Shitkatapult has been publishing special music for special people since 1997. Shitkatapult represents: Das Bierbeben, Apparat, T.Raumschmiere, Sami Koivikko, Anders Ilar, Napoli Is Not Nepal, Phon.o, Magnum38, Fenin, Peter Grummich, a.o. and many more. The musical concept is to not have one at all. Everything is allowed, every release is different and with every record, the label gets a new definition.
From elektronik shuffle-rock to funky micro-disco, from digital high-speed swing to analog ambient-jazz, Shitkatapult has everything your electronically-polluted heart needs. Shitkatapult also organizes and promotes parties and events like the anual "Shitparade" at Maria/Berlin.
Originally founded by tech-punk maven T. Raumschmiere (Marco Haas), in 2000 Sascha Ring aka Apparat jumped on board the katapult, and the two have been splitting head honcho duties ever since. Graphics and such are handled by comrades in arms Carsten Aermes aka Phon.o and Alexander Solman aka Cia-Industries. Shit from this katapult is not something you want to wipe clean anytime soon. It hits from all directions and, let's face it, getting the beats flung at you this recklessly is oddly refreshing. Conceptually, the folks at Shitkatapult couldn't care less about concepts. Everything goes, from the more serious organo-chemistry of Apparat to the musical middle finger of T. Raumschmiere to the mutant tech-disco of Das Bierbeben.
Future label plans: world domination.
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12"
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STRIKE 169EP
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Apparat prepares a rerecording of his 2004 Peel Session: a sonic dedication to the huge mentor John Peel from Shitkatapult. Apparat swings the composer's stick with emotion to give yearning it's segue way by conducting pieces of lonely melancholic beauty with godly discretion. New strings are thanks to the violin and cello of Kathrin Pfänder and Lisa Stepf aka Complexácord. The trio harmonizes with dream-like perfection. It reminds one once again of the experimental modus operandi combining classical instruments with electronic music. Also features singer Raz Ohara, clarinet/sax player Hormel Eastwood.
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STRIKE 168CD
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Frank Bretschneider on Lunik: "It moves, it sings... but does it swing? Anyway, it represents the soundtrack of my life, my musical influences: some San Francisco psychedelia, some London underground, some Berlin school (old and new). Krautrock from Cologne and New York minimalism. A shot of Detroit grit, a bit of Moscow dust, a splash of Paris charm? Who knows. It's about daily grind, the passing of time, the change of seasons and relations. Reality and fiction and perception. Biography - back & forth." Bretschneider was raised in Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz) in the German Democratic Republic. He is the founder of the influential East German underground band AG Geige and co-founder of the prestigious Raster-Noton label. He lives as a musician, video artist, and producer in Berlin.
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12"
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STRIKE 167EP
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Frank Bretschneider on the tracks: "It moves, it sings... but does it swing? Anyway, it represents the soundtrack of my life, my musical influences: some San Francisco psychedelia, some London underground, some Berlin school (old and new). Krautrock from Cologne and New York minimalism. A shot of Detroit grit, a bit of Moscow dust, a splash of Paris charm?" Bretschneider was raised in Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz) in the German Democratic Republic. He is the founder of the East German underground band AG Geige and co-founder of the Raster-Noton label. He lives as a musician, video artist, and producer in Berlin.
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STRIKE 166CD
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Orbologists Dr. Alex Paterson and Thomas Fehlmann are in their lab putting together a massive sound worm by hand for the anniversary of Berlin's elite training ground, Shitkatapult. A comprehensive overview of works spanning 20 years of label history; As they often did, the Orb liked to operate right at the convolutions and interfaces between work and quote, between interpretation and punctuation. A fine, easy hour of music from the Orbital of Shitkatapult. Featuring (in mix order): Hamburger dub specialist Fenin opens the show with a darkly ambient hall "Adeto" from Mixes & Maxis, (STRIKE 117CD, 2010) and is immediately layered through with "What Is Paris?" by Bus and Dabrye from Eagles (STRIKE 146LP, 2014). Both tracks blend together like a cut-up for adults into a single track. Next is Phon.O, from his album Burn Down the Town (STRIKE 064LP, 2005) with "Verborg Nie Die 6" and wayward Finn Sami Koivikko with "Erisana" from Kut Pulatin Pt. 3 (STRIKE 028EP, 2002), delivering the most important building blocks of the minimal/tech house side of the label, coming from Cristian Vogel's "Telemorphosis" from the exiled UK artist's latest album, The Assistenz (STRIKE 160CD, 2016). Followed and once again interrupted by Cristian Vogel, from the songs and more section with The Sorry Entertainers's (Judith Juillerat, Khan of Finland, and T.Raumschmiere) "The Only Thing I Know" from Local Jet Set (STRIKE 129CD, 2011), Judith Juillerat's "Vol-au-Vent" from Soliloquy (STRIKE 067CD, 2005), Khan of Finland's "H&M Freedom" from Nicht Nur Sex (STRIKE 162CD/LP, 2017), Cristian Vogel's "Barefoot Agnete" from The Assistenz, T.Raumschmiere's "Nuclear Bedtime Stories", featuring Lilian Hak, from I Tank U (STRIKE 096CD, 2008). A gloomy lightness takes hold and seeps into the depths with Ulli Bomans and Marco Haas, aka Shrubbn!!, and the track "Drunen" from their latest album Europa (STRIKE 161CD/LP, 2016), and misfits like Frank Bretschneider's "Subharchorded Waves" from Komet (2008), Boxtype's "Spin" from Sparkflight (STRIKE 029EP, 2002), Oval's "Kasino" from OvalDNA (STRIKE 134CD, 2012), Sun Electric's "One Dub", Ricardo Villalobos remix and MM Studio counter cut, aka "Toninas" (STRIKE 085EP, 2008), culminating in Thomas Brinkmann's soul center house sache "Pig Peg" from General Eclectics (STRIKE 118CD, 2010). The Orb make for the exit with Apparat's "Not A Number" from Walls (STRIKE 084CD/LP, 2007), Tom Thiel's "Laissez Faire" (STRIKE 125CD, 2011), wrapping things up with the deeper Orb mix of Shrubbn!!'s "Echos" (STRIKE 130EP, 2012). Four different covers -- find each of the covers and piece them together to reveal the "20" pictured here.
