[ aquarius records — Electronic ]

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Following the Mogwai/Kid606/other fella remix ep released recently, here's the new full-length from this edgy electronica New Yorker.

The ultimate in suave chic pop. Positively groovy. Ideal music for the Euro-fashion show runways including the catfights backstage. One part Heaven 17. Remember "Let Me Go"? Well, check out the track entitled "So Gut". One part Charles Wilp. One part Human League. One part Pizzicato 5 (see "Whole Lotta Weasel"). One part dorky weirdness. Well shaken, and topped with an avalanche of cocktail fruit, olives and canapes. So very very fun.

The first salvo of electronic vinyl madness from AQ pal Drucifer's new label comes in the form of four 12"s, beautifully packaged in distinctive orange sleeves (dance 12" style) and on nice thick vinyl, and sonically running the gamut from stuttery glitched out electronica to shimmery drones to speaker shredding digital rhythms to dreamy beatscapes. Carson Day (NOT Carson Daly!) is a 17 year old SF local who according to the Dielectric website likes Tool, White Zombie, Boards Of Canada, Autechre and loads more. Don't notice much of the Tool or White Zombie influence, but the Boards/Autechre vibe is present in spades. Stuttery, skittery rhythms over dreamy pastoral backdrops, with hyper-distorted melodies, the occasional grinding, rib cage rattling low-end bass line and bursts of almost jungle peppering these dreamy, late night electronic workouts. Definitely for fans of Autechre, Boards Of Canada and the like. MPEG Download: "Different Agendas" [/audio/daydifferent.mp3] MPEG Stream: "Different Agendas" [/audio/daydifferent.m3u]

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The latest from local label Time Released Sound comes from a Russian duo called Daydreamer, their record a sonic homage to French existentialist Albert Camus, the music a darkly languorous sprawl of slo-mo ambient drift, and abstract post rock shimmer, opening with a bit of Durutti Column like guitar mesmer, the record soon settles into a brooding, cinematic slowcore, horn flecked smolder, sounding like some lost David Lynch score, before transforming into a hazy Tim Hecker-ish stretch of minimal murk, which in turn unwinds as a haunting abstract chamber folk, all pointillist piano and slow burn shimmer, the sound over the course of Camus' nine tracks slipping easily from sun dappled dreaminess, to dark, ominous dronescapery, black ambience shot through with barely there rhythms, strange snippets of what sounds like subtle turntablism, a hazy sinister creep through sonic shadows, emerging on the other side, all warm, and lush, and lustrous, a softly glitchy swirl of prismatic sound, a woozy world of whirring chordal thrum woven into lush layered ambience, the final movement more straight up guitar, spidery melodies suspended in space, wreathed in barely there distant drones, surrounded by clouds of cymbal shimmer and strange abstract voices, finishing off with a brief bit of smeared psychedelic swirl, a gauzy, druggy, drowsy coda. Gorgeous! Like all Tim Released Sound releases, there are two versions, the standard digipak edition, limited to 150 copies, and the deluxe handmade art edition, this time limited to just 90 copies, and as always, extravagantly packaged. Which means for Camus, a multi page booklet, hinged on one corner, which fans open into a sort of mandala. The super striking cover image is printed to Japanese tissue paper, hand pasted and shredded. The booklet itself is printed on heavyweight Moab paper, and are hand punched, sewn, collaged, stamped and doodled. The back of each page is spray stenciled as well. And to top it off, hanging from the corner of each booklet is an actual Gauloises cigarette, packaged in a little capped vial. Everything then housed in a 6" square spray painted, hand punched and stamped translucent envelope. Wow!

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By golly, we've received a bunch of tweaked pop releases this week -- Black Moth Super Rainbow, Shaky Hands, Welcome, Bonde Do Role -- but Baltimore's Dan Deacon and his merry melody makers (read: an assortment of well-worn effects pedals and electronic gizmos -- yup, he's a one-man band!) definitely take the daffy cake! That is, if the cake is a dizzying candy-jewelled sparkler inferno of vintage video game melodies and processed kiddie gang vocals. Having played a couple shows with Deacon, our own Matt Wildlife has attested to the live awesomeness of this fellow. However, despite the loosey-goosey frolicking nature of this album and his live show, he ain't no musical neophyte amateur. He's got some serious skills to pay the bills (i.e, classical training and a Masters degree in electro-acoustic composition!). Deacon's self-released seven albums to date, and this is his first for Carpark Records (home of quirkulicious releases by Ariel Pink, Ecstatic Sunshine, Animal Collective, Kit Clayton & Safety Scissors). Spiderman Of The Rings sounds like a sugar-coated battle royale between Arcade Fire and HR Pufnstuf. You want party? Here it is!

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If only all electronic music sounded this sick, so heavy and distorted and twisted! From the same label that brought us Cloaks' Versus Grain records, a big favorite around here with it's noisy, chaotic, industrial crunch, Dead Fader do something similar, taking a root sound that's equal parts dubstep, electro, and that sort of synthy heavy Ed Banger stuff, and then cranks it WAY up, the beats are thick and distorted and crumbly, the synths are thick and fuzzed out and also WAY distorted, there's noise all over the place, rumble and buzz and whir and skree, feedback, glitched out damage, but all woven into super funky fucked up grooves, it's like some modern electronic record given an old school DHR makeover, reminds us a lot of Fever, for those of you who remember them, their record maybe one of the heaviest most distorted sort-of-hip-hop records ever. The label compares Dead Fader to Burial playing through Slayer's backline, which isn't really that far off the mark, the sounds here are in-the-red, blown out, there are distorted almost black metal vocals buried in the mix, streaks of feedback, the beats and synths careen wildly, panned super hard, swinging from speaker to speaker, it's dizzying and relentless, dark and dense, abstract and freaky, with weird bursts of Goblin-y prog, thick pulsing synths, creeping monklike chanting, flurries of skitter and stutter, crumbling walls of electronic sound that are practically metal in their timbre and intensity, but for all its crunch and pummel, all its ferocity and aggression, and fucked up weirdness, it still manages to be melodic and groovy, funky and fun, the sort of dancemusic that we always wished existed, and it makes even the most intense jams and block rockin' beats from folks like Daft Punk or the Basement Jaxx or the Chemical Brothers or whoever sound downright flaccid. Electronic record of the year? Quite possibly...

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SORRY. 'Ambient' music soaked in cheap cologne.

Som ething Borrowed, Something Blue is Deadbeat aka Scott Monteith's follow up to his 2002 release Wild Life Documentaries. People will still undeniably draw comparisons to Stefan Betke's dub project Pole, but by now the world of Teutonic dub has unfolded everywhere since Betke's initial releases. So while that albatross is likely to follow Monteith for many a mile yet, it's safe to say he's charting waters leagues beyond the original Pole territory. And let's face it, there's much worse things an electronic artist could be compared to. The remaining Pole-esque vestiges on Something Borrowed remain the trademark square wave bass line, the dubbed out organ and -- of course -- the mock-Jamaican rhythms. There's much less dependence on the micro-rhythm sound palette, which gives Something Borrowed much more full sounding rhythms. Along with the addition of some very pretty and sparsely played piano on one track, there's a great deal more organic sound matter thrown into the mix here and Monteith makes good use of longer track times -- most between 7 and 10 minutes -- to experiment more with developing compositions including some pieces which pleasently drift off into rhythmless grainy soundscapes.

