Four Tet

Biokinetics

Nautical Dub

Byetone - Opal

Martyn + Four Tet - Glassbeadgames (8 Hours at Fabric Dub)

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 - Searching

LIES-049
Voiski-Wax Fashion
from the upcoming "Culture to Trash" ep
to be released June 15th 2014

Voiski-Wax Fashion (LIES-049)

Double Dutch

Grab it now from -
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https://hardwax.com/71643/vc-118a/vlucht-naar-nachtschade/
http://lunardiskorecords.bandcamp.com/album/vc-118a-vlucht-naar-nachtschade

VC-118A - Vlucht Naar Nachtschade (Delta Funktionen Remix)

pot roast and gravy

Ostati

Sallow Myth

Sacred Trickster

Tresor Records are pleased to present S_W_Z_K, the new project from David Brown aka Swayzak. Whilst the name remains identifiable, S_W_Z_K presents a clear departure from his work with James Taylor who recently left the legendary production duo. Taking cues from the outfit’s heavier live material, Brown — with the sporadic help of long time collaborator and friend Richard Davis — steers S_W_Z_K into deep and spacious techno on this eponymous debut album.

	Before taking different paths in July last year, Taylor and Brown had been producing together since 1997. A union that spawned five studio albums, two high profile DJ comps and stack of genre-spanning EPs, Swayzak became one of the leading figures of !K7 Records, as well as appearing on labels like Force Tracks, M_nus and of course, their own Swayzak Recordings and 240 Volts. But it’s their legacy as a formidable live act that lays the groundwork for Brown’s new direction as S_W_Z_K, turning the pair's chaotic, experimental and textural live aesthetic into a recorded signature that’s energetic, raw and unrestrained.

“The project was to make sonically powerful music that would work in clubs without necessarily making "club music". The tracks are very minimal in the sense that no more than ten sounds were used, giving each track space to breathe.” comments Brown.

	S_W_Z_K is an Intelligent Dance album with Berlin sensibilities. It balances the more pensive, introverted Warp moments like “Elsenstr. 171” and progressive closer “End of the Line Old Boy” with plenty of floor friendly cuts. From the shimmering Basic Channel-hailing opener “31 Techniques” the album plunges into steelier, hydraulic recesses with “Dimanche Noir” before Artificial Intelligence and the Tresor basement collide in “Neukölln Mon Amour”. The remainder of the album continues to reinvent itself, working over a restricted sound pallet and yet culminating in a diverse, rich and intriguing long player. 

S_W_Z_K deftly showcases Brown’s 20 years of electronic craftsmanship, with tracks like the morphing “Marianne F” and multi-tiered “The Last Drop” flaunting a particularly inventive approach to sound design. It’s a stunning juncture in an already prolific and venerable career, and one Tresor Records look forward to fostering in the future.

01. S_W_Z_K - 31 Techniques

Out now: “New Atlantis”, the epic, psychedelic title track off of @Efdemin’s upcoming album out February 15, 2019 via Ostgut Ton.

Across 15 minutes, Efdemin’s experimental spirit is in full swing, with morphing drones/chords generated by a mix of Efdemin’s hurdy-gurdy and drum machines, Konrad Sprenger’s MIDI-controlled Stratocaster, Joachim Schütz’s electric guitar and Nika Son’s synthesizer – recorded live during the quartet’s Tony Conrad tribute concert in Hamburg. 

Album-wise, ‘New Atlantis’ oscillates between fast, kaleidoscopic techno, multilayered drones and acoustic instrumentation, fusing for the first time Sollmann’s deep dancefloor productions as Efdemin with his sound art and avant-garde music projects. The latter include 2017’s Harry Partch-inspired ‘Monophonie’ performance and 2018’s ‘Panama / Suez’ EP with Oren Ambarchi and Konrad Sprenger.

Sollmann took inspiration for ‘New Atlantis’ from Francis Bacon’s unfinished 17th century novel of the same name, which describes a fictional island devoted to social progress through the synthesis of art, science, technology and fashion. 

Listen at
Apple Music: https://itunes.apple.com/album/new-atlantis/1446617084
Bandcamp: https://ostgut.bandcamp.com/album/new-atlantis
Deezer: https://www.deezer.com/album/84349402
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/0DvULRThTYtegc9nMTxkTx?si=tmOYwipxTt-Coq7XJGyc5A
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIBQEH6TH1Y

Taken from the Album: Efdemin | New Atlantis [OSTGUTCD45/LP31], out February 15, 2019.
Buy ‘New Atlantis’ as 2xLP, digipak CD or in digital formats: http://ostgut.de/shop/music/efdemin-new-atlantis-ostgutlp31.html / http://ostgut.de/shop/music/efdemin-new-atlantis-ostgutcd45.html / https://ostgut.bandcamp.com/album/new-atlantis

All info: http://ostgut.de/ton/record/234
Layout: Yusuf Etiman

New Atlantis

Buy Album

Efdemin | New Atlantis

Produced by Kieran Hebden between 1997 and 2001
Compiled 2012
TEXT021

Also available on vinyl LP soon.

0181

From the Think and Change comp out now on Nonplus+

http://boomkat.com/downloads/665757-various-nonplus-think-and-change
https://bleep.com/release/42160-various-artists-think-and-change

Byetone - Opal

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