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12"
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STRIKE 165EP
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"Suspected Hippies In Transit" is an exclusive track by The Orb. Written and produced by Alex Paterson and Thomas Fehlmann at Lab, Berlin 2017. "Adeto / What Is Paris?" is an exclusive mixed track, the original track from Fenin and Bus (with Dabrye) mixed together by Alex Paterson, at Lab, Berlin 2017. This 12" will be released in tandem with The Orb Chronicles (20 Years of Shitkatapult) (STRIKE 166CD) to celebrate the Berlin label that debuted artists like T.Raumschmiere, Apparat, or Phon.O.
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STRIKE 164LP
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LP version. Includes download code. Pioneering music producer Si Begg presents his sixth studio album Blueprints on Berlin's legendary label Shitkatapult. His first album in four years, Blueprints is a celebration of raw electronics welded to the "romance of engineering". The project was inspired by the discovery of an old diagrammatic notebook that belonged to Begg's grandfather, George, in his lifetime a cutting-edge engineer. Dubbed "visionary" by The Who's Pete Townsend and widely considered a producer's producer, Begg has been making genre-defying electronic music for more than two decades. He has carved a reputation as a recording artist, DJ, and sound designer, and in more recent years, as an award-winning composer for television and film. Blueprints sees Begg's passion for contemporary score collide with his love of electronic music. Since the release of his last album, 2013's Permission To Explode, Begg has written scores for four feature films as well as for the Netflix original series, Lovesick, and a battle rap documentary, War of Words (2016). The concept for the album sprang fully formed when Begg came across the notebook, a beautifully preserved leather-bound volume, annotated in his grandfather's precise hand. The book was filled with meticulous diagrams of compressors and parallel air ducts, graphs recording comparative noise levels at different factories, statistical information detailing the thermal efficiency of power stations, alongside blueprints for futuristic machines yet to be built. At the same time, Begg was reconnecting with his own back-to-basics studio machinery, the voltage-powered hardware instead of slick high-end software. The parallel discoveries felt like synchronicity and Begg began producing tracks using analog synthesizers recorded live in one take, augmented by circuit bending effects units and the electro-magnetic field noise created by mobile phones and hard drives. Begg decided to champion these idiosyncratic machines, putting them center stage with the aim to demonstrate that not only were these unique tools to create art, they were simultaneously works of art in their own right. The pieces on Blueprints evoke the beauty and romance of great engineering, often overlooked in a landscape of post-industrial gloom. From the hums and sparking pops of "Heat Resistant Alloys" to the relentless subsonic sine waves underpinning "Resistance Is Expensive", raw electrical signals pulse through the heart of the music. This is a work of complex, evolving mathematical patterns, circuitry bent out of shape. It is a hymn to the voltage-controlled oscillator.
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STRIKE 164CD
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Pioneering music producer Si Begg presents his sixth studio album Blueprints on Berlin's legendary label Shitkatapult. His first album in four years, Blueprints is a celebration of raw electronics welded to the "romance of engineering". The project was inspired by the discovery of an old diagrammatic notebook that belonged to Begg's grandfather, George, in his lifetime a cutting-edge engineer. Dubbed "visionary" by The Who's Pete Townshend and widely considered a producer's producer, Begg has been making genre-defying electronic music for more than two decades. He has carved a reputation as a recording artist, DJ, and sound designer, and in more recent years, as an award-winning composer for television and film. Blueprints sees Begg's passion for contemporary score collide with his love of electronic music. Since the release of his last album, 2013's Permission To Explode, Begg has written scores for four feature films as well as for the Netflix original series, Lovesick, and a battle rap documentary, War of Words (2016). The concept for the album sprang fully formed when Begg came across the notebook, a beautifully preserved leather-bound volume, annotated in his grandfather's precise hand. The book was filled with meticulous diagrams of compressors and parallel air ducts, graphs recording comparative noise levels at different factories, statistical information detailing the thermal efficiency of power stations, alongside blueprints for futuristic machines yet to be built. At the same time, Begg was reconnecting with his own back-to-basics studio machinery, the voltage-powered hardware instead of slick high-end software. The parallel discoveries felt like synchronicity and Begg began producing tracks using analog synthesizers recorded live in one take, augmented by circuit bending effects units and the electro-magnetic field noise created by mobile phones and hard drives. Begg decided to champion these idiosyncratic machines, putting them center stage with the aim to demonstrate that not only were these unique tools to create art, they were simultaneously works of art in their own right. The pieces on Blueprints evoke the beauty and romance of great engineering, often overlooked in a landscape of post-industrial gloom. From the hums and sparking pops of "Heat Resistant Alloys" to the relentless subsonic sine waves underpinning "Resistance Is Expensive", raw electrical signals pulse through the heart of the music. This is a work of complex, evolving mathematical patterns, circuitry bent out of shape. It is a hymn to the voltage-controlled oscillator.