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We've long loved Paul St Hilaire, aka Tikiman, THEE voice of minimal dub geniuses Rhythm And Sound, his gorgeous, otherworldly croon adding some serious soul to R&S' darkly digital world of gristly dubbed out, slow skitter creep, and really, if there was ever one of those 'could sing the phonebook' voices, it's St Hilaire's. Years back, St Hilaire performed with Deadbeat, aka Scott Monteith, another aQ fave, a dub scientist in Berlin by way of Canada, whose sound was and is equal parts Rhythm & Sound skeletal dig-dub, and Pole style click and pop minimalism. Over the years, Monteith and St Hilaire stayed in touch, even playing the occasional show, but this is the first proper recording the two have made together, and it's a total stunner. And as you might imagine from the above, it's pretty much just what you'd expect, a sprawling collection of gorgeous super spare electro dub, a lot like Pole crossed with Rhythm & Sound. But that sound is stretched way out, some of the tracks here almost house-y, some very Kompakt sounding, but regardless of the sonic influence or inspiration, Monteith and St Hilaire make the sound totally their own, conjuring up some spiritual musical magic that makes The Infinity Dub Sessions totally divine. Especially the first track, which is worth the $18 price tag all on its own. Maybe the most perfect, and perfectly mysterious and moody modern dub track we've heard, all woozy, thick bass rumbles, wreathed in static, deep mesmeric swells, laced with dubbed out upstroke chordal thrum, as well as the occasional dubstep style bass wobble, little bits of glitch and squelch scattered throughout, super minimal melodies drifting like bongsmoke in the background, even instrumental, this would be totally hypnotic and irresistibly mesmerizing, but add St. Hilaire's gorgeous croon, and it becomes something even more transcendent. Nothing else is quite as dark and bass heavy, but all the tracks are tranced out, softly swirly and psychedelic, the sound simultaneously minimal and skeletal, but also deeply lush and layered, ranging from the super percussive churn of "Dopa", with some seriously twisted, echo drenched vox, to the more reggae sounding "What The Heck Them Expect", St Hilaire's vocals the focal point, the background music a dark, languorous groove. "Working Everyday" is a dubby, dreamy sprawl, all soft focus and prismatic, billowy chords drifting atop a lazily propulsive rhythm, while "Rock Of Creation" is a hazy techno-dub ballad, a field of gristly and crackle the framework for shimmery synths and hushed melodies, St Hilaire crooning seductively amidst ethereal clouds of sound. The final three tracks have a huge Kompakt vibe, but imagine if Kompakt was headquartered in Kingston, Jamaica, with The Infinity Dub Sessions a chronicle of St Hilaire and Monteith's mobile sound system, the streets of Jamaica sonically transformed into some otherworldy dream-dub dancehall.

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For everyone disappointed by the lack of proper, big beat, banging Daft Punk style dancefloor destroyers on the recent Tron soundtrack, well this is for you. The latest from Deadmau5, an electronic musician who performs costumed, much like the above mentioned Daft Punk. But where Daft Punk are some sort of futuristic spacemen, Deadmau5 wears a giant, lawsuit baiting mouse head, and sonically, Deadmau5 explores a soundworld not all that dissimilar to those of his electronic music compatriots, Daft Punk, Basement Jaxx, Chemical Brothers and the like. Big beats sure, but with a dark melodic element that elevates this beyond pure dancefloor fodder. "Some Chords" might be the electronic jam of the year (last year?), with its haunting moody intro, thick corroded/distorted synth sound, woozy minor key melody, and dubsteppy vibe (not to mention that dubstep bass wobble/warble), hypnotic, and dark, and rhythmic, and surprisingly cinematic. Those same elements inform the rest of the record, fat fuzzy basslines, wheezing synths, big ol' block rocking beats, but with plenty of unlikely filigree, from strange Darth Vader like heavy breathing to dark moody piano to Jamaican style toasting, to ravey synth stabs. The songs with vocals are definitely on the pop side, sing songy, sounding like Double Dutch chants, playful and fun and funky, but it's the instrumental jams that are the fiercest, and must send dancefloors into fits. "One Trick Pony" manages to merge the two, with a totally pop verse, but when the vocals drop out, it's one of the hardest dubstep jams we've heard in ages. "Raise Your Weapons" sounds like a soulful radio ballad, crooning female vocals over dark minor key piano, but then suddenly, the vocals get all dubbed out, and the song gets super dense and heavy, and those throbbing dubstep basslines, squelchy synths and crushing stuttery big beats come tumbling out. For fans of the poppier side of dubstep, Zomby, Rusko, Martyn, Roska, Guido, Mount Kimbie who aren't averse to some chest rattling big bass, and of course the above mentioned big beat electronicians (Daft Punk, Basement Jaxx, etc...)!

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Kick ass collection of dark East Coast hip hop, blunted beats and brooding atmospherics, from this bizarre collective made up of experimental hip hop outfit Dalek, East Coast spaced out dronescapers Destructo Swarmbots, and hop hop weirdo Oddateee. Tons of guests too...

While we totally dug Matthew Dear's debut from several years ago, we just haven't gotten into his last few outings as much as we wanted to, but with Black City, he shows us why we fell for him in the first place. He merges elements of house, electro funk, and dark pop into such a compelling and unique sound, one as influenced by folks like Herbert and Swayzek as it is Gary Numan, early Nine Inch Nails and mid-era Cabaret Voltaire. While there has been no shortage of white guys doing their best Prince imitations in recent years, we love how Matthew Dear takes elements of Prince's sound yet totally injects his own voice and style in it, adding darker beats, sleeker rhythms and more hypnotic melodies, all without having to resort to a really forced high pitched vocal delivery, which so many others do and just comes off as beyond corny. Kind of like if Junior Boys started listening to lots more dirty techno or how that last James Pants record tapped into the same kind of unique hybrid of electronic left-field pop. Undeniably groovy and funky and so very good.

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Remixes and b-sides!

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SORRY. New Alec Empire project, a 45-minute limited edition no-frills cd of extreme slamming digital hardcore whoomph.

Afro-Booty Musique! That's not just one of the song titles here, that's what this is. French techno producer Debruit makes his debut with this lively disc, that weaves both samples and rhythmic inspiration from various sorts of African music old and new (including stuff from "lost African VHS") into a slightly hip-hopped, drum-machine driven, largely instrumental techno funk full of fat, squelchy bass lines and infectious chants. It comes off like a mad, manic mix of the hyperactive, synthed-out sound of South African "Shangaan Electro" and the funky-but-fucked up approach of another aQ fave style, namely "Skweee"!! Syncopated, surreal like the cover art, exotic and energetic, great for a sweaty dance frenzy or fast driving in the car (simply sitting at home in front of the stereo, maybe that too, but you might not be sitting still for long). And track 7 is called "Zef", so now we know Die Antwoord didn't make that up. Fans of skweee, of Shangaan stuff (particularly the Shangaan Shake remixes Honest Jon's put out), the electrified thumb-piano "Congotronics" of Konono No.1, and that great Francis Bebey "African Electronic Music" collection on Born Bad, all will hear things they like here, in one chaotic, jubilant, groovy jumble! Next time, we'll probably have the double vinyl version of this too, plus also a remix 12".

