iDEAL Recordings Sweden Vinilo y CD

Review: Jean-Louis Huhta is a long-standing veteran of the Swedish underground, from roots in punk and industrial through to an illustrious if somewhat low key life in techno. His Dungeon Acid alias heralded a return to the fundamentals of machine music, and gets more intriguing with every release. This self-titled album on iDEAL gives a wonderfully widescreen impression of his style, where atmosphere and textural individuality are just as important as the beats. At times the electronics are joyously weird, as on unhinged acid burner "7Y02", and elsewhere a more exotic, head-nodding melange emerges. Just stick on "4R01" and find yourself transported to a most curious, utterly wonderful synthetic tropicalia.

Review: Fresh from releasing Mika Vainio's Mannerlaatta OST, Joachim Nordwall's peerless iDEAL Recordings coax a new album out of Nadine and Tanya Byrne's Ectoplasm Girls project. First surfacing with the Forever Nothing tape back in 2008, the Byrne sisters were unfairly lumped in with the 'Witch house' crowd and have since kept the Ectoplasm Girls project away from the recorded format and instead developed it in a live setting. This appearance on iDEAL is something of a welcome surprise then and New Feeling Come suggests the sisters have been stealthily expanding on their sound to a most satisfying degree. Distilling elements of techno, ambient, pop and drone into a wholly enveloping ten tracks, New Feeling Come is one of those albums whose mysterious delights is further revealed with each listen.

Review: iDEAL Recordings Joachim Nordwall revisits his youth and offers up a timely chance to acquaint yourself with Frak's deranged early '90s acid phase on this reissue of Alice In Acidland. Originally released as a limited LP and cassette in 1993, Alice In Acidland came with Frak five years into a prolific recording career, and saw them fully caught up in the high octane, breakbeat driven euphoria of acid techno rave, though it's sound is still very much grounded in the idiosyncrasies that make up a Frak release. As a founder of the Borft label along with Jan Zwarre Svensson, Nordwall is well-versed on the early days of Frak, and recent adoptees of the Swedish troupe should not pass up the chance to terrorise their senses with this four track reissue!

Review: "Say Yes To No" is the debut record from iDEAL Recordings label head Joachim Nordwall, aka the iDEALIST. It is an experimental affair couched in dub but run through with a sense of dread and plenty of noise. Expertly manipulated sound characterises each track - the distant drone of a factory floor, the hum and fizz of machines at work and the lumpy, loopy drums of automation. Fans of Adrian Sherwood's brain frying, punk influenced work are sure to lap up this most dark and dystopian dub exploration, and arresting vocal appearances from John Duncan and Jamaican poet Nazamba only heighten the whole experience.

Review: Spanish producer Jasss it seems is closely affiliated with Mannequin boss Alessandro Adriani; often supporting him at his label nights in Berlin in addition to carving out a name for herself in the city as a fine selector playing everything from electro and techno through to industrial. It's all those influences that are brought together as a cohesive whole on her debut album m: Weightless for Swedish noise cognoscenti Ideal. Featuring many of the tracks as previewed during her electrifying live show at Berlin Atonal 2017, it runs the gamut from moody and brooding imaginary soundtracks ("Every Single Fish In The Pond") through to body bashing analogue noise terror ("Oral Couture"/"To Eat With Dirty Hands"), to mesmerising exotica ("Danza"), free jazz ("Cotton For lunch") and new wave EBM mutations. A riveting listen from start to finish and a cohesive effort. Recommended.

Review: Primarily known for his work with the double bass and modular synths, Egil Kalman straddles that unique hinterland somewhere between electronic, electroacoustic, and folk. Renowned for his ability to improvise and create stunning, beautiful, minimalist compositions on the fly, while this is hard to truly capture on record, Forest of Tines does its best. With a subtitle referencing the instrument Kalman is perhaps most associated with, the work is deeply textured and yet deceptively bare, with layers slowly revealing themselves before dissipating into the ether. A sonic adventure that lures us in with calm, organic movements set against tones that are more obviously the result of man and machine, timelessness meeting modernity in these exquisite forms, like stories of the ancients told through contemporary musical language.

Review: The enigmatic Stephen O'Malley returns. The co-conspirator in seminal projects Sunn O))) and KTL issues the third and final instalment in a series of live solo recordings for Swedish label iDEAL. This follows up the Fuck Fundamentalist Pigs release, recorded only days after the Charlie Hedbo attacks and this release, however as not as direct in its title, is equally poignant given this week's terrorist attacks in Brussels. For those of you who have not had the honour of seeing O'Malley live solo, this is the next best thing as he entrances and hypnotises you with his brooding, textural and minimalist drones via raw voltage, drenched in distortion. Captured on a zoom H4 at Centre Cultural Suisse, Bad Bonn Carte Blanche, Paris, France, on 18th October 2013. Limited to 700 copies. No CD. No digital.