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10"
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STRIKE 163EP
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RSD 2017 release. Colored vinyl. PVC sleeve. After several live performances together in Berlin, Caspar Brötzmann (Caspar Brötzmann Massaker) and T.Raumschmiere teamed up in the studio to create a document of pure beauty. Behind this wall of tones lies a romantic projection for every listener to dig into and explore, built out of dreams of music, movements of layers, and shifting patterns that are melted down and nurtured at the same time.
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LP
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STRIKE 162LP
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LP version. Includes download code. Hendrik Otremba talks about Khan Of Finland's new album, Nicht Nur Sex: " 'Nicht Nur Sex' is a user profile on a literally gay forum named Gayromeo that's serving the purpose of organizing its user's needs for fleshly pleasures. The transvestite's user name is programmatic, has an explicit meaning: it's more than sex! That breakthrough in superficiality appearing also proclaims Khan Of Finland aka Can Oral - artist- and real name go hand in hand. Of course it's about sex. There's more than that, though. The title previews an album that forces bystanders to take a deeper look but it also clearly states: here a few points can be found sex isn't satisfying without. Khan's musical aesthetics are glamorous, dub-like pop packed with samples and alienated voices - a musical tradition leading back to Grace Jones and Marianne Faithfull in their Island Records era of '80/81. We're able to hear moaned phrases, phrased moaning, artificial ejaculation. Nicht Nur Sex creates a melange of an intense life-style, here the untamed before-and-after finds a musical counterpart as well as the in-between finds a starting point. Even the album cover is held in a similar fashion: The archive of Khan's snapshots mirrors our voyeurism so we finally recognize we're most intrigued by picky details found in the hidden. Between fragments and snapshots secrets unveil, obsessions materialize. And desires dance. To prove this view is of political nature the song 'H&M Freedom' depicts various forms, shapes and conditions of dependency in today's world of consumerism. Khan's a page that's got to be written on from both sides regarding it's fidgety character in music and pictures: the Berlin based artist produces, sings every so often, remixes, releases his own records under his finish moniker or as a member of a band named Wild Style Lion, has recently formed a bridge between electronic- and guitar-music with the aid of J. Mascis and Kim Gordon, has been a club owner in NYC, organized events at the infamous Berghain, plays theater, travels with Goethe - or speaking metaphorically: melodizes live! . . . Through Khan's arrangement, a diverse interdependency of emotions is created compiling the ten tracks into a listening-album where a soundtrack can be found. A soundtrack for our sexuality - and basically everything in between!" Features: Joe Volume, Mexican rapper Alemán, Julia Kent (cello player of Anthony and the Johnsons), and Icelandic musician Urður (GusGus).
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CD
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STRIKE 162CD
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Hendrik Otremba talks about Khan Of Finland's new album, Nicht Nur Sex: " 'Nicht Nur Sex' is a user profile on a literally gay forum named Gayromeo that's serving the purpose of organizing its user's needs for fleshly pleasures. The transvestite's user name is programmatic, has an explicit meaning: it's more than sex! That breakthrough in superficiality appearing also proclaims Khan Of Finland aka Can Oral - artist- and real name go hand in hand. Of course it's about sex. There's more than that, though. The title previews an album that forces bystanders to take a deeper look but it also clearly states: here a few points can be found sex isn't satisfying without. Khan's musical aesthetics are glamorous, dub-like pop packed with samples and alienated voices - a musical tradition leading back to Grace Jones and Marianne Faithfull in their Island Records era of '80/81. We're able to hear moaned phrases, phrased moaning, artificial ejaculation. Nicht Nur Sex creates a melange of an intense life-style, here the untamed before-and-after finds a musical counterpart as well as the in-between finds a starting point. Even the album cover is held in a similar fashion: The archive of Khan's snapshots mirrors our voyeurism so we finally recognize we're most intrigued by picky details found in the hidden. Between fragments and snapshots secrets unveil, obsessions materialize. And desires dance. To prove this view is of political nature the song 'H&M Freedom' depicts various forms, shapes and conditions of dependency in today's world of consumerism. Khan's a page that's got to be written on from both sides regarding it's fidgety character in music and pictures: the Berlin based artist produces, sings every so often, remixes, releases his own records under his finish moniker or as a member of a band named Wild Style Lion, has recently formed a bridge between electronic- and guitar-music with the aid of J. Mascis and Kim Gordon, has been a club owner in NYC, organized events at the infamous Berghain, plays theater, travels with Goethe - or speaking metaphorically: melodizes live! . . . Through Khan's arrangement, a diverse interdependency of emotions is created compiling the ten tracks into a listening-album where a soundtrack can be found. A soundtrack for our sexuality - and basically everything in between!" Features: Joe Volume, Mexican rapper Alemán, Julia Kent (cello player of Anthony and the Johnsons), and Icelandic musician Urður (GusGus).