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We want to live in whatever world the music of Deepchord provides the soundtrack to. His murky, swirly minimal techno/dub evokes some sort of future noir, crumbling buildings, rainswept streets, everything lit by the haunting yellow glow of old streetlights, but it also has us imagining modern penthouses, all glass and chrome, overlooking the decrepit city, and the long lit tunnels of some futuristic transport system, not sure why, but Hash-Bar Loops, a record thematically focused on Amsterdam actually, instead has us imagining something like Raymond Chandler crossed with Tron. Which is most definitely a good thing. We just can't resist the sounds of Deepchord, aka Rod Modell, who seems to have mastered this sound, whatever 'this' sound is. Future dub, ambient cinematic techno, pop ambient futurism, whatever it is, it's a strange hybrid, that to these ears at least, sounds like a mix of late night Detroit techno, Pole style digidub, blissed out pop ambience and that murky washed out heroin house we love so much. Which pretty much describes Hash-Bar Loops, as does the opening three song suite, perfectly displaying what Modell is so good at, unfurling a hazy bit of warm whirling ambience, wreathed in a layer of static that could be the sound of wind whipping over the hills, rain falling on city streets, or just hissy static... And from there it's a slow build over the three tracks, opener "Spirits" is all ghostly and spectral, "Stars" is where rhtyhmic elements first surface, a muted skitter and pulse mostly obscured by the hiss and hum, all beneath a warm wash of blurred melody and smeared soft focus ambience, until finally, "Sofitel" finds the hiss receding completely, leaving just a skeletal techno groove, the soundtrack to some strange dinner party, on a rooftop in this futuristic city. The record drifts deamily from beat to drift, from rhythm to ambience, the two sides of the sound constantly fusing and intertwining, the record's finest moments when the balance is just right, the beat buried beneath warm billows of dreamlike sound. And then finally the record ends the way it began, with a three song suite that leads the listener into a blissed out drift, "Crimson" shuffles and swings, surrounded on all sounds by a blurred thrum, on "Black Cavendish" that thrum takes over, and gradually transforms into what sounds like a symphony of crickets, over a murky muted pulse, until finally "Neon And Rain" slips into full on dubbed out shoegaze, a warm whirling shimmer, laced with jagged bits of echoey effects, perfectly evoking as the title suggests, the glow of neon on a dark, rainy night...

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Regular list readers will instantly recognize the name Deepchord, whose tripped-out, stoned version of minimal techno has filled the gap in our hearts left by the absence of the Chain Reaction and Basic Channel labels. Here at Aquarius, we've never really focused on techno as much as other genres, but our general interest tends to orbit somewhere out in the distance, near the intergalactic debris left in the wake of the rave. Detroit and Berlin minimalism, experimental noise makers Astral Social Club, or even the bedroom beats of Finland's Fricara Pacchu. However, this release bears witness to the side of Deepchord that we're really just less familiar with: actual techno. But, at least one of us has spent time digging through dance music crates looking for techno main players like Carl Craig, Kenny Larkin, or Kevin Saunderson. That's exactly where this tends to go, away from the celestial droniness of the majority of their work and back to the Detroit soil. As we listen, we're hearing a lot more of the city's second wave minimal tendencies, albeit married to the spacey grit of other Deepchord releases. In other words, this is a pretty seamless, thoughtful blend of what techno had going for it about 10 years ago, and what's happening now. It's actually really nice to hear this duo branch out a little from what they've been doing, and continue offering an exciting alternative to the now ubiquitous big-room, yawn-inspiring minimal techno that's been popping up the last couple of years. Fans of the project fear not, this isn't exactly a foray into trance synths and cheesy vocal samples of obvious classic soul or '80s pop songs. This is still instrumental, still experimental, and really pretty great. Fans of artists like both Sleeparchive and William Basinski can find something here to love too. Once again, Deepchord: recommended.

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Hephaestus, the blacksmith, the ancient Greek god of fire and metal. Also, the title of a 1993 album by skate metal avantgardists Iceburn, one of our faves of theirs that we wish would get reissued. However, THIS Hephaestus has got nothing to do with skate metal, although it is avantgarde. On this experimental drone disc issued by Editions Mego, cellist Arne Deforce's classically acoustic, acoustic classical instrument is subjected to the electronic effects of Pan Sonic's Mika Vainio. We hadn't heard anything by Deforce before, but there's nothing like cello for creating some seriously dark, doleful atmospheres. And Mika Vainio is Mika Vainio - heck it's not really 'experimental' if he does it, 'cause you know the result will turn out great, right? So what you get here is pretty fantastic, six tracks (whose names all come from the cartography of Greek mythology) of spacious, abstract dronescapes. The first track, "Phlegethon", starts off in subtle stealth mode, quietly haunting, before the cello's drone is distorted into sounding something more like an aircraft engine, rumbling with distortion and feedback - yeah it gets HEAVY, sounding like SUNNO))) or Earth, or even Merzbow. Sudden -boom- explosions of low-end, the volume peaking, add even more dynamism. That's how it goes throughout the disc, there are restrained passages of cinematic near-ambience; and others, wherein the cello sonics are processed into something more fragmented, frazzled, even frightening. You'd think you were listening to a Caspar Brotzmann guitar solo some of the time! Really well done, and recommended.

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This one probably doesn't require too much of a review (and we're not being too timely with it either!), but we might as well start this one the way we started our review of 2010's Diamond Eyes, and say that we STILL don't understand how anyone who digs heavy music doesn't love these guys. Pretty much every record since Around The Fur has been chock full of brooding, moody heaviness, the sound as much beholden to their nu-metal past as the Cure and Depeche Mode, and somehow the weird fusion of metal and moody pop has transformed into a super unique sound, one that almost everyone we know, metalheads included LOVE. When this record came out, a procession of aQ friends and customers, came in, called, emailed, all SO excited about a new Deftones record. And we're talking weirdo music nerds, metalheads, pop kids... And like Diamond Eyes, Koi No Yokan is another killer, heavy as hell, crazy catchy, super atmospheric, the sound massive, the production HUGE, and with some of the best songs in ages. "Romantic Dreams", is so poppy it's almost criminal that's it's not all over the radio. Then there's "Poltergeist", with it's weird hand clap breakdown and soaring chorus. There's also plenty of the Deftones slower doom poppy dirges, which still sound amazing. Fuck it, fans are gonna want this, haters oughta give the samples a listen, you might be surprised. For all the weird black buzz and dense drones and hooky indie rock and heavy psych we've been digging, odds are this may very well end up being the record some of us listen to most...

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Earlier this year, Chris Degiere presented a surprisingly comedic / theatrical performance at the "Six String Object" show for guitars tricked out with laptop processing. Degiere had rigged up his PDA to register the scribbling of stylus upon its face as its electro-acoustic equivalent. Matched with his permanently goofy grin and some crowd pleasing, uptempo IDM abstractions, Degiere's gimmickery did what few have been able to do -- make a laptop concert an event that was entertaining to watch. As he has also claimed allegiance to generative music and compositional indeterminancy, Degiere seemed poised for something interesting. His debut recording, while pleasant in its own right, is somewhat lacking in those sensationalist applications of electronics he alluded to earlier. This 10" on lovely blue vinyl is full of ambient-techno pleasantries with soupy stoner electronics and thickly rounded basslines topping post-Boards of Canada rhythmic preciousness. Compositional indetereminancy? Do you really want to hear that with your Boards of Canada wistfulness? Probably not.

Soul Coughing's sampler operator DeGliAntoni debut solo disc of sampler experimentation, a bit farther out than the pop of his main band, "drawing upon instrumental trip-hop, cartoon music and minimalism."

Vladislav Delay has a thing for cologne (this is a true fact) -- not the city as you may expect from one whose aesthetic parallels that of Cologne's Wolfgang Voigt and Thomas Brinkmann, but rather the mens' perfume. It may be a stretch to qualify his complex percolations of dubbed-out ambient techno as musical equals to his cologne fetish, but there must be some connection between the two. Where Thievery Corporation reeks of AquaVelva, thus smelling like a soft-core porno, Vladislav Delay has the aroma of something infinitely more sophisticated, like the clean citrus scents from Hermes. "Anima" is his lightest and airiest production to date, almost abandoning the rhythmic proclivities of his dense Chain Reaction record in favor of skittering abstraction that loosely follow a subtle ambient dub rhythm (one complaint: a two-note synth pad sequence that is practically identical to the Twin Peaks theme, and thus Moby's early techno anthem "Go!"). One continuous track.

