Modular synthesis

Falling Into the Light

The Blue Hour

Blue 03

Enin

ARS MECHANICA 001 ANTIGONE FORBIDDEN GALAXY

ARSM001-A2-ANTIGONE-CIRCUMPOLAR

Monad XVI

Kneeling (Original Mix)

Tulip Space

In Place of Matter

Please Touch

Spore

Buy/stream: https://kompakt.fm/releases/agartha_lp_dl

‘Where is Agartha? What is the specific region in which it lies? Along what road, through what civilizations, must one walk in order to reach it?.’ Saint-Yves d’Alveydre in 1886

Agartha, the debut full-length album by Japanese producer Wata Igarashi, is a mysterious, divine thing. Named for the mythical secret kingdom, understood as a complex maze of underground tunnels, perhaps designed by Martians who colonised the Earth tens of thousands of years ago, it’s a similarly mystical, perhaps even cosmic trip – but this time, exploring an inner, deeply personal cosmos. Beautifully detailed and bustling with rich incident, it takes Igarashi’s music to new places, which still retaining his unique sonic imprimatur; in this respect, it’s perfectly at home with Kompakt, a label that’s always encouraged artists to make the visionary music they need to create, to take risks and make sideways steps into uncharted territory.

An eloquent producer and DJ, Igarashi has been releasing techno for eleven years now, appearing on such imprints as The Bunker NY, Delsin, Midgar, and Time To Express; he has also self-released his productions via his WIP net label. Throughout, Igarashi has consistently explored his unique approach to techno and electronic music, one that’s eloquent and poised, even when it shifts into more psychedelic terrain; he’s a master at balancing the sensual and the functional, and he has an unerring ear for the right texture, the right tone, at the right time. He brings all of this into Agartha, his most thorough-going expression of self to date.

For Agartha, Igarashi had a strong concept he wanted to explore. Visualising specific scenes from an imaginary film based on the titular secret kingdom, he created soundtracks for those scenes, spending time during the pandemic in his studio, working away carefully at the ten tracks here. Given his background in creating music for television and advertisements, Igarashi is well-placed to explore the marriage of the sonic and the visual in such intimate ways, but freed from commercial concerns, he let his imagination run riot. He also drew on a rich palette of musical influences – techno is in there, of course, but you can also hear the smoky, improvised jazz of the likes of Miles Davis (to whom the album’s title is an indirect nod), and the minimalism and systems music of Steve Reich.

The latter is particularly pronounced on the gorgeous, beatless drift of “Floating Against Time”, where an arpeggiated sequence lingers, lovingly, around your ears for nine blissful minutes, coasting across swooning drones and waves of ambient noise. “Ceremony Of The Dead”, originally composed as part of a Sony 360 Reality Audio spatial sound concert, is a deep pass into systems composition, with various patterns overlaid and interlocking, before a wordless vocal rises from the depths, a gorgeous counterpoint to the swarming textures that gather across the track. On the other hand, tracks like “Burning” and “Subterranean Life” nudge toward Fourth World territory, painting deluxe dreamscapes of uncertain provenance; the title cut is an abstract drift-world, Igarashi painting an alien tableau dotted by shape-shifting creatures.

Agartha’s conceptual framework means that everything on the album sits perfectly together; listening to it in one sitting is a dizzying, lush experience. Its imaginings of inner landscapes recall, in some respects, the nautical, aqueous mythologies of the Drexciyan universe, though from different perspectives. But the result is Igarashi’s own creation, a deluxe, enchanting trip through the visionary Agartha of this unique producer’s cinematic mind’s-eye.

Agartha

Wata Igarashi - Floating Against Time

Released.

http://www.beatport.com/release/laboratory/1016493

An Inspiration (Original Mix)

Cascade

Tun Tun

1 I240 (Intro)

buy
https://deathinvegas.bandcamp.com/album/honey

Witchdance Dub ( Richard Fearless Dub ) 

Death in Vegas 'Witchdance Dub'

Sombra, the Lisbon label founded by Shcuro and Peterr, is back with a fourth release to celebrate their fourth anniversary. This time, their sombre and atmospheric vision of techno finds expression through the work of 12 artists, from promising newcomers to established heroes, in a compilation called "4 ANOS", available in tape and digital formats.

Side A opens with label co-founder Peterr on a sparse, sonic slow techno work-out, followed by a breakbeat-tinged atmospheric cut by british talent Positive Centre and a detailed, deconstructed dancefloor-ready piece by Chimess. Young Lisbon producer Prec steps in with a tense, kick-furious roller while another local beatsmith, VIL, delivers an aqueous, percussive stunner and label regular Larix comes up with an ever-evolving broken techno riddim.

Lisbon's Enkö inaugurates side B by raising the intensity bar with a percussion-heavy hypnotic flex, followed by UK legend Paul Mac who hands in an insanely imaginative acid cut punctuated with a dense drone and cutting-edge drum patterns. Label repetent Damaskin is up next with a industrial-noise arpeggiated exercise that manages to take tension levels to extreme heights right before label co-founder Shcuro's peak-time dub-soaked techno seems to create a moment of euphoric dissociation. Buttons' resident Madalba brings all her Berlin knowledge to the table fusing rave intuition with drum innovation and blissful textures, with Cindy bringing a industrial and EBM inspired cut that taps into the soft spot between trippy and energetic to close this oneiric, techno-utopia of a compilation.

A6 - Larix - Moro

On the eight release of 898 Records we welcome portuguese artist Tryangle which makes his debut on 898 Records with two experimental techno tracks showing off some heavy basslines and immersive grooves.

Out May 4th

SSN-571 (DJ Pitts Slave To The Rhythm Remix)

Tryangle - SSN - 571 (DJ Pitts Slave To The Rhythm Remix)

Release Date - 21 December 2018
Format -	Digital
Support & Buy - http://bit.ly/2A8qQPm
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Label on Facebook :	https://www.facebook.com/blackchrysalisarchives/
Label on Soundcloud :	@blackchrysalisarchives
	
Artist on Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/WTTMpage/
Artist on Soundcloud : @matteo-frau
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Track extracted from Selected Deep Archives - Various Artists, the first Various Artists from Black Chrysalis Archives.

Red Uprise

Abdulla Rashim

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