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CD
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STRIKE 161CD
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Europa, the second album from Shrubbn!!, the duo of Ulli Bomans (Schieres) and Marco Haas (T.Raumschmiere), displays a map of Europe on its cover, as might be expected from the title. The song titles on Europa also draw from the inexhaustible riches of the dialects and villages. From a musical perspective, this record is like an amazing journey through a Europe that is fed by more than just numbers, tables and statistics. Unlike its predecessor Echos (STRIKE 136LP, 2012), which represented something rather hidden and gloomy, Europa changes direction towards land and people. All the tracks on Europa are named after cities. "Elk" is the sound of the universe screeching as it lands on earth. With saw-toothed flowers and an utterly beautiful intro, the universe finally lands on the lost Alp. "Lom" is cubist electronics over a dense beat. "Eskilstuna", somewhere in Scandinavia, sounds something like snow and rock crystal. One melody after another sits between the round and beautifully layered chord pads. "Vovchans'ki" is a typical track from the Europa phase - A European yearning for the avant-gardist of 1922, modern and extremely brilliant. "Äthäri" sees Schieres and T.Raumschmiere manoeuver through snapshots, waves and highways in a meadow from elsewhere. "Anenii Noi" is a fantastic Shrubbn!! track that still breathes the spirit of Echos. It has a wonderful delayed beat, painted in tonal drums. With "Mondragon", a European spirit is conjured again, one that is much freer and more beautiful, and seems lost for nearly 100 years - crashing layers of melodies and clear sounds of a modern age from the past. "Shumen", previously called "Kolarowgrad", wanders from A to B. "Freistritz an der Gail" is composed of sound. Shrubbn!! builds a wall-of-sound out of hisses, synth teeth and flashes of genius. "Drunen" and "Nöo" are sort of downbeat, but definitely beat. Very dream-like and beautiful. "Nea Koroni" sounds a bit like the Alps and the mountains and valleys and meadows and bells. Shrubbn!! go through "Hrafnagil" and leave the listener in "Leirbotn". If the previous album Echos can be described as a profoundly intense journey through spaces and depths, reverb and shaft, Europa warms up like a dream landscape of earth and clay. The tracks have their own dialects; they are either coming from or traveling to someplace. There are colorations and stories told.
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LP
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STRIKE 161LP
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LP version. Includes download code. Europa, the second album from Shrubbn!!, the duo of Ulli Bomans (Schieres) and Marco Haas (T.Raumschmiere), displays a map of Europe on its cover, as might be expected from the title. The song titles on Europa also draw from the inexhaustible riches of the dialects and villages. From a musical perspective, this record is like an amazing journey through a Europe that is fed by more than just numbers, tables and statistics. Unlike its predecessor Echos (STRIKE 136LP, 2012), which represented something rather hidden and gloomy, Europa changes direction towards land and people. All the tracks on Europa are named after cities. "Elk" is the sound of the universe screeching as it lands on earth. With saw-toothed flowers and an utterly beautiful intro, the universe finally lands on the lost Alp. "Lom" is cubist electronics over a dense beat. "Eskilstuna", somewhere in Scandinavia, sounds something like snow and rock crystal. One melody after another sits between the round and beautifully layered chord pads. "Vovchans'ki" is a typical track from the Europa phase - A European yearning for the avant-gardist of 1922, modern and extremely brilliant. "Äthäri" sees Schieres and T.Raumschmiere manoeuver through snapshots, waves and highways in a meadow from elsewhere. "Anenii Noi" is a fantastic Shrubbn!! track that still breathes the spirit of Echos. It has a wonderful delayed beat, painted in tonal drums. With "Mondragon", a European spirit is conjured again, one that is much freer and more beautiful, and seems lost for nearly 100 years - crashing layers of melodies and clear sounds of a modern age from the past. "Shumen", previously called "Kolarowgrad", wanders from A to B. "Freistritz an der Gail" is composed of sound. Shrubbn!! builds a wall-of-sound out of hisses, synth teeth and flashes of genius. "Drunen" and "Nöo" are sort of downbeat, but definitely beat. Very dream-like and beautiful. "Nea Koroni" sounds a bit like the Alps and the mountains and valleys and meadows and bells. Shrubbn!! go through "Hrafnagil" and leave the listener in "Leirbotn". If the previous album Echos can be described as a profoundly intense journey through spaces and depths, reverb and shaft, Europa warms up like a dream landscape of earth and clay. The tracks have their own dialects; they are either coming from or traveling to someplace. There are colorations and stories told.
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CD
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STRIKE 160CD
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"The Assistenz is the culmination of a four-year creative hot streak as vivid as any part of Cristian Vogel's long career. The trio of dancefloor-oriented records formed by 2012's The Inertials (STRIKE 137CD), 2014's Polyphonic Beings (STRIKE 151CD/LP) and now The Assistenz are sensual pleasures: a lifetime of study of frequencies and rhythms on the frontline of the world's clubs has been put into the creation of sounds that interface with the nervous system and emotional responses with extraordinary immediacy. Together with the more abstracted album Eselsbrücke (SR 375CD, 2013), these form an enticing sonic narrative, each part revealing more about the whole [of Vogel's work]. The Assistenz, then, is many things: a personal document, a tribute to Copenhagen where it was recorded - but also the final piece in this bigger puzzle. While you will certainly hear some of the most fundamental and enduring vectors of underground music - dub, electro, acid, funk - flowing through the tracks, even those things are rebuilt from the molecular level, created completely afresh with new, precise, but somewhat skewed vision. His sound synthesis - increasingly done via the Kyma programming platform - is more and more able to reach beyond the 'synthetic' and impact in uncanny and wonderful ways. The most obvious sense of this is the way his sounds touch on the human voice: not just in the chattering, shimmering, singing tones of The Assistenz's ghostly centerpiece 'Barefoot Agnete', in the alien radio signals of 'The Merman's Dream' or even in the subliminal 'aaahs' hiding in the background of the noisy 'Vessels', but in the way any sound, anywhere in any track can sound peculiarly vocal, heard from the right angle. And it's not just the boundary between human and non-human, or that between acoustic and synthetic, that get blurred to the point of non-existence. In the voluptuousness of 'Hold' or the body-rocking funk of 'Cubic Haze' all the abstraction is grounded in sheer pleasure of bodily responses to the sound. Over some 25 years, Cristian's experiments have traced much of this weirdness and evolved with it, and his understanding of synthesis and algorithmic processes to create structure makes him one of the most important composers working today. The Assistenz expresses those relationships in ways that are beautiful, troubling, moving and scary, and which even make you want to dance." -- Joe Muggs, June 2016.