The latest from Finnish minimalist electronic dub technician Vladisav Delay is not in fact a record of demos as the title might lead you to believe, but is actually the first release on his own Huume label, and is easily the most exciting thing he's ever done. Still dabbling in dub, but just barely, this is spare and haunting, with massive expanses of shimmering sound, reverbed emanations that ripple endlessly to the fuzzy grey of the horizon. Industrial clatter is stretched and reshaped into rhythmic echoes, never coalescing enough to constitute an actual beat, but more a series of random pulses and throbs, providing a skeletal support for Delay's blurry indistinct map of abstract dub. Imagine the first groundbreaking Pole record, played through rusty loudspeakers, mounted on unsteady supports, spread throughout a bombed out and wasted urban landscape, the sound waves reflecting from jagged, toppled masonry, shattered windows, and rubble strewn alleys. But then somehow, imbue this murky otherworldy ambience with a distant warm glow, a sort of slight hopefulness, minor keys distantly mirrored by subtle major keys, a single shaft of sunlight filtered through dust choked atmosphere and filthy weather worn windows. Just enough to allow for some slight rosy shading to the otherwise grey sheets of sonic shimmer. At once totally soothing and hypnotically dreamy, but also a deep and darkly challenging listen.

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THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY. Release number 5 from this great new New Zealand label. Just like the first two (Rosy Parlene and Parmentier, reviewed in the last AQ-List) these are all-white packages of beautiful, minimal music. Vladislav Delay (from Finland, a hemisphere away from the other Sigma artists physically but not musically) distills dub into faded ghosts of fragmented sound, immersing the listener in a droning deconstruction of snare, cymbal, and analog electronic sounds.

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SORRY. With a number of releases on structuralist techno labels MaxErnst and Chain Reaction, this Finnish prodigy has been slowly breaking from the pure-tone oscillations of artists like Thomas Brinkmann and Mika Vainio, in favor of the digital facsilimies of rusted detritus which corrode monophunk techno pulses into atmospheric murk. Another quality release from Mr. Delay.

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SORRY. Thomas Brinkmann's influence on Vladislav Delay is far well beyond the fact that Brinkmann released this single on his Max Ernst label. The motorik machines that tick with clockwork precision (and a very static 'groove') are signature of Brinkmann's minimalist techno. However, Vladislav Delay (who also has a great album on the New Zealand label Sigma) does appear to be doing more with the digital metronome in sprinkling cavernous dub and frozen atmospheres, falling closer to the sound of Plastikman or some of the Chain Reaction kids.

Yay, this long out of print Chain Reaction classic from Finnish minimalist Vladislav Delay is now reissed by Huume... here's what we said about it long ago, the first time 'round: The scope of the anonymous metallic techno sound of the Chain Reaction / Basic Channel core of artists has been fractured by the simple fact that Berlin is no longer the locus of activity. Rather, Fluxion, Hallucinator, and Vladislav Delay (the latest wave of Chain Reactors) come from lands quite far from Berlin. Finland's Vladislav Delay retains only a semblance of the Chain Reaction 'heroin house'. Instead of stripping the already minimal techno to its most hypnotic particles, Delay densly layers murky percolations of dubbed pattern phases with the teutonic 909 thump only sporadically emerging from the sonic substrata. An exceptional variation on a proven theme.

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"Naima" is an edited document of Vladislav Delay's extended live performance at Ars Electronica Klangpark 2001. While his previous albums were of the digidub / ambient electronica sound alongside Pole and Kit Clayton, "Naima" is a spartan abstraction of

RealAudio clip: Naima

Vladislav Delay has long been regarded as one of the most astute electronic producers, having successfully investigated a Chain Reaction morass of heroin house percolating with dubbed out granular synthetic bleep and bloop, then making quite a splash with numerous bona fide club anthems under the Luomo moniker. The Four Quarters marks the first record in quite some time as Vladislav Delay; like his electrifying Chain Reaction recordings, The Four Quarters is a submersive experience albeit a far more downtempo excursion with plodding breakbeats and super slow-motion ambient wash and synth vibrations, all smothered in a frigid digital dub.

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Sasu Ripatti (the man behind Vladislav Delay mask for a decade now) has long touted his jazz roots when talking about the complex pixel-fizz and digi-blur he crafted above his seminal Chain Reaction records of abstracted techno from the turn of the century. It seemed a bit of a stretch; but yeah, you could hear some tinklings of jazz expressionism lurking within his liminal electronic rhythms. Jump to 2009 with his first album as Vladislav Delay in two years (there was a Luomo record from 2008, mind you!), and Ripatti has made a fine piece of noir-laced electronics that balance his formative years as a jazz drummer and his contemporary explorations with digital synthesis. Boozy atmospheres, scatter-shot percussion occasionally tightening into repeating sequences, looping organic rhythms, and dub-inflected electronics abound.

MPEG stream: Kuula (Kiitos)
MPEG stream: Toive

It's been a couple of years since we've heard anything purely electronic from the Finnish techno abstractionist Vladislav Delay. Recently, Sasu Ripatti (the man behind the Vladislav Delay moniker) has fronted an electro-jazz quartet, emblazoned with the rather obvious name - the Vladislav Delay Quartet, a project that must have been inspired by Ripatti's time as the drummer for Mortiz Von Oswald's hypno-jazz trio which sported an equally eponymous nom de plume. By contrast with all of the wooden explorations of post-Kosmische grooves that hinted at Terry Riley, Can, and Cluster, Vantaa turns back to his celebrated work for Chain Reaction, radiating its dub-inflected electric lullabies from within the heart of the machine. As Vladislav Delay, Ripatti has been known for a decentering form of abstracted techno, where the rhythms are erased, blurred, muted, shifted, and otherwise obfuscated amidst a constantly morphing array of whirring mechanics and granulated synthesis, making this some of the most difficult forms of techno to try to tap out a rhythm to. Vantaa continues brilliantly along this line of thought, with organically spun networks of electrical synapses responding through metabolic fluctuations and dream-like dubbed echoes. By the time, he slips and trips his way to "Lauma" at the end of the record, Delay glides into a high-octane techno pulse without anybody really noticing; but with all the shimmering hypnotic electronics cast suitably in loads of delay patterns, the track becomes more of an accelerated ambient tonic. Vantaa is downright messy for the machinist rigidity one can normally expect from a label like Raster-Noton, but the album is all the more sublime for it.

MPEG stream: Luotasi
MPEG stream: Lipite
MPEG stream: Levite

With the exception of the Huume label's reissue of Vladislav Delay's Multila album, it's been a while since we heard from that masterfully skilled Finnish practitioner of minimal glitch-y techno, dub and house (aka Sasu Ripatti). Whistleblower is his new album, the follow-up to 2005's Four Quarters. It very well might be his most subdued work to date. A slow spreading presence of synth washes, melting drones and deeep basslines seeps out of your speakers. Anything resembling beats is muted into gentle pulses, sputters and stutters. Beautiful and understated.

MPEG stream: Whistleblower
MPEG stream: Stop Talking

Vladislav Delay continues to drift ever further from the spaced out minimal electronic dub and spare skeletal Chain Reaction techno that so defined him, this being maybe the strangest thing we've heard from him, this newly formed Quartet finds Delay (aka Sasu Ripatti) back behind the drum kit, where he started as a young jazz drummer, teamed up with Lucio Capece, Derek Shirley and none other than Pan Sonic's Mika Vainio (which makes sense as Delay now calls Finland home). Besides Delay's drums and percussion, the sound is rounded out by an appropriately eclectic, and is some ways traditionally jazzy array of instrumentation, acoustic bass, soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, sruti box, preparations, electronics and live processing. The opening track is an impressionistic soft noise blur, all hazy thrum, murky electronic burble, and what percussion there is exists more as barely audible skitters, and reverbed sizzle and clang, but it's an arresting introduction, dark and dense, washed out and psychedelically laced with the buried skree of horns and constantly shifting textures, the perfect lead in to the first 'proper' track, the nearly 12 minute "Santa Teresa", which is super minimal, low slung, Delay's drums spare and skittery, the bass locked into a warm jazzy pulse, the horns emitting sheets of brassy shimmer and skree, hard to say whether this is minimal experimentalism, or far out deconstructed jazz, or freeform improvised electronica, it actually sounds like all three, dark and haunting, dense and tense, with the drums marvelously effected, giving the sound a darkly dubbed out vibe as well. "Des Abends" at its core is a variation of that opening track, but way noisier and dirgier, the sound more chaotic and distorted, the sound more industrial, laced with fragmented grooves, and thick clouds of blurred electronic noise. And so it goes, from crunchy, buzz drenched low end dirgery, to charged electronics wreathed pulsing drones, from tripped out celestial kosmische electro-jazz to hushed, blurred, almost Portishead sounding downtempo slither, and from noisy cinematic horn flecked chaotic crunch to lush haunting layered ur-drone mesmer. Fantastic stuff.

