New Releases for August 2008

Index of New Releases for August 2008

OSTGUT TON (GERMANY)

Artist:	SHED
Title:	Shedding The Past
Label:	OSTGUT TON (GERMANY)
Format:	2LP
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	OSTGUT 002LP

Double LP version; 7 tracks total, one vinyl exclusive. This is the first full-length release for Berlin-based DJ/producer, Shed.The work at hand presents yet another stunning Ostgut Ton acquisition, revealing Shed's irresistible, intense techno sound. Shedding The Past is the culmination of years of continuous Soloaction research, Shed's very own imprint. The recordings fully unfold the total variety in his outstanding crafts of sound. Lineage can be drawn to the Saunderson Detroit sound, Aphex Twin rave and Manix hardcore, sounding like an archive document -- an archaeological history of electronic dance music. Shedding The Past captures the intensity and the purity of club and rave in the early days, without excess nostalgia. Rather, it creates new moments that leave the past behind. Full of energy and vigor, this is true techno music: concentrated and dense, but with a sheer easiness born from eastern Germany. This adeptness has captured the ears of Berghain and Hard Wax ears. As others of his social provenience, Shed took on the opportunities of the early '90s techno culture, which unfolded after the Wall went down, and developed an approach of "just do it." With this easiness in mind, Shedding The Past is just true techno music. Includes an exclusive track, as well as two alternate versions specially crafted for vinyl.

Artist:	PROSUMER & MURAT TEPELI
Title:	Serenity (Soundstream Remix)
Label:	OSTGUT TON (GERMANY)
Format:	12"
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	OSTGUT 018EP

This 12" by Prosumer & Murat Tepeli includes Soundstream and his remix of "Serenity." His deep and hypnotic treatment captures the sound and atmosphere of the duo's album and leaves enough room for melancholy, playfulness and bass-y grooves. This EP also includes the original track, previously only available on CD. As a bonus, there is the vocal mix of the album track "Believe." Measured chords, a driving bass line and ecstatic melodic sequences make for an emotional journey.

OZIT (UK)

Artist:	VA
Title:	Step Into the '70s & Beyond/It Started in Rochdale
Label:	OZIT (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$19.00
Catalog #:	OZIT 247CD

"This CD explores the cultural diversity of the music and art scene of Rochdale that started in the 1970s, based around Tractor Music, Cargo Recording Studios, Deeply Vale Festivals and beyond. It covers '70s Rochdale bands Tony Crabtree, Blinder (featuring Tom Szakaly and Tony Hallsworth), Accident on the East Lancs, Local Heroes, Wilful Damage, and Tractor as well as the next generation of bands such as the Pranksters, Potential Victims (who toured with Discharge and GBH), Andy T and Untermensch (who would go on to work with Crass). The album also contains a previously unreleased version of Joy Division's 'Atmosphere' recorded in Rochdale in the 1970s. The CD album provides an audio journey through an extremely creative era in Rochdale of the late '60s and into 1970s that spawned The Rochdale Sculptors, Tractor, Tractor Music, Cargo Studios, Brian Eastwood Guitars, Tony Crabtree, Deeply Vale and would make Rochdale a creative force in arts and music right through to the late '80s. All those involved in the 1970s music and arts scene in Rochdale claim that for 'a moment' in the history of Rochdale -- and that moment was the 1970s -- there was a synchronicity that spawned a very creative era. Two of the key streets in Rochdale in this scene were Hunters Lane in the early '70s where the Sculptors Gallery and Axis bookshop were and in late '70s Kenion Street where Tractor Music and Cargo Studios were. Even the roots of Factory Records and the Hacienda have links to the Kenion Street building via Tony Wilson and Joy Division who frequented Kenion Street from 1978."

PERLON (GERMANY)

Artist:	A GUY CALLED GERALD
Title:	In Ya Head
Label:	PERLON (GERMANY)
Format:	12"
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	PERL 071EP

"When sonic pioneers collide in an ideal setup within club culture dynamics, they do not just produce dents on the floor, but in fact amalgamate in a pliant way to stretch the space-time continuum by means of enrichment through sound. And knowledge. Here we have such a mighty hook-up: Gerald Simpson is known to be an innovator of electronic dance music. Starting with Manchester-based 808 State in 1988, sparking the fire of Voodoo Ray Acid Soul, measuring the Black Secret Technology jungle, finding the Essence of song-based dance via New York City, he continues pushing evolutionary music processes since taking up residence in Berlin. Now he joins forces with the Perlon visionary community of unfathomable deepness and unrivaled sound design always leaving room for novelty, scientific curiosity and blasting mind frames. On this volume, every element of Gerald's spirited signature can be strongly detected again: his rhythm awareness, the proto acid clonks and bleeps with soul implant, the drum&bass infection, the arcane technology, the essence, the magic, the coolness, the timelessness -- again put into a future focus. The stunning result appears as a revelation of a shiny, blue-black character. 'In Ya Head' is featuring soulmate Mia, former Cologne producer and founder of Sub Static, who dived into the Berlin pool in 2004, the same year as Gerald did. The forward motion of this stealth orbital glider with its elegant lunar sister module is definitely space-, time- and style-expanding."

