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viewing 1 To 8 of 8 items
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2LP
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KEPLARREV 007LP
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$36.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 1/14/2022
For its 20th anniversary, Keplar presents an absolute milestone in the history of IDM and ambient music for the first time in its definite form: Together Is The New Alone by Donnacha Costello was originally released on Mille Plateaux in 2001 as the second LP under the Irish producer's given name and firmly established him as one of the leading artists in the field of forward-thinking electronic music after he had primarily made a name for himself with house and techno releases under the Jayrod moniker. This vinyl reissue with an entirely new artwork comprises all ten tracks originally only included on the CD version in their edited and final form in which they were last presented on the digital re-release under the name Together, remastered by Stephan Mathieu and self-published by Costello, in 2015. Truly prescient artists rarely opt for introspective sounds, however that was the case when Costello set out to produce Together Is The New Alone during nightly session in his hometown Dublin between April and July in 2001, and it also explains the album's enduring appeal and unwavering radiance twenty years on. While many of his contemporaries dedicated themselves to explore the musical zeitgeist and notions of the future in conceptual terms, Costello made them emotionally tangible, allowing his audience to feel their underlying ambiguity rather than just reflect on it. Together Is The New Alone is an album that wordlessly speaks of the paradoxical sense of social alienation and isolation expressed by its title and thus seems even more topical today than it did at the time of its release. Working with elements from techno culture, glitch aesthetics, intricate IDM rhythms and lush ambient textures, Costello never once throughout the album adheres to tried and tested formulas and conventions, but holistically molds complex compositions out of distinct and discrete parts. The result is a record that is at once easily accessible and deeply affecting, but also infinitely rich and stunningly sophisticated in musical terms. A personal record expressing a universal sentiment -- a truly timeless statement that will reverberate for decades to come. Full tone artwork; includes download code; edition of 500.
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2LP
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KEPLARREV 006LP
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Keplar reissues the fourth album Chessa by Dan Abrams' project Shuttle358 on vinyl for the first time. The double LP edition includes three previously unreleased tracks from the same recording sessions back in 2004, as well as an extended artwork with unseen photographs by Dan Abrams. While undoubtedly associated with the microsound and "clicks & cuts" movement around the turn of the millennium, on Chessa, Shuttle358 left behind the classical rhythmic patterns of the genre and shifted further towards warmer territories, meandering between modern digital minimalism and the soft tones of ambient music. Counter to his microsound synthesis approach on Frame (2000), Abrams created Chessa by writing software that manipulated samples from his unreleased songs, guitar pieces, and vintage Japanese films sampled from video tape. In particular, a special granulating technique was written and performed at intentionally low sample rates that gave the uniquely fragile, yet dense sound to the album. Over fourteen tracks, Abrams arranges slowly evolving sonic entities of unfading elegance. Strayed and hazy melodies pulse and cascade, elongated but brittle harmonies shimmer and disappear, echoing far-off in the rounded corners of the mind. The patient and detailed way Abrams combines the broken with the beautiful in creating organic collages of sound that retain the euphonic essence of a song, makes this piece of work so powerful and timeless, sounding just as relevant today, as it did upon release. Under modern scrutiny in Abrams latest studio, he refocused the original recordings to emphasize the elements most important to the original vision. The final mastering and vinyl preparation was done in collaboration with Stephan Mathieu, vinyl was cut by LUPO. From the original press release in 2004 by Taylor Deupree: "... Chessa is the third release from Abrams' Shuttle358 moniker on 12k and he continues to do what he does best: attempt to move microsound away from the world of theory and towards absolute real life. Like his photographs, Chessa is music about, and to be listened to in, unexpected places. It is a narrative, a simple slice of life that plays out through the incidental photography of the cover artwork. To achieve this Abrams fuses irregular granular sound particles, like the movements of everyday life, with a deliberate melodic base that captures emotion and simplicity." Edition of 500; includes printed inner sleeves and download code.