MPEG stream: Minus Degrees, Bare Feet, Tickles
MPEG stream: Santa Teresa
MPEG stream: Des Abends

The Deletist (aka Bitter Pie) is a member of the SF Entartete Kunst arts collective. While conveying the group's socio-political ideas, she also makes some beautifully aquatic sounding music. Using both acoustic and electronic sources, she blends her dark processed experimentations with airier, delicate melodic lines. The latter is particularly notable on tracks like "Sans Toi" and the "The Lure Of War" in which waves of obscure/effected vocals flow in and around tapped woodblock-y rhythms, acoustic string, keyboard or harpsichord (?) sounds, programmed beats, distorted hiss and sputters. There's also a number of heavier passages that bring to mind the Cold Metal Perfection album by Atari Teenage Riot's Nic Endo. The result is a sharp, effective contrast between The Deletist's enveloping, almost-soothing tracks and her moodier, more abrasive ones. MPEG Download: "Sans Toi" [/audio/deletistsanstoi.mp3] MPEG Stream: "Sans Toi" [/audio/deletistsanstoi.m3u]

MPEG stream: Sans Toi
MPEG stream: The Lure Of War

Delphium's first recordings situated themselves along the Scorn/Ice/God axis of devastating, electronic dub fused with bleak isolationist atmospheres. The overall darkness remains for their latest album, but it's been jacked up with time-stretched drum & bass breaks, angular 8-bit bleeping, and synthetic strings manuvering through all sorts of minor chords. "Nobody Sees The Monster In The Light Of Day..." wants to be a bad-ass/industrial strength companion to things like Springheel Jack or Chemical Brothers, but doesn't quite have all of the grooves down right. A strange hybrid.

We would have made Demdike Stare's sprawling quadruple vinyl 12"s epic Elemental our Record Of The Week had it not been for a few things. One, the four records were released over the course of several months, two, the combined cost of all those records ended up being nearly $100, and three, we knew it was eventually gonna come out on cd. So now that the cd version is here, we can finally make this twisted hauntological epic our Record Of The Week, which is great news for everybody, EXCEPT maybe crazy completists, who will be dismayed (or perhaps perversely thrilled) to discover, that not only does the double cd version tack on a bunch of extra tracks (nearly 33 minutes worth!!), but it also features alternate versions of some of the tracks from the 12"s. So it's really up to the folks who already shelled out for all four 12" if they want to buy it all over again, but for everybody else, we can't recommend this highly enough. More on the bonus tracks at the end, but let's talk about Elemental proper first... Elemental was probably one of the most anticipated records around here recently, the sprawling epic from hauntological duo Demdike Stare, a four part songsuite, Chrysanthe, Violetta, Rose and Iris, the duo's new sound seriously dark, much more industrial sounding, the vibe blackened, the sounds layered and way more dense. Chrysanthe opens with "Mephisto's Lament", which is all foghorn buzz, deep whirring drones, keening high end melodic fragments, murky buried rhythms, peppered with creepy synth squelches, and when the song gets rolling, it's almost like a hauntological SUNNO))), the same sort of roiling downtuned heaviness, but here stretched into something a bit more sinister and abstract, almost like the soundtrack for some subterranean factory, all rumble and clang, all shadows and very little light. "Kommunion" is up next, a lush looped slow build, all repeated piano motifs wreathed in chanted vocals, and all blurred into fuzzy soft focus swells, the sound suddenly expanding into a blisteringly blown out in-the-red buzz, a swoonsome melody hidden in there somewhere, the sound slipping from caustic and crunchy to blurred and murky, before switching gears completely, lacing a sprawl of staticky hiss to a skeletal trip hop pulse, extra percussion provided by found sounds, clatter and crunch, atonal piano, all woven into a strange almost Art Of Noise sounding beat. Then comes "Unction", a super creepy stretch of undulating lowend, demarcated by a strange sonar ping rhythm, one that is quickly augmented by a twisted effected croaking frog skitter, and another beat seemingly assembled from the sounds of workman scraping and dragging, a crunchy noisy lurching groove, that is soon overtaken by another cloud of reverberating pianos, which finishes off the side with a coda of swirling minimal washed out thrum. The second part, Violetta, begins with "Mnemosyne", a blissed out sun dappled bit of witch house-y skitter, all hazy and gauzy and dreamlike, until a sudden burst of clattery noisy rhythmic crunch changes everything, and then assembles itself into a strange lumbering cacophonous beat, the sound eventually underpinned by some Eastern style folk music, which drifts briefly, before that clattery beat crashes back in, now accompanied by that Eastern melody, sounding like a weirdly stuttery bit of gypsy electro. Which leads directly into "In The Wake Of Chronos", which opens with some distant mysterious melodies, some sprinkler like textures, some super minimal skeletal skitter, and some seriously deep bass thrum, the minimal drift soon peppered with short sharp bursts of metallic crunch, clipped bits of hiss and skree sculpted into a sort-of-beat, also soon joined by tinkling melodies, wreathed in echo, the sound gradually expanding, and becoming more and more lush, that beat drifting off, leaving the various other sounds to shimmer and hover ethereally over a blackened backdrop of blurred hum. And finally, Violetta finishes off with the title track, a soft cacophony of pounded piano, the chords allowed to ring out and slowly fade, all subtly warped, an ominous sort of avant classical doom, laced with little sonic squiggles, and wreathed in clouds of hiss and static, soon those little squiggles transform into beats, a wild chaotic looped rhythm, which is strangely at odds with that funereal piano, still pounding away in the background, a twisted bit of hauntological IDM, the piano subtly replaced by a hazy sprawl of synth simmer, which is left to fade out once the beat drops off, a thick swirling final movement, washed out and woozy. Part three is Rose, and begins with a churning industrial chug, grinding through a woozy washed out haze, wreathed in a distant ethereal vocal drift, looped and mesmerizing, the sound is most definitely epic and cinematic, the sound laced with bits of clatter and crunch, and than BAM, the track is transformed into a gorgeous stretch of Middle Eastern string laden groove, all wrapped around that opening industrial rhythm, sounding like a more dense, more psychedelic Muslimgauze! The second track is more murky and dubbed out and spacey, anchored by a muted slo-mo house beat, buried in the murk, the beats wreathed in soft metallic billows, the surrounding sounds swirling dreamily, hazy melodic streaks and blurred background shimmers, clouds of tripped out drift, through which that industrial flecked rhythm soldiers druggily on. The third track begins as a gauzy, ethereal thrum, that seems to hover wraithlike, before suddenly in drops an impossibly dense and heavy ribcage rattling bass pulse, accompanied by cool spare tabla like rhythms, that Muslimgauze vibe is definitely huge here too, a keening high end sine wave tone flutters over fragmented chunks of dubstep bass wobble, all drifting in the sonic ether. Finally comes part four, Iris, which might be the grimmest and darkest of the bunch. Opening with buzzing cellos, and swirling blackened drones, which are soon joined by a plodding doomy rhythm, laced with streaks of prismatic feedback and hauntingly melodic harmonies, all the whole in the background, textures and layers softly swirl and undulate, the result is definitely creepy and cinematic, but also a bit blackened and industrial. The second track dials it down even further, unfurling a hushed, blurred thrum, a wash of hazy shimmer, a dubbed out murk laced with mysterious industrial percolations, reverbed clatter, and strange squelches, like a field recording of an old abandoned office building with all the air conditioners and printers and computers whirring away, a creepy disembodied hum which is soon enveloped by crunchy caustic high end, keening shards of buzz and skree, growing ever more dense and noisy. Next up some surfacing sonar pings, over a skittery, skeletal beat, shuffling through clouds of effects swirl, droned out bass warble, and more of that unidentified background shimmer, the sound is cavernous and hypnotic, the background sounds gradually solidifying into sheets of chordal whir, all wreathed in a cowl of soft buzzy sonic gauze, all the while that rhythm churns relentlessly, and that bass thrum stretches out into a strangely undulating low end drone. Obviously, that should be more than enough to sell you on it, but folks who are after the bonus tracks will not be dissappointed, more than a half hour's worth minutes of extra music, six tracks, the first of which, "New Use For Old Circuits", opens up the set with a blast of psychedelic noise, before oozing into something much more liquid and murky, a sort of subaquatic space dub, a little bit like Chain Reaction style 'heroin house', but instead of hearing the music through a wall, we're hearing it through the thin steel walls of a submarine, stranded in the inky blackness of the deepest sea. "Shade" is a short stretch of gauzey high end shimmer, a haze of blurred melody and buried plink plonk piano, while "10th Floor Stairwell" is a fantastic chunk of thrumming low end pulsations, a minimal blackened drone that slwoly blossoms into something more tonally colorful, eventually becoming a sort of blackbuzz raga. "Metamorphosis" takes a field recording of voices and wraps it in soft swirls of static and tape hiss, soon introducing more of that impossible low end, the voices locked in a chant-like loop, while that skull rattling bass tone, pulses ominously, eventually introducing some throbbing 4 on the floor house music, but all murky and muddy, as if blasting in an upstairs apartment, just the rhythm oozing though the walls, a darkly propuslive slab of late night housemusic murk. "All This Is Ours (Sunrise)", unfurls soft swells of new age synth shimmer, a crystalline drift that soon sinks into a thick layed morass of crumbling bass-synth squelch and gradually intensifying distorted crackle, before finishing off in a squall of soft noise and sc-fi FX swirl, and finally, "We Have Already Died", strings some tribal skeletal skitter into a looped almost Muslimgauze sounding groove, all draped over an ominous sprawl of post industrial hum and layered swirls of blurred ghost-grey ambience. Packaged much like the last Demdike Stare, in an oversized six panel digi-sleeve, with original Andy Votel artwork, mirroring the artwork from the original quadruple gatefold sleeve that housed all four 12"s...