PERSISTENCEBIT (GERMANY)

Artist:	SKUGGE/STAVOSTRAND
Title:	Pink Panthom
Label:	PERSISTENCEBIT (GERMANY)
Format:	12"
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	BIT 020EP

"After the fantastic Gez Varley and Geoff White releases in the past few months, Persistencebit returns strong once more with the Swedish minimal techno artists Johan Skugge and Mikael Stavöstrand, who work their collaborative gear into a feverish lather on a new trio of high-octane cuts. Immaculately constructed and executed with precision, the duo's material isn't as skeletal as one might expect-ample noise and commotion appear alongside the tunes' grooves-and, in its acidy moments, Pink Phantom sometimes sounds like Audion, albeit in a slightly less raucous frame of mind. Working a lithe and rubbery techno march on the A-side's charging title cut, Skugge and Stavöstrand deepen the cut's hypnotic impact with the incessant hoot of a cuckoo motif while keeping the groove stoked with roiling bass lines and percussion-enhanced beats. Augmented by an announcer's looped 'test' utterance, 'Gotcha' jacks with an irrepressible and seductively infectious tech-house swing that will pull even the most resistant clubber onto the dance floor, while 'Mantradisk' closes the flip with jittery techno swing. No one should be too surprised by the material's polished veneer, given the wealth of experience the Mitek and Force Inc. vets bring to the project."

PHOENIX RECORDS (UK)

Artist:	INSECT TRUST, THE
Title:	The Insect Trust
Label:	PHOENIX RECORDS (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	ASH 3012CD

Combining elements of rock, jazz, bluegrass, soul, Dixieland, folk, ragga, blues and practically every genre there is, The Insect Trust's classic debut (recorded in 1968) reveals one major difference between them and almost all other U.S. psych bands of the time -- while the majority were in thrall to Eastern sounds, they sound resolutely homegrown. Despite featuring banjos, fiddles and bottleneck guitars, the band still sounded absolutely contemporary, with superb tunes, gorgeous vocals and some mindblowing freakout passages. Tuneful, intelligent and highly musical, they truly forged something new out of the past, and this is one of the most beguilingly strange and original rock albums ever recorded. Housed in a unique gatefold card-wallet format in a numbered edition of 1000.

PLANET E COMMUNICATIONS

Artist:	LARKIN, KENNY
Title:	Keys, Strings, Tambourines
Label:	PLANET E COMMUNICATIONS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	PE 65303CD

"Detroit producer Kenny Larkin takes a break from the stand-up comedy to put out a new album on Carl Craig's Planet E label. Who says techno artists don't have a sense of humour? Kenny Larkin's output has been quiet of late, the reason being that he has moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in stand-up comedy and independent film-making. Keys? is Larkin's first album since Funkfaker (2004), but don't expect belly laughs, Keys... is serious business: Larkin's most dancefloor-oriented album to date. 'The majority of the album was written at my home in L.A.,' says Larkin. 'But I flew to Detroit a few times to work in Carl's studio which did wonders for my inspiration. Nothing can top the type of inspiration I get from being in a proper studio environment in Detroit. I stayed in Carl's studio and worked for days.' Made with 'proper synthesizers' and 'mixing on a mixing desk with proper outboard gear,' the album so far features two singles, the song-based 'You Are,' and Larkin's favorite track on the record, 'Glob Glob.'" --Resident Advisor

PLATZHIRSCH SCHALLPLATTEN (GERMANY)

POGUS

Artist:	CRESHEVSKY/IF, BWANA, NOAH
Title:	Favorite Encores
Label:	POGUS
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	POGUS 21049

"A split CD of works by Noah Creshevsky (4 tracks) and If, Bwana (3 tracks). While on the face of it this may seem a somewhat odd pairing, the pieces recorded here comment on and highlight each other. And an aural adventure is indeed in the offing. Trained in composition by Nadia Boulanger in Paris and Luciano Berio at Juilliard, Noah Creshevsky has taught at Juilliard, Princeton University, and Brooklyn College. He was director of the Center For Computer Music (1994-2000) and is currently Professor Emeritus at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. His musical vocabulary consists largely of familiar bits of words, songs, and instrumental music that are edited but rarely subjected to electronic processing. The result is a music that obscures the boundaries of real and imaginary ensembles though the fusion of opposites: music and noise, comprehensible and incomprehensible vocal sources, human and superhuman vocal and instrumental capacities. Creshevsky's most recent hyperrealist compositions explore the fragmentation and reconstruction of pre-existing music in combination with original synthetic and acoustic materials. Moments suggest musical environments of indeterminate ethnicity --simultaneously Western and non-Western, ancient and modern, familiar and unfamiliar. Hyperrealism is an electroacoustic musical language constructed from sounds that are recognizable parts of our shared environment ('realism'), handled in ways that are exaggerated or excessive ('hyper'). Al Margolis has been working under the musical pseudonym If, Bwana since New Year's Day 1984."

POINT.ONE. RECORDINGS (UK)

POKER FLAT (GERMANY)

Artist:	CHARDRONNET VS. DAVID DURANGO, PATRICK
Title:	Days Like These/Move With Me
Label:	POKER FLAT (GERMANY)
Format:	12"
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	PFR 097EP

Chardronnet and Durango are known in celestial circles as the lords of movement and melody. Chardronnet's "Days Like These" promises to groove from start to unwanted finish, with power and soul. Its language of softly-spoken synth stabs and elegant, building syntaxes are beautifully expressed. Durango's "Move With Me" taps into the more cerebral zones with nervous, intricate percussion, tweaked-out delays and charged reverb washes. Deep, subconscious, and mysterious stuff.

Previous Page Index of New Releases for August Next Page

Artist:	EMSLEY, JASON
Title:	Backslappers Ball EP
Label:	PLATZHIRSCH SCHALLPLATTEN (GERMANY)
Format:	12"
Price:	$11.00
Catalog #:	PLATZ 018EP

Artist:	VOLTAIC
Title:	Abyss EP
Label:	POINT.ONE. RECORDINGS (UK)
Format:	12"
Price:	$11.50
Catalog #:	PTO 006EP