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2LP
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KEPLARREV 005LP
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Restocked. Arovane's debut album, Atol Scrap, on vinyl for the first time. Originally released in 1999. The story of each re-release begins with the original. In the late '90s, Uwe Zahn (Arovane), along with Robert Henke (Monolake) and Stefan Betke (Pole), began releasing music on Torsten Pröfrock's (Dynamo) newly launched DIN label. This was a very inconspicuous undertaking, but fans of the flourishing IDM, glitch, and constantly evolving abstract techno genres quickly picked up on the quality of sound coming out of Germany. After a few successful EPs, Zahn began working on his debut full-length, Atol Scrap. The release was a success, at least in the underground circles, where followers of the melodic harmonies, stuttering off-beat rhythms, and, most importantly, advanced sound design feverishly consumed the imprint's output. There was only one thing missing -- the album was never pressed on vinyl, and for decades remained in the digital domain. The fans, of course, inquired. "I thought of taking everything into my own hands and releasing the record myself," says Zahn, "but at the end of last year, Matthias from Keplar asked me to re-release Atol Scrap on vinyl." The label and its owner revolve in the Morr Music universe, and so it made sense for Zahn to trust the platform to treat the record right. Listening to Atol Scrap over twenty years later it is inane not to admit how well it has held up. Where other genres clearly aged, becoming stale, bland, and dull, the music on eleven tasty tracks still keeps the neurons tickled with each note. Many of the newly evolving techniques are recognizable on the album. "I created the digital artifacts with a digital multi-track recorder, the Fostex D80," recalls Zahn. "The thing had a scrub wheel with which I could achieve wonderful glitch effects by winding through the audio data. I have sampled and further processed these artifacts." And this approach is still embedded in Zahn's sound design. "I still use my 24-track analog desk from Tascam to mix my audio. I love to use hardware synths and samplers. I've definitely built upon my studio experience in the '90s." From this debut to the most recent output, Arovane's sound has evolved to become more intricate, detailed, and pronounced. Remastered and cut to vinyl by Kassian Troyer at Dubplates & Mastering. Cover art by Jim Kühnel based on a photograph by Uwe Zahn. Die-cut sleeve with full-tone artwork, poly-lined inners; includes download code.
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LP
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KEPLARREV 004LP
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The album Balance by Frank Bretschneider and Taylor Deupree was originally released in 2002 by Mille Plateaux on CD only. The nine tracks on Balance are a perfect example for the aesthetics to arise within the click & cuts scene and (ambient-)glitch music movement of the late '90s and early 2000s. The two masters of microscopic sounds and sine wave/white noise-based music constructed these seamlessly mixed pieces around rhythms and melodies, which grants the album plenty of dynamics. The wide variety of carefully chosen ambient sounds throughout the whole work endows Balance warmth and intimacy. The recordings are now available for the first time on vinyl within the KeplarRev series, presented in a new updated artwork based on the original layout with photographs by Taylor Deupree. Includes download code; edition of 500.
From the original press release in 2002: "Balance is the first [and so far only] collaborative release from Frank Bretschneider (Berlin) and Taylor Deupree (Brooklyn). Both of these artists are no strangers to the ears of many; Taylor Deupree is one of New York's most vibrant electronic producers. From his early techno days as a member of Prototype 909 to his current status as one of N. America's key 'microscopic" electronic composers and to add runs the prestigious 12K and LINE labels. Frank Bretschneider is a key member and founder of the prestigious Raster Music label, he has critically acclaimed releases under the names Komet and Produkt. It's easy to say that Frank Bretschneider has created some of the most influential spatial electronics of the late '90s. Utilizing both artists keen ears for carefully crafted sounds, Balance blends the clean sine wave/white noise of Bretschneider with the defined grit of Deupree's granular synthesis. Realized entirely on Nord Modular synthesizers, Bretschneider and Deupree exchanged patch files through email and began constructing foundation loops. Bretschneider then created initial mixes of 9 songs and then sent them to Deupree who remixed and re-processed them. This digital exchange allowed for them to work using their own methods and aesthetic while combining the similarities of each other's interests. The result is a looping and churning rhythmic work that is both synthetic, warm, dubby, and tonally challenging. Thus Balance creates an engaging balance between the two artists aesthetics."
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LP+12"
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KEPLARREV 003LP
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Between Christmas 2000 and New Year 2001, producers Ekkehard Ehlers and Stephan Mathieu recorded an album of warm, soft, delicately crackling electronic music in the space of that week. It was christened with the ambivalent title Heroin and was released on CD via the label Brombron in 2001 and later in 2003 re-issued on Kit Clayton's Orthlorng Musork on double-LP with remixes the pair had commissioned as expansions. 17 years later Heroin sees its first vinyl release to include all 13 tracks from the original CD track list on this LP plus 12" set. The centerpiece "Herz" finally receives its long deserved vinyl treatment (side C, at 45rpm) and on the flip side Thomas Brinkmann contributes a mirror in a magnificent remix of that very piece on side D. Ehlers and Mathieu were both highly prolific solo artists during the period 2000-2004, and in just two years after the initial release of Heroin each had produced over half a dozen new solo recordings: among them the serial masterpiece Ehlers' Plays released as five stunning LPs in a series on Staubgold, while Mathieu's Full Swing Edits spread over five 10" records plus his album FrequencyLib on Mille Plateaux, Die Entdeckung des Wetters on Lucky Kitchen, and The Sad Mac on Atsushi Sasaki's Headz label. Heroin is an album that embraces the happy accident being made up of reduced, often very catchy and very direct micro hooks which seem laser-guided into a space accepting obvious melodic beauty in what feels like an observation of musics unfolding and revealing it's DNA, embed with for a kind of yearning for innocence and naiveté -- as if Satie were on the jukebox in The Crying of Lot 49. The album not only sounds like that of two producers who are both dreamers and scientists, but that Ehlers and Mathieu chose to work with these means in a dialogue together to reduce pop music to its musical/tonal core, it is not pop music anymore, rather a ghostly pointilistic itteration of song. Heroin is located at this transition, around that point at which tracks, that were or could have become pop compositions, irrevocably slip into a static harmonic nirvana. Includes printed inner sleeves and download code; Edition of 500.