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LP
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STRIKE 160LP
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LP version. Includes download code. "The Assistenz is the culmination of a four-year creative hot streak as vivid as any part of Cristian Vogel's long career. The trio of dancefloor-oriented records formed by 2012's The Inertials (STRIKE 137CD), 2014's Polyphonic Beings (STRIKE 151CD/LP) and now The Assistenz are sensual pleasures: a lifetime of study of frequencies and rhythms on the frontline of the world's clubs has been put into the creation of sounds that interface with the nervous system and emotional responses with extraordinary immediacy. Together with the more abstracted album Eselsbrücke (SR 375CD, 2013), these form an enticing sonic narrative, each part revealing more about the whole [of Vogel's work]. The Assistenz, then, is many things: a personal document, a tribute to Copenhagen where it was recorded - but also the final piece in this bigger puzzle. While you will certainly hear some of the most fundamental and enduring vectors of underground music - dub, electro, acid, funk - flowing through the tracks, even those things are rebuilt from the molecular level, created completely afresh with new, precise, but somewhat skewed vision. His sound synthesis - increasingly done via the Kyma programming platform - is more and more able to reach beyond the 'synthetic' and impact in uncanny and wonderful ways. The most obvious sense of this is the way his sounds touch on the human voice: not just in the chattering, shimmering, singing tones of The Assistenz's ghostly centerpiece 'Barefoot Agnete', in the alien radio signals of 'The Merman's Dream' or even in the subliminal 'aaahs' hiding in the background of the noisy 'Vessels', but in the way any sound, anywhere in any track can sound peculiarly vocal, heard from the right angle. And it's not just the boundary between human and non-human, or that between acoustic and synthetic, that get blurred to the point of non-existence. In the voluptuousness of 'Hold' or the body-rocking funk of 'Cubic Haze' all the abstraction is grounded in sheer pleasure of bodily responses to the sound. Over some 25 years, Cristian's experiments have traced much of this weirdness and evolved with it, and his understanding of synthesis and algorithmic processes to create structure makes him one of the most important composers working today. The Assistenz expresses those relationships in ways that are beautiful, troubling, moving and scary, and which even make you want to dance." -- Joe Muggs, June 2016.
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STRIKE 159CD
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In the beginning there is noise. Not an encompassing and continuous noise, but something choppy and rhythmic. It sounds as if a noise-generating device is constantly being switched on and off in regular time. It's a machine-like pulse that stoically keeps its own time, even if none of the instruments, introduced one by one, follow its rhythm. Nor does the bassline, consisting of four notes played with long pauses, nor the hypnotic tom sequence on the drums. The noise has a life of its own. Its staccatos swell into metallic harmonies that wander around the room without ever deviating from their tempo. The voice of Cambodian singer Prak Chum floats over it all. Its agility and countless, minute modulations make it seem both strange and intimate; grounded and ethereal at the same time. This is "Batagur Baska," the first piece from the album of the same name by Guido Möbius. Nothing on this album actually goes together. One hears bouncy patterns played on analog synthesizers, and then a recorder. Rumbling, grinding industrial percussion develops through vocals played backward into something like acid krautrock. "Call The Police Now," with its shakers and soft vocal lines, has a bossa character that's counteracted by the overwrought voice of a woman screaming her lungs out in all fury. The ghostly "How To Never Wake Up" accompanies a mantra sung by Jana Plewa with grating squeaks that seem to comment on and object to the voice and lyrics. In any case, for Möbius, it is about the interplay between friction and harmony -- sound and noise -- and the constant balance between melodiousness and discord that keeps his music in suspense. The path he takes from a pleasant sound immersion to oppressively disturbing noises is a short one. Twisted humor and sacred seriousness are neighbors, as are autonomy, irritation, and loss of control. The Berlin-based artist creates tracks that suddenly shift from mild and friendly to darkly morbid -- or the other way around. Everything is organically interwoven, arranged in layers, or opposed. Möbius works as a PR agent and runs the music publishing house Autopilot Music Publishing. His PR clients include record companies and promoters such as Shitkatapult, Alien Transistor, Deutsche Grammophon, the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, and CTM Festival. As a music publisher, he handles the rights of artists such as F.S. Blumm, the Trabant Echo Orchestra, Nicholas Bussmann, and zeitkratzer.
