On June 27, 2025, a long-dormant signal reactivates from Hamburg's hidden places: Helena Hauff and F#X return as Black Sites with R4 on Tresor Records—their first full-length album and the first release under the moniker since 2014. Like a hieroglyphic recently discovered and translated, R4 feels more like a long-awaited resumption than a comeback.

Recorded to tape with minimal editing or post-production the record is a classic example of the symbiotic relationship that can come from the interaction of human and machine. This punk ethos isn't invoked through distortion alone, but through method; in the album's breaking from the received wisdom of hardness tethered to speed as most of the tougher pieces are lower BPM and vice versa (with one notable exception in the mind-melting stomp of BLOKK).

Across ten tracks, Black Sites traverse a landscape where genre dissolves into intention. It migrates through electro's danceability, acid house's corrosion, and into the liminal realm of machine funk—a genre coined by Andrew Weatherall, which sounds like the results of technology dreaming of soul where the emphasis is on live execution, on immediacy over perfection—a sound forged in the act of creating, not polishing.

In a 2013 interview, around the time of the first Black Sites EP, Hauff was quoted as saying that she wants "things to fit together properly, but on another level, I really want them to make sense together." That principle animates R4: The album's form reveals itself in time, with each movement echoing and amplifying the others to create a synergistic whole.

From the opening crawl of C4 (a name that like the music foreshadows the explosions to come) to the end-of-the-night bliss of MOTHERJAM via the intense peaks of BLOKK, 707, and classic acid track 3D it's clear that R4 is a work made with serious intent; a refutation of a world where streaming has made the two-minute single the dominant musical form again. R4 demands immersion, not just attention. It is not a collection of tracks, but a singular, recursive experience: a mirror in which sound and listener repeatedly rediscover one another.

BANDCAMP

Black Sites - SKKETCH

Black Sites - MOTHERJAM

𝑷𝒓𝒆𝒎𝒊𝒆𝒓𝒆: Anybody Anytime - KI2t [SC10Y]

It all began with “Have Sword, Will Travel“, an EP that started the „armed“ journey with its many different ups and downs. But the label is still here and celebrates its 10th anniversary today. Besides being pretty emotional about the fact that this journey is still continuing after so many years, I’m also looking back at an intense period of time full of doubts, disappointments and mistakes. Especially social media leads us to believe that every life is so exciting, spectacular and unique and that you are doing something wrong compared to all of this glamorous self-promotion. If you really start comparing to these blissful images, things feel miserable very fast. But instead, the healthiest things are to just be yourself, to follow your vision no matter how slow and complicated things evolve and to avoid doing things that feel wrong and factitious. And because of that, everything is right where it should be for Shaw Cuts and it’s still so much fun and exciting to run this project. I’m trying my best to keep things going and to keep things fresh & exciting - hopefully for another decade.
Thank you all for the genuine appreciation and support of all the music that got released over the past 10 years, for having an open mind for all the different projects and for helping the label to grow and develop a certain brand recognition and identity. Without you none of that would have been possible. Have Sword, Will Travel.

Written and produced by Anybody Anytime
Mastered by Farron
Artwork by Farron

𝑨𝒏𝒚𝒃𝒐𝒅𝒚 𝑨𝒏𝒚𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒆
Soundcloud : https://soundcloud.com/anybody-anytime
Bandcamp : https://anybodyanytime.bandcamp.com/album/hologram
Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/anybodyanyitime/

𝑺𝒉𝒂𝒘 𝑪𝒖𝒕𝒔
Soundcloud : https://soundcloud.com/shaw-cuts
Bandcamp : https://shawcuts.bandcamp.com/
Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/shaw_cuts/

10 Years Of Shaw Cuts [SC10Y]

KI2t

Support & Buy

𝑷𝒓𝒆𝒎𝒊𝒆𝒓𝒆: Anybody Anytime - KI2t [SC10Y]

Lithuanian DJ and curator Aleksandr L — founder of Electric Shapes and host on Radio Vilnius — crafts a mix that drifts through vaporous layers and blurred contours. Glowing textures dissolve into silence, loops echo like fading memories, and tones linger at the threshold of presence. A suspended flow shaped by contrast and nuance — where the stillness speaks, and each fragment carries the weight of what's just beyond reach.

Amulet of Tears 060: Aleksandr L

Music: @aleksandrl

Artwork: @anasisana

Amulet 060: Aleksandr L

Follow @keinblume on SoundCloud.

For this next entry in the Embodiment series, we’re proud to share a deeply atmospheric and intuitively woven mix by BLUME.

"Lately I’ve been dwelling in a strange in-between," BLUME shares, "and this mix lives there too. No bpm to hold onto, no genre to fall into. Ghosted rhythms, soft dissonance, moments of friction, and traces of fourth world brass dissolving into smoke. Not meant to resolve, just to linger."

One thing we resonate with deeply is how BLUME moves fluidly across genre boundaries not as a showcase, but as a way of creating dynamics and narrative. The tracks don’t just follow one another, they speak, echo, and unfold together like fragments of a larger story.

No need to overthink it just press play and see where it takes you.

Follow BLUME |
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/keinblume
SoundCloud: @keinblume

Artwork by Severja |
Instagram: www.instagram.com/sever.ja/

Follow Embodiment |
Instagram: instagram.com/embdmnt.rt

Embodiment 071 - BLUME

A life without dreams is as dry as a life without tears...

5 years of Amulet of Tears

TEARS025

Jonas Raudonius - Shelter

Amulet of Tears

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