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LP
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KEPLARREV 002LP
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Aix is an outstanding piece of work by Italian electro-acoustic savant Giuseppe Ielasi, originally released in 2009 on Taylor Deupree's 12k label. The follow-up to 2007's August (12k) and Ielasi's first collaboration with Nicola Ratti as Bellows, also out in 2007 (Kning Disk). Originally only released on CD (12k), the album got a very limited vinyl issue on Czech label Minority Records in 2010. Keplar presents this extraordinary and timeless collection of nine evocative minimalist soundscapes on vinyl again after ten years. For more than 20 years, Giuseppe Ielasi has been releasing his recordings on labels like Erstwhile Records, Häpna, Kning Disk, Dekorder, 12k, Entr'acte. or Editions Mego, as well as on his own label Senufo Editions. The label Keplar has been on a long hiatus and is now back with its KeplarRev series presenting vinyl re-issues of essential electronic albums from the '90s and '00s, as well as new recordings by momentous electronic and ambient artists. Includes download code; Edition of 500.
From the original press release in 2009: "With Aix we see Ielasi building his layered, atmospheric music around rhythmic grids. Most of the time these are quite irregular and the pulses are not necessarily stable or clear. Where his previous work approached sound in a linear fashion Aix imposes a strong vertical development with the aforementioned grid and a production consisting of ons and offs, employing as much improvisation as Ielasi's previous work, but in a different way. Despite the self-imposed grid structure, Aix relies heavily on randomization. Not in the traditional sense of sound placement but instead of the spatialization of sounds, echoes, reverbs, and the stereo image. As a result, Aix has an amazing sense and clarity of space as the small fragments of sound breathe and find their own place in the mix, thanks to Ielasi's sublime skills as a mixer and engineer. Ielasi relied heavily on numerous short samples and combining them in ways that fell into his groove; some found from others' recordings and many more recorded during the past year. We hear fragments of percussive (acoustic) objects, drums, piano, trumpet, guitar, and, of course, synthetic textures. Although there is a distinct rhythmic pulse to Aix, Ielasi manages to mold it into something wonderfully languid and warm... and strangely inviting." Composed and recorded by Giuseppe Ielasi in Aix-en-Provence, Autumn 2008. Remaster by Giuseppe Ielasi. Cover photograph "Construction, Barcelona" by Taylor Deupree. Layout by Dan Dudarec/Marco Ciceri.
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2LP
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KEPLARREV 001LP
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Repressed. Multila was the third album by Finnish producer Sasu Ripatti under the moniker Vladislav Delay. It compiles the Huone and Ranta 12" EPs Ripatti released on Basic Channel's Chain Reaction label in 1999 and 2000. The album features six hauntingly murky dub ambient tracks and the impressive 22-minute techno odyssey "Huone". 20 years after its original release as a full-length CD album (Chain Reaction), these timeless recordings of modern electronic music are now finally available for the first time as a double-vinyl edition. The label Keplar has been on a long hiatus and is now back with its KeplarRev series presenting vinyl re-issues of essential electronic albums from the '90s and '00s, as well as new recordings by momentous electronic and ambient artists. Drawings by Kaisa Kemikoski; Layout by Marco Ciceri. Remaster by Rashad Becker and vinyl cut by Kassian Troyer at Dubplates & Mastering. Includes download code.
"Life films us exactly. Our experience of it, though, lies beyond images and descriptions. Emotions, coming in irrational flashes, are non-figurable. We lose our little connection to them very quickly. We look for forms which promise to take us to our own experience. We construct forms with this in mind: that they can take us to meet the subconscious. Multila's construction is principled this way. Fragments of experience, moments without definition or localization are captured within tiny fragments of time and then within one's mind space. We can look into it and see that experience has left some of its data to us. As we receive it, again and again, we are connected and reconnected to certain indefinable moments. Both during and after its recording, Multila is a tool to learn about the unintentional states of us. It is a way to see our own emotional loops. Multila is a soundtrack for vision." --Vladislav Delay (2000)
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CD
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KEPLAR 008CD
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"Pantasz presents contemporary diary writing, no music concrete. He´s inspired by chance and creates a masterpiece of taken back pop largeness: On this record you come towards pop, great pop. And then you get a feeling of techno and immediately thereafter you hear electro. Once it is flowing and beautiful, then hypermotorically restless. You even can dare an excursion to the disco to dance for a while. But that certain melancholy, which attends to the most pieces, takes you back to reality. And again this moment of chanson appears and becomes to a central thread of the whole work. The technical revolution with computers and the related possibility of home recording surely plays a not too insignificant role on the record. But despite all that the huge composing talent of Fabian Fenk is inescapably audible. How he connects guitars, electronics and various other instruments and how he uses his famous vocals, sometimes sporadically, sometimes song-determining, will be hard to match around here."
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