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STRIKE 159LP
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LP version. Includes download code. In the beginning there is noise. Not an encompassing and continuous noise, but something choppy and rhythmic. It sounds as if a noise-generating device is constantly being switched on and off in regular time. It's a machine-like pulse that stoically keeps its own time, even if none of the instruments, introduced one by one, follow its rhythm. Nor does the bassline, consisting of four notes played with long pauses, nor the hypnotic tom sequence on the drums. The noise has a life of its own. Its staccatos swell into metallic harmonies that wander around the room without ever deviating from their tempo. The voice of Cambodian singer Prak Chum floats over it all. Its agility and countless, minute modulations make it seem both strange and intimate; grounded and ethereal at the same time. This is "Batagur Baska," the first piece from the album of the same name by Guido Möbius. Nothing on this album actually goes together. One hears bouncy patterns played on analog synthesizers, and then a recorder. Rumbling, grinding industrial percussion develops through vocals played backward into something like acid krautrock. "Call The Police Now," with its shakers and soft vocal lines, has a bossa character that's counteracted by the overwrought voice of a woman screaming her lungs out in all fury. The ghostly "How To Never Wake Up" accompanies a mantra sung by Jana Plewa with grating squeaks that seem to comment on and object to the voice and lyrics. In any case, for Möbius, it is about the interplay between friction and harmony -- sound and noise -- and the constant balance between melodiousness and discord that keeps his music in suspense. The path he takes from a pleasant sound immersion to oppressively disturbing noises is a short one. Twisted humor and sacred seriousness are neighbors, as are autonomy, irritation, and loss of control. The Berlin-based artist creates tracks that suddenly shift from mild and friendly to darkly morbid -- or the other way around. Everything is organically interwoven, arranged in layers, or opposed. Möbius works as a PR agent and runs the music publishing house Autopilot Music Publishing. His PR clients include record companies and promoters such as Shitkatapult, Alien Transistor, Deutsche Grammophon, the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, and CTM Festival. As a music publisher, he handles the rights of artists such as F.S. Blumm, the Trabant Echo Orchestra, Nicholas Bussmann, and zeitkratzer.
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10"
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STRIKE 158EP
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RSD 2016 release. German group Das Bierbeben return to their roots with the Schwarze Spinne EP, their first release since 2012. After three albums -- No Future No Past (STRIKE 047CD/LP, 2004), Alles Fällt (STRIKE 073CD/LP, 2006), and Das Bierbeben (STRIKE 103CD/LP, 2009) -- the group delivers four tracks shaped by truth, chiseled from insight, demanded by sense, and right on the mark. "Nervy new wave electroclash punk-pop Neue Deutsche Welle never sounded quite so good." --AllMusic, reviewing Das Bierbeben
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CD
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STRIKE 157CD
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Bremen, Germany-based artist Ulli Bomans presents Sort By Dragging, his second album under his given name. His first, Riven (STRIKE 149LP, 2014), followed a long series of music productions under his Schieres alias and numerous 12"s, albums, remixes, and tours together with Marco Haas aka T.Raumschmiere and their band of electronic thunder experiments, Shrubbn!! This time, the listener is lost completely in the gloomy, captivating worlds of sound. Sinister at times, Sort By Dragging recalls Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis, while also bearing parallels to Bomans's sculptural and visual art in its passage from Bremen to Detroit and back. Bomans clears the way with opener "Detroit Tape Noize," as the gloomy intro of noises and clicks gives way to a distant beat that functions more as a moving wall than a drum pattern. Sounds are created from noise; rhythm from the recovery of movement -- and somehow are condensed into a track, a song not without melody, resonating like an alarm in an ocean of noise. On "Cheap Seats" the listener even encounters a real drumbeat, which somehow drags and pushes a Vermona home organ sound into the echo loop. "One Piece Missing" then brings a clear piano voice into this world of sound. "Screensaver" concludes the work with ringing and roaring under a strangely amazing piano. CD in digipak with booklet.
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LP
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STRIKE 156LP
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LP version. Includes download code. The first album by Vert aka Adam Butler, The Köln Konzert, appeared in 1999 on sonig, the Cologne institution for nonlinear electronic music. In the years that followed, he left his mark on the experimental electronic scene and defined his own complex sound language, culminating in his fourth album, Some Beans & an Octopus (2006), on which he beautifully balanced pop-influenced songwriting and experimentation. After its release, Butler shocked everyone by announcing the end of his work as a musician. Now, in 2015, nine years after Some Beans & an Octopus, Vert is back with The Days Within. The songwriting here is unmistakably Vert, but Butler doesn't like to use the same idea twice. His signature as a songwriter and producer is more recognizable by atmosphere than by harmonies and hooks, mixing melancholy, sophisticated arrangement, densely woven sounds, delicate irony, and surprises. On "Bury Yourself," the listener hears clattering percussion and a host of apparently incidental sound events alongside a loose, catchy vocal melody and an effervescent synth line play. The main atmosphere is dark, and Butler's voice has a smoky patina. "Dog Days" begins with noisy Morse code and intermittent, lugubrious harmonium chords; the ensuing composition is so masterful it would probably work just as well with only a piano and vocal. Each of the many hisses, rattles, and beeps that swarm around "I Run the Waves" seems to have a life of its own. Everything is out of place, yet everything fits together. The macabre "Like a Rose" takes the listener to a dive bar where Kurt Weill sits at the piano surrounded by drunken prostitutes. And so it goes on. No two tracks are alike, but it all fits together. Maybe it's the slightly ironic vocals that always wobble through the haunting melodies. The poignantly simple strings. Or the nervous rasping in the background. Hardly a track on The Days Within is wholly unambiguous; everything seems ambivalent and unknowable. Soft strings and beautiful vocal melodies speak a different language from the unsettling hisses and the rumbling bass that lurk behind them. The songs that seem at first glance harmless are the ones that threaten to slide into the abyss. It's as if Butler, the experienced producer and master of the complex arrangement, is speaking several languages at once. As if ghosts, both past and future, whisper their subtexts behind the beautifully woven arras of every song.
