Kostas Soublis’ productions under the Fluxion moniker helped define legendary Berlin imprint Chain Reaction, and with 1999’s Vibrant Forms, the Greek producer released a milestone in the dub techno genre. Hazy and distant, there was still more than enough dancefloor push to propel Soublis into the (very short) list of genre legends, and make Vibrant Forms one of the very rare techno albums that works from beginning to end.

Out of press for far too long, this new edition of Vibrant Forms has been remastered and will finally see the entire album released on vinyl for the first time. The most shocking thing hearing it almost fifteen years after its original release however is how little it has dated. Soublis wisely avoided any cultural tropes, and the productions still sound fresh and deceptively alien. Through washes and waves of reverb and the faint thud of a kick drum the all-analogue productions contain a raw quality that is all too rare these days.

Just head to the album’s elegiac closing number ‘Opaque’. Upbeat and propulsive the track still maintains a deceptive calm, buoyed by swirling synthesizer washes and sizzling, tape saturate percussion. This is the way dub techno should sound – don’t accept any imitations, Vibrant Forms is the real thing.

Cyclops Machine

Italian artist Andrea Taeggi’s latest full-length is a rich exploration of tense, rhythmic minimalism. Unlike his work with Koenraad Ecker as Lumisokea and his material under the Gondwana moniker, Mama Matrix Most Mysterious showcases Taeggi’s interest in finding strength in simplicity. Taeggi was able to limit himself by working on old modular synthesizer systems - the Buchla and the Serge to be exact. “I needed to adapt to them,” he admits. “I  don’t actually master them, which isn't necessarily a disadvantage.” 

This playfulness buoys Mama Matrix Most Mysterious throughout, distancing it from the litany of self-involved modular synth LPs filling the shelves right now. Rather, the Serge and Buchla systems allowed the Italian producer to realize his rhythmic and timbric visions. Taeggi filters decades of beat-driven electronic music through these machines to come up with a record of chattering bass-heavy experiments that sound like little else. You’d struggle to dance to it, but Taeggi’s sound is so physical that you can almost feel the electricity running through the circuits. And isn’t that exactly what electronic music should be about?

Adumbration

Hiraeth

Merry Go Raum

I’m going to do something I never do - I’m going to write this press release in the first person.

This is a very special release and it’s been a long time coming. I met Arash Moori when we both attended the same Art School in Birmingham in 2000. We quickly realized that we both liked music - I think it was a shared love of To Rococo Rot or Metamatics that sparked the first conversation - and within weeks of meeting each other we were DJing fairly regularly. We kicked off a number of nights in the city, some successful (Default, which birthed the Type label), some not (Left Handers Disco, which confounded punters who didn’t understand how well Kelis mixed with SND). Arash was also kind enough to teach me some production tricks as I was putting together my first album.

In 2002, Arash headed to Finland to continue his art studies, and began to experiment with electricity and light. These experiments informed the direction of Heterodyne - I’ve been waiting 13 years for this record. It’s the experimental Chinese Democracy, except worth the wait.

Over the years, Arash pieced together a deeply personal palette of electrical sounds from strobe lights, fluorescent lights, radios, plasma balls and electronic devices. He exploited the peculiarities of these devices to create harsher and more aggressive sounds. This gave way to a series of live performances using minimal hardware and self built devices to structure, shape and trigger sounds rather than resorting to samples. The computer was an editing device, not a compositional one.

Heterodyne is the culmination of these experiments. The resulting tracks are far more than academic exercises: Arash has taken years of theory and woven together a spiky collection of coarse techno and disorienting drone. The raw electrical textures and rhythms he spent years collecting are framed by analogue synth pads and oscillators which add contrast and levity. It’s a demanding listen, certainly, but a rewarding one.

This is an album I’ve seen develop for longer than any other and it’s a pleasure to unleash it on the world. Our own collaboration LP (touted for release on City Centre Offices in the early 00s) will never see the light of day, but Heterodyne may be one of the most personal records I’ve released on Type to date. Enjoy.

-John Twells, October 2015.

Tantalum March

Doppelganger

Possession

Vomitorium

Ruins

Illusory Systems Of Broadcast

Nerves & Wires

Parasitic Noise

Flowers Of Evil

Heterodyne

Shapednoise is Italian producer Nino Pedone, and over the last few years he’s built a name for himself issuing music that bridges the gap between the basement and the club. Noise and techno are proven bedfellows at this point (for better or for worse), but Pedone pushes harder and further, and ‘Different Selves’, as the title suggests, is his most diverse and challenging work to date.
Fusing the industrial grind of early Godflesh (Justin K. Broadrick even makes an appearance on opening track ‘Enlightenment’) with the raw power of mid 90s D&B, the visceral pleasure of early grime and the ominous scrape of dark ambient, Shapednoise navigates unfamiliar territory expertly.

Whether traversing beatless outworld landscapes with ’Travels in the Universe of the Soul’ or assaulting the senses with the acidic, rhythmic blast of ‘Heart Energy Shape’ there’s a sense that Shapednoise is exploring his own boundaries.

‘Different Selves’ is a challenging, unruly selection of tracks; not a deconstruction of club music, but an amplification, blowing every sound out to near cacophony. the result is truly explosive.

Escalation

The Man From Another Place

Heart-Energy-Shape

What Is It Like

Travels In The Universe Of The Soul

Well-Being

Dream Within A Dream

Intruder

Enlightenment (feat. Justin K Broadrick)

Anthoney Hart is hardly a newcomer. Cutting his teeth spinning hardcore, jungle and D&B at legendary pirate radio station Rude FM, Hart eventually began producing under the Imaginary Forces moniker, channeling his early influences into noisier, more abstract territory. As Imaginary Forces plumbed the depths of abstraction, Hart was keen to find an outlet for dancefloor material, and that’s where Basic Rhythm comes in.

Hart wanted to reference the hardcore and jungle he grew up obsessing over, but not simply as an exercise in nostalgia. Avoiding breaks altogether, he went back to the samples that littered the genre, reframing them with contemporary rhythms. Raw Trax is not an attempt to recapture the sound of jungle or hardcore, but a new twist on a familiar setting.

This isn’t a dull academic experiment: Basic Rhythm was always intended to be fun to listen to, fun to dance to and fun to mix. Raw Trax delivers in spades.

Break It Down (4 Da Kru)

Feel Me

Get Dark

Your Love

Maintain

Taken from the forthcoming album Modern Pressure by Australian producer Kane Ikin.

Out soon on Type Recordings LLC.

http://www.typerecords.com

Kane Ikin - Crosstalk

From Moments In Shapeshifting, out soon on Type Recordings.

Belarisk - The Hand That Bit Itself {Geist}

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