MPEG stream: Mephisto's Lament
MPEG stream: Kommunion
MPEG stream: Mnemosyne
MPEG stream: Erosion Of Mediocrity
MPEG stream: Dauerlinie
MPEG stream: New Use For Old Circuits

Rose is the third volume in Demdike Stare's latest sprawling multipart sonic hauntological tetraptych, the first two volumes of which were released together as a double 12" a little while back, and housed in a massive quadruple gatefold sleeve, designed to hold all four volumes, so obviously if you were one of the many folks who got the first two, you're gonna need this one as well, it does come in a fancy Andy Votel designed sleeve, but that sleeve fits right into the third pocket in above mentioned gatefold jacket. And sonically, it fits perfectly alongside those first two as well, beginning with a churning industrial chug, grinding through a woozy washed out haze, wreathed in a distant ethereal vocal drift, looped and mesmerizing, the sound is most definitely epic and cinematic, the sound laced with bits of clatter and crunch, and than BAM, the track is transformed into a gorgeous stretch of Middle Eastern string laden groove, all wrapped around that opening industrial rhythm, sounding like a more dense, more psychedelic Muslimgauze! The second track is more murky and dubbed out and spacey, anchored by a muted slo-mo house beat, buried in the murk, the beats wreathed in soft metallic billows, the surrounding sounds swirling dreamily, hazy melodic streaks and blurred background shimmers, clouds of tripped out drift, through which that industrial flecked rhythm soldiers druggily on. The side-long third track begins as a gauzy, ethereal thrum, that seems to hover wraithlike, before suddenly in drops an impossibly dense and heavy ribcage rattling bass pulse, accompanied by cool spare tabla like rhythms, that Muslimgauze vibe is definitely huge here too, a keening high end sine wave tone flutters over fragmented chunks of dubstep bass wobble, all drifting in the sonic ether. And while like many 12"s, this sounds great at 45rpm, it sounds WAY better at 33, so much darker and woozier and druggier and more drowsily divine! If you're after the whole set, might be a good idea to preorder the final volume, which should be coming soon, and as we mentioned in the review of the first two volumes, there WILL be a double cd version available sometime this year as well, according to the label, but apparently the music will be (somehow?) different, with altered versions of all the songs...

Here it is, the final installment in Demdike Stare's sprawling new hauntological epic, Elemental, split into 4 separate 12"s, the first three already sold out and out of print, as this one will be too shortly. Obviously, if you bought the first one, which came in the super deluxe Andy Votel designed quadruple gatefold sleeve, designed to hold all 4 records, you're gonna want/need this one too, but like we said with the last volume, the record do work pretty well on their own. This fourth one, titled Iris (they're all titled after different flowers), might be the grimmest and darkest of the bunch. Opening with buzzing cellos, and swirling blackened drones, which are soon joined by a plodding doomy rhythm, laced with streaks of prismatic feedback and hauntingly melodic harmonies, all the whole in the background, textures and layers softly swirl and undulate, the result is definitely creep and cinematic, but also a bit blackened and industrial. The second track on the A side dials it down even further, unfurling a hushed, blurred thrum, a wash of hazy shimmer, a dubbed out murk laced with mysterious industrial percolations, reverbed clatter, and strange squelches, like a field recording of an old abandoned office building with all the air conditioners and printers and computers whirring away, a creepy disembodied hum which is soon enveloped by crunchy caustic high end, keening shards of buzz and skree, growing ever more dense and noisy... The flipside introduces sonar pings, over a skittery, skeletal beat, shuffling through clouds of effects swirl, droned out bass warble, and more of that unidentified background shimmer, the sound is cavernous and hypnotic, the background sounds gradually solidifying into sheets of chordal whir, all wreathed in a cowl of soft buzzy sonic gauze, all the while that rhythm churns relentlessly, and that bass thrum stretches out into a strangely undulating low end drone. CRAZY LIMITED of course, already sold out, so these are the last copies we'll be able to get. Comes in another Andy Votel designed sleeve, pressed on blue vinyl, and something weird this time (we didn't notice with the other records), the run out groove is on the OUTside, with the music toward the center, as if it was a 10" with extra empty groves wrapped around the circumference, etched of course with a mysterious message as well...