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CD
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STRIKE 156CD
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The first album by Vert aka Adam Butler, The Köln Konzert, appeared in 1999 on sonig, the Cologne institution for nonlinear electronic music. In the years that followed, he left his mark on the experimental electronic scene and defined his own complex sound language, culminating in his fourth album, Some Beans & an Octopus (2006), on which he beautifully balanced pop-influenced songwriting and experimentation. After its release, Butler shocked everyone by announcing the end of his work as a musician. Now, in 2015, nine years after Some Beans & an Octopus, Vert is back with The Days Within. The songwriting here is unmistakably Vert, but Butler doesn't like to use the same idea twice. His signature as a songwriter and producer is more recognizable by atmosphere than by harmonies and hooks, mixing melancholy, sophisticated arrangement, densely woven sounds, delicate irony, and surprises. On "Bury Yourself," the listener hears clattering percussion and a host of apparently incidental sound events alongside a loose, catchy vocal melody and an effervescent synth line play. The main atmosphere is dark, and Butler's voice has a smoky patina. "Dog Days" begins with noisy Morse code and intermittent, lugubrious harmonium chords; the ensuing composition is so masterful it would probably work just as well with only a piano and vocal. Each of the many hisses, rattles, and beeps that swarm around "I Run the Waves" seems to have a life of its own. Everything is out of place, yet everything fits together. The macabre "Like a Rose" takes the listener to a dive bar where Kurt Weill sits at the piano surrounded by drunken prostitutes. And so it goes on. No two tracks are alike, but it all fits together. Maybe it's the slightly ironic vocals that always wobble through the haunting melodies. The poignantly simple strings. Or the nervous rasping in the background. Hardly a track on The Days Within is wholly unambiguous; everything seems ambivalent and unknowable. Soft strings and beautiful vocal melodies speak a different language from the unsettling hisses and the rumbling bass that lurk behind them. The songs that seem at first glance harmless are the ones that threaten to slide into the abyss. It's as if Butler, the experienced producer and master of the complex arrangement, is speaking several languages at once. As if ghosts, both past and future, whisper their subtexts behind the beautifully woven arras of every song.
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3CD
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STRIKE 155CD
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The Shitkatapult label reissues Apparat's first three albums, originally released in 2001, '02, and '03. Hardly any other musician at the interface between electronic and pop is as greatly cherished and passionately admired as the Berlin-based Apparat. He merges the inexhaustible sound-worlds of electronic music with the emotional depth of indie. He makes music to rock out to and to drift away to, to sing along to and to dive into. With Moderat, his collaboration with Modeselektor, he has commanded numerous festival stages. In 2015, he created the score for the 2015 film Equals, and is working on the third Moderat album at the time of this release, as well as his second collaboration with theatrical luminary Sebastian Hartmann. Most people got to know Apparat through his albums Walls (STRIKE 084CD, 2007) and The Devil's Walk (2011), and don't know much about his early, quintessentially electronic music dating back to just after the turn of the millennium. In his early 20s at the time, Apparat created an autonomous, radical sound-universe on those albums -- long out of print -- that is just as fascinating today as it was then. For this combined reissue, Mike Grinser painstakingly remastered each album and Carsten Aermes, a comrade-in-arms from Apparat's early days in Quedlinburg, East Germany, designed the cover based on Apparat's own original graphic design. Apparat's debut album, Multifunktionsebene, was released in 2001. With its intricate grooves and floating soundscapes, it defines a differentiated, tuned-down emotional spectrum. It is a recorded moment from another era entirely, which is exactly what makes it so powerful and captivating. Tttrial and Eror, from 2002, is his electronic magnum opus. Apparat mangles the grooves and develops rhythms with a complexity that makes Aphex Twin seem dull by comparison. And yet from within these tremendous, brutish tracks emerge minute, cautious sounds. On his third album, Duplex (2003), his world of sound explodes as he adds acoustic instruments to the electronics. Throbbing basses create an absurd contrast with saxophones and clarinets. He continues to define his acoustic space, which is reminiscent of classical chamber music; intimate and tactile. This is where he lays the foundation for Apparat as we know it. One can only marvel at the consummate and broad understanding of music that Apparat had already achieved in his youth.
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3LP
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STRIKE 155LP
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Triple LP version. Includes download code. The Shitkatapult label reissues Apparat's first three albums, originally released in 2001, '02, and '03. Hardly any other musician at the interface between electronic and pop is as greatly cherished and passionately admired as the Berlin-based Apparat. He merges the inexhaustible sound-worlds of electronic music with the emotional depth of indie. He makes music to rock out to and to drift away to, to sing along to and to dive into. With Moderat, his collaboration with Modeselektor, he has commanded numerous festival stages. In 2015, he created the score for the 2015 film Equals, and is working on the third Moderat album at the time of this release, as well as his second collaboration with theatrical luminary Sebastian Hartmann. Most people got to know Apparat through his albums Walls (STRIKE 084CD, 2007) and The Devil's Walk (2011), and don't know much about his early, quintessentially electronic music dating back to just after the turn of the millennium. In his early 20s at the time, Apparat created an autonomous, radical sound-universe on those albums -- long out of print -- that is just as fascinating today as it was then. For this combined reissue, Mike Grinser painstakingly remastered each album and Carsten Aermes, a comrade-in-arms from Apparat's early days in Quedlinburg, East Germany, designed the cover based on Apparat's own original graphic design. Apparat's debut album, Multifunktionsebene, was released in 2001. With its intricate grooves and floating soundscapes, it defines a differentiated, tuned-down emotional spectrum. It is a recorded moment from another era entirely, which is exactly what makes it so powerful and captivating. Tttrial and Eror, from 2002, is his electronic magnum opus. Apparat mangles the grooves and develops rhythms with a complexity that makes Aphex Twin seem dull by comparison. And yet from within these tremendous, brutish tracks emerge minute, cautious sounds. On his third album, Duplex (2003), his world of sound explodes as he adds acoustic instruments to the electronics. Throbbing basses create an absurd contrast with saxophones and clarinets. He continues to define his acoustic space, which is reminiscent of classical chamber music; intimate and tactile. This is where he lays the foundation for Apparat as we know it. One can only marvel at the consummate and broad understanding of music that Apparat had already achieved in his youth.
