - but later celebrated - albums that somehow joined the dots between fuzzy ambience, odd indie-rock, lo-fi jazz, atmospheric acoustic music and other similarly out-there ideas. Here, Palto Flats present a selection of unheard tracks from the brothers' archives, recorded in Wimbledon between 1975 and 1982. Thrillingly, much of the material is more psychedelic and out-there than even their wildest releases, making it an enticing, adventurous hotch-potch of weird and wonderful interludes, doodles and quickly recorded escapades.

Review: Kick-starting 2016 with style, cult NYC label DFA call upon Montreal-based duo Essaie Pas to deliver an LP of pure sonic vibrations and soothing meditation. The title track itself, "Demain Est Une Autre Nuit", is a definite stand-out thanks to its dreary, lonesome pool of harmonies, but the album develops a more concrete shape with tunes like "Retox" or "Le Port Du Masque Est De Rigeur", both classic coldwave cuts with a nod to electro. Our favourite on here is definitely "Facing The Music", though, an ominous crescendo of hollow bass and dread that falls neatly into the EBM-style techno of "Lights out".

Review: Modern auteur James Clements is back with more fascinating explorations of the grey zone. Starting out with the psychotic acid experiment of "Ignite" it is then business as usual on the title track, with its dark atmospheres and industrial textures contrasted by a belting gabber style beat; it's pretty brilliant. On the flip "Reveal" is another furious 170 BPM experiment, innovative as much as it is utterly confronting, while final track "Vanium" switches to cruise control on this mysteriously bleepy sci-fi epic somewhere between Sahko and the Autonomic sound. Sounds good enough right?

Review: Japanese musical legend Ryuichi Sakamoto composes the soundtrack to Hollywood blockbuster The Revenant. Directed by Alejandro G. INarritu and starring Leonardo Di Caprio and Tom Hardy, the film earned three Golden Globes and five BAFTA awards. Sakamoto collaborates with The National's Bryce Dessner and German multidisciplinary artist Carsten Nicolai aka Alva Noto of Raster-Noton fame. This brooding yet breathtaking musical accompaniment is awe inspiring in all its grandeur, particularly the moments on which Alva Noto appears to provide his trademark synthesized string orchestra passages, complimented by his glitchy and clinical soundscapes ("Carrying Glass"/"Powaqa Rescue") They're so reminiscent of his legendary Xerrox series. Also features the Northwest Sinfonia (Seattle), Berlin orchestra s t a r g a z e and contributions from John Luther Adams and Eliane Radigue.

Review: Bristol's Subtext is now home to a stunning mixture of artists from all over the electronic sphere, and aside from being one of Roly Porter's birthing grounds, the label has released plenty of choice output from both Emptyset and Paul Jebanasam, among others. The latter is back this week three untitled snippets of sounds under the Continuuum heading, the first of which is a noisy chance of industrial feedback-funk, and the second a fluttering wave of lonesome sonics, and lo-fi glitches. Lastly, the B-side hurls in a load of pseudo beats, all rolling and disjointed, to go alongside the steely pile of noise drones that engulf your ears with fury.

Review:  Last year, Border Community heavyweights James Holden and Luke Abbott took part in a special performance to mark the 80th birthday of minimalist legend Terry Riley. Here, the extended pieces they performed that night are finally released. Holden's 46-minute piece - performed with tabla player Camilo Tirado, and created by writing a special sequencer for his modular synthesizer - is little less than an exotic, slowly evolving masterpiece, up there with the American composer's finest synthesizer works. Abbott's "555Hz", on the other hand, is an altogether deeper and more languid affair, but no less enthralling. Built around droning, drawn-out chords and subtle melodic shifts, it bubbles away attractively like the greatest intergalactic ambience.

Review: Some 31 years after they were first conceived, the cuts that make up Anna Homler and Steve Moshier's Breadwoman & Other Tales remain thoroughly odd, out-there and entertaining. During the duo's mid-1980s collaboration, performance artist Homler channeled the spirit of a character she'd created called Breadwoman, delivering bizarre vocals - half sung, half spoken, in some kind of made-up dialect - she referred to as "divine speech". These were worked into musical pieces by experimental composter Moshier, who utilized cheap drum machines, battered analogue synthesizers, and chamber music players to create hypnotic, otherworldly tracks that remain hugely charming. The story of their creation and performance, told in great detail in the accompanying liner notes, is also fascinating.