Probably one of the most anticipated records around here recently, the sprawling QUADRUPLE 12" epic from hauntological duo Demdike Stare. These, the first two 12"s are available now, released in a massive quadruple gatefold book-style jacket, which could be what accounts for the price. Sorta steep for sure, but the idea is that parts 3 & 4 will be released soon too, and can be housed in this very same jacket, so theoretically, those will be significantly cheaper (we hope). And while there WILL be a double cd version available in the next year as well, according to the label, apparently the music will be (somehow?) different, with altered version of the songs. Sheesh. It's almost like something Boris would do! Anyway, Elemental is a four part songsuite, Chrysanthe, Violetta, Rose and Iris, each one pressed on a different color vinyl, and if these first two parts are anything to go on, the new sound is seriously dark, much more industrial sounding, the vibe blackened, the sounds layered and way more dense. Part one opens with "Mephisto's Lament", which is all foghorn buzz, deep whirring drones, keening high end melodic fragments, murky buried rhythms, peppered with creepy synth squelches, and when the song gets rolling, it's almost like a hauntological SUNNO))), the same sort of roiling downtuned heaviness, but here stretched into something a bit more sinister and abstract, almost like the soundtrack for some subterranean factory, all rumble and clang, all shadows and very little light. The flipside starts with "Kommunion", a lush looped slow build, all repeated piano motifs wreathed in chanted vocals, all blurred into fuzzy soft focus swells, the sound suddenly expanding into a blisteringly blown out in-the-red buzz, a swoonsome melody hidden in there somewhere, the sound slipping from caustic and crunchy to blurred and murky, before switching gears completely, lacing a sprawl of staticky hiss to a skeletal trip hop pulse, extra percussion provided by found sounds, clatter and crunch, atonal piano, all woven into a strange almost Art Of Noise sounding beat. The B side finishes off with "Unction", a super creepy stretch of undulating lowend, demarcated with a strange sonar ping rhythm, one that is quickly augmented by a twisted effected croaking frog skitter, and another beat seemingly assembled from the sounds of workman scraping and dragging, a crunchy noisy lurching groove, that is soon overtaken by another cloud of reverberating pianos, which finishes off the side with a coda of swirling minimal washed out thrum. The second part, Violetta, begins with "Mnemosyne", a blissed out sun dappled bit of witch house-y skitter, all hazy and gauzy and dreamlike, until a sudden burst of clattery noisy rhythmic crunch changes everything, and then assembles itself into a strange lumbering cacophonous beat, the sound eventually underpinned by some Eastern style folk music, which drifts briefly, before that clattery beat crashes back in, now accompanied by that Eastern melody, sounding like a weirdly stuttery bit of gypsy electro. The flipside starts off with "In The Wake Of Chronos", which opens with some distant mysterious melodies, some sprinkler like textures, some super minimal skeletal skitter, and some seriously deep bass thrum, the minimal drift soon peppered with short sharp bursts of metallic crunch, clipped bits of hiss and skree sculpted into a sort-of-beat, also soon joined by tinkling melodies, wreathed in echo, the sound gradually expanding, and becoming more and more lush, that beat drifting off, leaving the various other sounds to shimmer and hover ethereally over a blackened backdrop of blurred hum. And finally, Violetta finishes off with the title track, a soft cacophony of pounded piano, the chords allowed to ring out and slowly fade, all subtly warped, an ominous sort of avant classical doom, laced with little sonic squiggles, and wreathed in clouds of hiss and static, soon those little squiggles transform into beats, a wild chaotic looped rhythm, which is strangely at odds with that funereal piano, still pounding away in the background, a twisted bit of hauntological IDM, the piano subtly replaced by a hazy sprawl of synth simmer, which is left to fade out once the beat drops off, a thick swirling final movement, washed out and woozy. Look out for some hidden locked grooves too. Definitely a lot different than past Demdike records, but we're digging it, a lot. If you want it on vinyl, you're definitely gonna want to get these first two parts before they run out, and as far as we know, this is the only way to get the jacket that houses all four parts. Asking us to put your name down to preorder parts 3 & 4 would also probably be a good idea...

MPEG stream: Mephisto's Lament
MPEG stream: Kommunion
MPEG stream: Mnemosyne

The first in a planned 3 part 12" series from this hauntological electronic duo, whose sound we had previously described as sounding like a black metal dub record on Chain Reaction, and we're pleased to report that the sound is indeed still blackened, and dubby, and weirdly house-y, and sprawling and epic and creepy and cinematic... Two side long tracks, the first starts out all deep shimmer, with a softly melodic buzz, spidery acoustic guitars, long stretches of billowy black ambience, bits of shuffly jazzy drift, peppered with thick shards of buzzy fractured dub bass and Kompakt style skitter, giving way to glistening late night techno, whirling pop ambient, and blissed out ethereal dronemusic. The flipside is cinematic and dramatic, epic and majestic, like some lost Italian soundtrack, big drums, orchestral and ominous, looped samples, blurred melodic smears over deep pulsing bass, whirling clouds of cymbal shimmer, insectoid FX buzz, jumbled atonal melodies (hints of Bernard Herrmann), the vibe tense and haunting, with some dubstep bass buzz, that slowly dissolves into a Caretaker like outro, all layered strings wreathed in hiss and crackle, hazy and druggy and divine. So good. We're already anxiously awaiting part two...

Originally, Demdike Stare's dark and dizzying, murky and mysterious hauntological black dub triptych, was available via three separate slabs of vinyl, but was then gathered up and released together as a triple cd set entitled Tryptych, which we made our Record Of The Week. Now, the cds set has been split up again back into 3 lps, pressed up on vinyl once again, this time as a bundled triple lp set, for those who missed out on the vinyl versions the first time around... Demdike Stare are one of the few bands who seem to be a unanimous aQ favorite, everyone here LOVES these guys, and judging on how many of the various lps AND cds we've sold, everyone out there does too. Which makes sense, when you consider, DS basically create a kind of black metal dubstep, or as we (and others) like to describe it, a blackened dub record on Chain Reaction. Either one should give you an idea of the sort of dark sonic energy these guys conjure up. Thick claustrophobic atmospheres, skeletal rhythms, thick throbbing bass, skittering dubbed out beats, disembodied voices, stuttering minimal sort-of-dubstep, looped and processed African folk music (??), swirling glitched out electronics, deeeep pulsing dronemusic, reverb drenched post-rock-via-techno skitter, all woven into a swirling organic mass of dub flecked blacktronica, dark and sinister and dubby, and weirdly house-y, sprawling and epic and creepy and so totally sweeping and cinematic. The first lp, Forest Of Evil starts out all deep shimmer, with a softly melodic buzz, spidery acoustic guitars, long stretches of billowy black ambience, bits of shuffly jazzy drift, peppered with thick shards of buzzy fractured dub bass and Kompakt style skitter, giving way to glistening late night techno, whirling pop ambient, and blissed out ethereal dronemusic, before transforming into something darkly dramatic, epic and majestic, like some lost Italian soundtrack, big drums, orchestral and ominous, looped samples, blurred melodic smears over deep pulsing bass, whirling clouds of cymbal shimmer, insectoid FX buzz, jumbled atonal melodies (hints of Bernard Herrmann), the vibe tense and haunting, with some dubstep bass buzz, that slowly dissolves into a Caretaker like outro, all layered strings wreathed in hiss and crackle, hazy and druggy and divine. The second lp, Liberation Through Hearing, is thematically related to the Book Of The Dead, and focuses on the space between death and rebirth. Rendered in greys and blacks, in buzz and rumble, beginning with some woozy late night Portishead style downtempo trip hop, low slung looped skitter and swell, lush swirls of cinematic strings, ghostly choirs, a softly lurching rhythmic stutter, a deep cavernous throb, sounding like a ghostly stripped down dubstep. Which gives way to heaving expanses of black tidal thrum, muted scrapings, all wound into hypnotic pulses of dark energy, laced with distant chiming melodies, a haunting, gauzey faded memory in sound, drawn from radios with dying batteries and gradually slowing turntables, a soft focus symphony of creaks and rumbles and blurred low end shimmer. The first half of the record finishes with a swoonsome smear of looped ambience, like a field recording of an after hours nightclub captured in a temporal loop, warm and druggy and fuzzy, strangely hypnotic and rhythmic, totally trancelike, a creeped out wasteland soundscape, mysterious and chilling, which is eventually augmented by thick slabs of corrosive low end, and heavily reverbed industrial clatter, which eventually emerges into a strange sea of crackle and hum, of warbly rhythms, chiming bells and distorted crunch, sounding a bit like Jeck spinning Pole record, abstract and spaced out and hauntingly lovely. The second half opens with thick streaks of ghostly mesmer, all washed out and slowly decaying, underpinned by thick swaths of dubstep style bass wobble, but muted and smoothed into soft smears of undulating blackness. Subtle skitter surfaces, as do distant voices, the sound getting more and more dubby, a bit like a Caretaker record on Chain Reaction, that sort of hazy abstract drift, but anchored to barely there beats, the buzz building to an intense coda, all the while wrapped in throbbing woofer punishing low end. Some super stripped down rhythms are laid over a swirling ghostly backdrop of fragmented melodies and a buried house music thump, tangled and blurred strings wrap the proceedings in a veil of softened reverb and subtle echo, the almost Eastern sounding pulse and swell reminding us a bit of the late great Muslimgauze. Finally, the record collapses into some sort of melancholic sonic reverie, a hushed ambient outro, a tranquil sea of soft swirling swells, clouds of echo and reverb, a dreamy darkness, a blackened bit of blurpop minimalism, laced with muted streaks of fuzz and hiss, but all gradually sinking into Demdike Stare's endless trancelike billowing blackness. Finally, the third lp, Voices Of Dust, unveils the Tryptych's final movement, opening with "Black Sun", a short stretch of some super minimal electronic dronemusic, all layered overtones and strange sonic shadings, which gives way to the chopped and looped and stuttery vocal driven "Hashshashin Chant" which takes tribal drums and traditional folk music vocals, and twists them all up, and tangles those elements with strange percussion, industrial buzz, the whole thing a dizzying chunk of hypno-electronic collaged psychedelic mashup weirdness, before slipping into the much murkier and minimal "Repository Of Light", which unfurls like some sort of Hawkwind-meets-Pole spaced out digi-dub drift. And so it goes, the sound flitting between impossibly realized miniature sound worlds, cinematic electronic ambience, ominously pulsing low end rumble, hazy glitchy dubbed out Jeckian smears, super blown out electronic big beat bombast, almost industrial sounding avant big band abstraction, roiling corrosive soft noise, bellowing foghorn-like melodies, warped and woozy scratchy old lp warblescapes and beyond. Gorgeously evocative, creepy and cinematic, abstract and otherworldly, druggy and dreamy, fantastically haunting and utterly spine tinglingly stunning. And thus, absolutely recommended. Three individual lps, bound together by a Japanese style obi, with metallic print. LIMITED TO 400 COPIES!!

