Hailing from Tokyo, Prettybwoy stands as an emblematic figure within Japan’s burgeoning experimental bass music scene. Following the success of his 2021 album released on the esteemed Chinese label SVBKVLT, Prettybwoy makes a triumphant return to POLAAR with a fresh EP featuring two original tracks and a pair of electrifying remixes.

The EP commences with “Purify,” a track characterized by its striking contrasts. Seamlessly fusing raw, overdriven kicks and beat structures with delicate kalimbas, the piece is enveloped by an array of otherworldly robotic sounds and textures. As Nobuto, the artist behind Prettybwoy, explains, “I think that when we purify something, clean and dirt are melting in the same result.” The track skillfully builds tension, maintaining a radiant and luminous aura throughout.

Bandcamp

Purify

Our sixth VA compilation continues in the collective spirit at the heart of Pressure Dome; here taking its fullest form. The first of its kind in the label catalogue, ‘Two [Is Greater Than] One’ sees a selection of PD regulars and friends of the label put their heads together across eight atmospheric tracks, equally as suited to the club as to solo listening. 

Those who have followed the label for a while will be no stranger to the comp’s first collaborator. Human Resources teams up with London dub techno specialist, Keplrr, on ‘Spring’: a mood-led composition where the impact is contained in atmosphere. Fragmented drum breaks are engulfed by airy synth pads and punctuated by a dancehall-indebted rhythm that marches at 90BPM. ‘Yuppel’ welcomes Noods Radio mainstay Sid Quirk aka Keppel into the mix. He is joined by label boss, Yushh, on a ruminative percussive tool, guided by cavernous drums that fabricate a vivid, immersive environment. With the guidance of Brighton’s Caldera, the journey continues with Süss Choc. The reverb-laden synth plucks on ‘evoke water droplets, and hallucinatory details echo around them to create the illusion of being in a mountainous cove.

Delay Grounds – an audiophile in the truest sense of the word – is next to take the baton. Together, he and Yushh take it up a notch on ‘Telomere’ – a full-bodied club-ready track packed with glitchy chords and giddy drums. A gnarly, Pariah-esque breakdown segues into the track’s second wind where pitched-up vocal chops accelerate it to the compilation’s energetic climax. With the help of London drum specialist, Syz, ‘Fuzbidun’ keeps our feet firmly on the dancefloor. Breakbeats are chopped and rearranged, flitting between double and half time whilst a distorted mid-bass roughens things round the edges, prepping the ground for the compilation’s move to a more inorganic feel.

Bristol don, Forever, joins Yushh next on ‘Passing Notes’ – a groove-driven club track where skittish percussion ricochets from side to side, so palpable it tempts the touch. ‘Crash Bash Party At BUFOs’ is no different. The link-up between Delay Grounds and dance music’s stalwart of musique concrète, Wordcolour, is completely idiosyncratic to both artists: the perfect combination of found-sound percussion and skillfully rehashed vocal samples. It’s up to two PD mainstays – Roy Mills and Human Resources – to close proceedings. A chugging rhythm bubbles under the surface of ‘Sycophantasy’, sending us on a dubbed-out trip before picking the pace back up again.

Copy – Annie Parker
Artwork – Jesse Webb
Mastering – Matthew Bentley

Passing Notes

Forever X Yushh - Passing Notes (PDCOLLAB001)

Turbulance  EP

Turbulance

Too Get

Vief’s next fundraiser compilation, as voted for by the 14 contributors to the release, is raising money for Palestine Solidarity Campaign to aid their work in building public support for an end to atrocities currently taking place in Gaza.

Following the Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7th October 2023, the disproportionate response by the Israeli armed forces and government has led to (at the time of writing):

• At least 31,923 people killed, of which more than 13,000 are children (Al Jazeera)
• The destruction or damage of more than half of Gaza’s homes (360,000 residential units) (Al Jazeera).
• ‘Catastrophic’ levels of hunger for more than 1 million people and an ‘imminent’ famine in northern Gaza (the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification).

On 26th January 2024, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take “immediate and effective measures” to protect Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip from the risk of genocide by ensuring sufficient humanitarian assistance and enabling basic services. Amnesty International and Oxfam have accused Israel of defying this ruling.

“Israeli authorities are not only failing to facilitate the international aid effort but are actively hindering it. We believe that Israel is failing to take all measures within its power to prevent genocide.”

Sally Abi Khalil, Oxfam Middle East and North Africa Director. Oxfam.

It has been heartening to see the volume of fundraisers in the dance music world for this cause, and we all really hope you like the tracks in this release. Any support will be very much appreciated! 

@crouds
@viefrecords

Buy:
https://viefrecords.bandcamp.com/album/palestine-fundraiser

vief Palestine Fundraiser

PREMIERE: crouds - Welcome [Vief Records]

Physical copies are available here: boomkat.com/labels/berceuse-heroique
Digital is available here: https://berceuseheroique.bandcamp.com/album/bht-022-roma-vjazemski-handlebar

"Estonian oddball Roma Vjazemski eases Berceuse Heroique back into the original production saddle with a killer suite of wheezing folk-dub synth sketches landing somewhere between Wah Wah Wino, Pretty Sneaky, Aeson Zervas and Civilistjävel!, doing their thing around a Baltic campfire.

The eight part session is the label's first tape of original works since turns by Al Wootton and Tradecraft aka Carrier last year, quietly regaling a slow burning instrumental yarn with lyrically poetic fingers on the keys and in its flickering downbeats. It’s the sort of music that feels to exist in its own dreamy time and space; unfussed or hurried by trend or commercial urgency, happy to glaze over the 3rd eye and unravel to its own atmospheric physics and pace.

With ambidextrous mutability, Vjazemski loosely limns the vibe via lines of rippling rhythmelodic thought on a trip from deliquescent dub minimalism in ‘Wired’, to the alien digi-dub of ‘Cryto’. He variously invokes mountain folk synth spectres in the very Wah Wah Wino-esque lope of ’Nhava’, thru curdled industrial curios on ‘Royal Brown’, and near passing out in a Estonian sweatbox with the wrung-out blips of ‘Sauna Belt’ - reminding us of Bergheim 34’s supremely sick, inexplicably forgotten 1999 bullet ‘Sechstrack’ for Klang Elektronik.

That fine seam of late night suss really comes out best in the glowing tone of ‘5am’ and likewise the smouldering embers of psych-folk dirge in the keening drones and crackle of ’Still Old’ and its ‘Ode to Outro’ like some lovesick mellotron"

Boomkat 


Edition of 100 copies. Mastered by Larry "Bruce" McCarthy at Edgar Studios

02 Nhava

[ Burning Planete ] DYB

Hold On

Heisenpatch

The stems of these tracks were made available by Tzusing. This is my spin on it :)Let me know what you think!

Tzusing - O.D.D. (Alberta Balsam Remix)

1015.3

info@albertabalsam.com


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anke@phuturewest.com