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CD
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STRIKE 154CD
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"We're big fans of French synthpop like Jacno, Deux, Ruth, and Serge Blenner. This kind of playful synthetic sound mixed with weird and sometimes depressing poetry had a big influence on us as kids and as musicians," reveal the French duo DAT Politics. Since 1999, Claude Pailliot and Gaetan Collet have been working on music shaped by those influences, without referring to them directly, on various albums and EPs for labels such as FatCat Records, A-Musik, Chicks on Speed Records, and Sub Rosa. Drone, noise, and musique concrète are other points of reference that clearly come through in their electronic songs, though they're also closely related to pop music. This time around, their songs once again took shape under such extra-musical influences as astronomy, philosophy, and programming language, as well as surrealism, fantasy films, and their own dreams. The nine tracks on No Void, which the duo describes as a "hallucinating ride in a space roller coaster: scary and funny!", were created in winter 2014 in a small cabin in northern France. The whimsical tour de force was recorded using computers, old beat-up synthesizers, worn-out keyboards, samplers, voice boxes, and children's toy instruments. Pailliot and Collet whisper into the microphone in French and English, their voices naked or distorted by a vocoder, at times using both languages in the same song, as the track "Reptiloid" demonstrates with poignant levity. The work occupies an eclectic territory that includes catchy melodies, versatile singing with pop appeal, and playfully rocking chiptune, synthwave, and electro. Pailliot and Collet's appreciation for Depeche Mode, Yazoo, OMD, Jean Michel Jarre, and Kraftwerk is as apparent as their love of Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze and the soundtrack worlds of Ennio Morricone, Giorgio Moroder, and John Carpenter. Yet rather than simply repackaging their personal preferences, the duo transforms art into something totally autonomous using a creative "cut-up" method as practiced by William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin. DAT Politics' songs are a combination of surreal stories, hidden meanings, and a search for clues within one's own subconscious. And as DAT Politics seeks mainly to electrify in a live setting, every track begins with bass and rhythms. Despite the atmospherically dense interplay between melancholy and joy, this approach is what makes No Void above all an album intent on rocking it in high style.
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LP
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STRIKE 154LP
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LP version. Includes download code. "We're big fans of French synthpop like Jacno, Deux, Ruth, and Serge Blenner. This kind of playful synthetic sound mixed with weird and sometimes depressing poetry had a big influence on us as kids and as musicians," reveal the French duo DAT Politics. Since 1999, Claude Pailliot and Gaetan Collet have been working on music shaped by those influences, without referring to them directly, on various albums and EPs for labels such as FatCat Records, A-Musik, Chicks on Speed Records, and Sub Rosa. Drone, noise, and musique concrète are other points of reference that clearly come through in their electronic songs, though they're also closely related to pop music. This time around, their songs once again took shape under such extra-musical influences as astronomy, philosophy, and programming language, as well as surrealism, fantasy films, and their own dreams. The nine tracks on No Void, which the duo describes as a "hallucinating ride in a space roller coaster: scary and funny!", were created in winter 2014 in a small cabin in northern France. The whimsical tour de force was recorded using computers, old beat-up synthesizers, worn-out keyboards, samplers, voice boxes, and children's toy instruments. Pailliot and Collet whisper into the microphone in French and English, their voices naked or distorted by a vocoder, at times using both languages in the same song, as the track "Reptiloid" demonstrates with poignant levity. The work occupies an eclectic territory that includes catchy melodies, versatile singing with pop appeal, and playfully rocking chiptune, synthwave, and electro. Pailliot and Collet's appreciation for Depeche Mode, Yazoo, OMD, Jean Michel Jarre, and Kraftwerk is as apparent as their love of Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze and the soundtrack worlds of Ennio Morricone, Giorgio Moroder, and John Carpenter. Yet rather than simply repackaging their personal preferences, the duo transforms art into something totally autonomous using a creative "cut-up" method as practiced by William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin. DAT Politics' songs are a combination of surreal stories, hidden meanings, and a search for clues within one's own subconscious. And as DAT Politics seeks mainly to electrify in a live setting, every track begins with bass and rhythms. Despite the atmospherically dense interplay between melancholy and joy, this approach is what makes No Void above all an album intent on rocking it in high style.
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2x12"
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STRIKE 153LP
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Berlin-based label Shitkatapult presents its 153rd release, following its October 2014 150th release, and continues to deliver the finest electronic music for and by people from another star (special music for special people) with an album that looks just as much back on tradition as it does toward the future. Lighthouse is Berlin-based Hamburg exile Lars Fenin's fifth album, a very sensual contemplation of the dancefloor as a stop along his journey through the wonderful depths of the dub world. After his previous releases, which lived somewhere between songs, dub, and electronica, he presents another true dub techno album. The "lighthouse" theme of the title and the amazing cover by Italian artist Petulia Mattioli shines a clear, simple light through bass waves and dub riffs. Lighthouse is available as a DJ-friendly double vinyl with a download code for the digital tracks.
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