MPEG stream: Forest Of Evil (Dusk)
MPEG stream: Caged In Stammheim
MPEG stream: Eurydice
MPEG stream: Regolith
MPEG stream: Hashashin Chant
MPEG stream: Repository Of Light
MPEG stream: Rain And Shame

Part two, in Demdike Stare's planned trilogy of 12"s, a comprehensive hauntological study in sound. For those new to Demdike Stare, we tend to fall back on this succinct description: black metal dubstep, or sometimes this one: a blackened dub record on Chain Reaction. Either one should give you an idea of the sort of dark sonic energy these guys conjure up. Thick claustrophobic atmospheres, skeletal rhythms, thick throbbing bass, skittering dubbed out beats, disembodied voices, all woven into a swirling organic mass of dub flecked blacktronica, the sound seeming to grow ever darker, as evidenced here on part two, which is thematically related to the Book Of The Dead, and focuses on the space between death and rebirth. Rendered in greys and blacks, in buzz and rumble, beginning with some woozy late night Portishead style downtempo trip hop, low slung looped skitter and swell, lush swirls of cinematic strings, ghostly choirs, a softly lurching rhythmic stutter, a deep cavernous throb, sounding like a ghostly stripped down dubstep. Which gives way to heaving expanses of black tidal thrum, muted scrapings, all wound into hypnotic pulses of dark energy, laced with distant chiming melodies, a haunting, gauzey faded memory in sound, drawn from radios with dying batteries and gradually slowing turntables, a soft focus symphony of creaks and rumbles and blurred low end shimmer. The A-side finishes with a swoonsome smear of looped ambience, like a field recording of an after hours nightclub captured in a temporal loop, warm an druggy and fuzzy, strangely hypnotic and rhythmic, totally trancelike, a creeped out wasteland soundscape, mysterious and chilling, which is eventually augmented by thick slabs of corrosive low end, and heavily reverbed industrial clatter, which eventually emerges into a strange sea of crackle and hum, of warbly rhythms, chiming bells and distorted crunch, sounding a bit like Jeck spinning Pole record, abstract and spaced out and hauntingly lovely. The B-side opens with thick streaks of ghostly mesmer, all washed out and slowly decaying, underpinned by thick swaths of dubstep style bass wobble, but muted and smoothed into soft smears of undulating blackness. Subtle skitter surfaces, as do distant voices, the sound getting more and more dubby, a bit like a Caretaker record on Chain Reaction, that sort of hazy abstract drift, but anchored to barely there beats, the buzz building to an intense coda, all the while wrapped in throbbing woofer punishing low end. Some super stripped down rhythms are laid over a swirling ghostly backdrop of fragmented melodies and a buried house music thump, tangled and blurred strings wrap the proceedings in a veil of softened reverb and subtle echo, the almost Eastern sounding pulse and swell reminding us a bit of the late great Muslimgauze. Finally, the record collapses into some sort of melancholic sonic reverie, a hushed ambient outro, a tranquil sea of soft swirling swells, clouds of echo and reverb, a dreamy darkness, a blackened pop ambience, laced with muted streaks of fuzz and hiss, but all gradually sinking into Demdike Stare's endless trancelike billowing blackness. LIMITED TO 700 COPIES!!

If you can imagine a black metal DUB record, released on Chain Reaction, then this debut from Demdike Stare might be just what you're looking for. A collaboration between one half of the group Pendle Coven, and one of the guys who helps run the amazing Finders Keepers label, the duo craft suffocatingly dark drones, and stark skeletal minimal house music, fusing the two into some sort of mysterious rhythmic black beast. The sound dense and dark, grim and frosty, but infused with all sorts of world music elements, Middle Eastern folk, Indian soundtracks, Turkish psych, the result is really hard to pin down, super stark and dubby a la Pole one minute, then lush and Middle Eastern sounding a la Muslimgauze the next, but just as often, something much more spare and harrowing, buzzy and drone-y, and very very very dark. The record opens with "Suspicious Drone", which is just that, a dense, deep, throbbing chunk of low end rumble, but shot through with undulating synth pulses, and laced with muted effects, before, a super skittery rhythm is introduced, all wreathed in a haze of Goblin-y synth. The second track, "Haxan Dub", is as you might have surmised super dubbed out, spacious and spare, the beats clipped and minimal, until about halfway through when a second beat joins in, creating a strange stuttery offbeat, very darkly groovy. And then there's "Regressor", a super abstract sprawl of rhythmic clicks, echo reverbed ambience, and very little else, bar the occasional synth squiggle or disembodied sample, the result is truly haunting and weirdly gorgeous. And so it goes, the second half of the record is a bit heavier on the world music, with much of the music being made up of chopped and looped samples, or recontextualized motifs, like on "Trapped Dervish, where a fragment of fiddle and a reverb drenched snippet of female vocals, are blurred into a gorgeous expanse of murky rhythmic ambience, but "Haxan" gets all Chain Reaction heroin house-y, while "Conjoined" is all tangled rhythms, and layered drums, until "Ghostly Hardware" finishes things off in appropriately ominous fashion, a long buzzing low end dronescape, all whirring synths, crackling textures, and pulsing bass, never truly locking into a rhythm, instead drifting and floating ghostlike. So good. One of our favorite new electronic records for sure.

MPEG stream: Suspicious Drone
MPEG stream: Haxan Dub
MPEG stream: Regressor