Review: It's a shame that Geneva Jacuzzi doesn't come out with her own releases more often, as we've been big fans of her work - and her voice, of course - ever since her first releases began to emerge around 2008. She's back with a bang on Seattle's Medical Records, home to some of the finest synth pop and coldwave of the last five years alongside the likes of Minimal Wave, kicking things off with the deliciously danceable kicks of the title track, "Technophelia". More playful moments like "Casket" "Cannibal Babies" are frequent and full of life, but we're really into the darker, broodier cuts such as "God Maker", "Ark Of The Zombies", or even the fantastic "Squid Hunter". Tipped!

Review: For fans of minimal wave and DIY electronic pop, Oppenheimer Analysis's self-released 1982 debut cassette, New Mexico - little more than an extended demo cassette - has become something of a collector's item. While it has been reissued digitally since, it never received a vinyl release. In tribute to Martin Lloyd (the other half of the duo, alongside Andy Oppenheimer), who passed away recently, Minimal Wave has decided to make New Mexico available on wax for the first time. While the sound quality is appropriately dusty (it was badly recorded in the first place, of course), the music remains magical - bubbling, evocative, left-of-centre leftfield pop created with home-made synthesizers, modular hardware and little else. It's no wonder many consider it a classic album (even if was never officially released first time round).

Review: Black Tears marks just the latest chapter in a long and productive history between Italian pair Giorgio Gigli and Francesco Baudazzi. Between 2009 and 2012, the pair were responsible for overseeing a wealth of deep techno on their Zooloft label, including many of their own 12"s (with Baudazzi working under the name Obtane). Recent times have seen Baudazzi re-emerge as Violet Poison, presenting a more esoteric and undeniably darker side of his productions and this evidently feeds into his Black Tears project with Gigli. Across the 11 tracks, the duo pull you through a crepuscular assortment of noise, harsh techno and industrial music with post-punk overtones. One for the dark rooms on the rainy weekends!

Review: Active for over a decade, Rabih Beaini's Morphine has never put out any music in the seven inch format - until now that is! This honour is bestowed up Senyawa duo Rully Shabara and Wukir Suryadi who have been granted the chance to show off their respective solo approaches. For his Huruf Hidup 7", Shabara takes a different approach to that shown by his Senyawa colleague, offering up six brief compositions that place his voice at the core. The more adventurous selectors out there will probably revel in the chance to tease out some of these Shabara concoctions over some ambient music and collectively with Suryadi's 7" this makes an intriguing addendum to Senwaya's LP for Morphine.

Review: French artist High Wolf seems to save his most fantastically madcap material for Black Zone Myth Chant releases. Certainly, you'll struggle to find a better example of imaginative, out-there electronic music than his fantastic 2015 set Mane Thecel Phares. This belated follow-up 12" is every bit as exciting and hard-to-decipher, with BZMC brilliantly blending sludgy, nightmarish vocal snippets, sparkling new age synthesizer motifs, impossible-to-pigeonhole rhythms, occasional Juke influences, lilting ambience and the kind of aural textures that sit somewhere between druggy weirdness and crystal clear, loved-up bliss. In other words, Jimi W is another essential missive from one of electronic music's most adventurous eccentrics.

Review: A new year sees Rabih Beaini's Morphine usher in the return of Senyawa duo Rully Shabara and Wukir Suryadi, although it's not in the form we are accustomed to seeing them! Rully Shabara and Wukir Suryadi have been actively pushing the boundaries of Javanese music since 2010, it was their arrival on Morphine with the album Menjadi in March last year that exposed Senyawa to a whole new audience. Having toured extensively with Morphine man Rabih Beaini since then, the Indonesian pair go solo for two 7" adventures on the label. Suryadi's Woven Sounds features two tracks, with "Tenun" an exercise in dense, ritualistic polyrhythms augmented by some mind-bending vocal chanting. "Comb Sisir & Topi Toraja" presents a more abstract side to Suryadi.