deconstructed club / halfstep / bass / hyperglitch / postindustrial hybrids

Taken from SBKT040: Yen Tech - Assembler

Release date: 28th May 2021

With Assembler, his second full-length album, Yen Tech re emerges in ecstatic and primordial new form -- a multi-layered and interwoven work that blends futuristic production, meta-science fiction, and anthropic critique into a dizzying array of next scenarios -- a maze-like vision of our technological and exponentially oracular, full-stack future.

This imagined future becomes a construct or place in itself; one in which the record buzzes and swarms; a mechanosphere of towering melodic vocal samples and sound design - all narrated by Yen Tech's unnerving, diaristic vocals - as he channels the form of post-human techno cretin, whispering hyperbolic ASMR to no one in particular. We follow this character from one disorienting experience to the next as he recites a stream of indecipherable neologisms and hyper-descriptives, the existential residue seeping from every line. In the end though, a strange, uneasy beauty comes into focus; the metamorphic lyrics and musical euphorias revealing Assembler as a type of elegy: a wet glass reflection of the failures of what we are and were - and a jubilant celebration of what we may become.

"I imagined Assembler as a type of self imposed simulation, an invisible boundary that the narrator has to navigate out of to move forward. It was a way of looking at how we may carry the issues and failures of the past with us into the future. The psychological baggage of history, the guilt of geotrauma, the addictive melange of technology all become dealt with in this stage of acceptance and recovery. I wrote the album with this in mind, a process to find the slimy pearl of who we are" - Yen Tech

All music and lyrics written by Yen Tech
Produced and arranged by Yen Tech
Vocals by Yen Tech
Additional vocals by Katy Townsend
Mastered by Raphael Valensi
Artwork and vinyl design by Johannes Schnatmann

Assembler

Yen Tech - Leech

Taken from SBKT041: NET GALA - 신파 SHINPA
Release Date: 25th June 2021

Written, Produced by NET GALA
Mixed by Kim Kate
Mastered by Raphael Valensi
Cover by Kynan Puru-Watt
Photo by Bakya

A regular at Seoul’s ‘Cakeshop’ and member of LGBTQ collective Shade Seoul, NET GALA’s SVBKVLT debut is named after Shinpageuk (신파극), a form of theatre from 20th century Korea. In contemporary context, Shinpa is a synonym for ‘tears and overwhelming emotions,’ but when it was first introduced to Korea, Shinpa was used to express progressive political views, cover social issues, and later the melodramatic domestic tragedies. There is a vast gap between the past and current context of Shinpa, and as such there has been a lot of mistranslation or misconception between the two.

After their first EP [re:FLEX*ion] (NBDKNW – 2019) - , NET GALA spent time researching Shinpa, finding parallels between the work they were making and the traditional theater style. The emotional, dramatic nature of Shinpa echoed the exaggerated affection of ‘pop’ – in which NET GALA searches for the impact on one’s own narrative and emotion. The ‘mistranslation’ applied to the terms history is reflected in the changing course between the two EPs – how one can reinterpret or warp one ‘lost’ cultural concept into another.

From the stretched-out ‘The Ha Dance’ sample combined with traditional Korean percussion and 808s on ‘Shpiral’, to the sample of a Korean lesbian protester struggling to claim her existence through the blasting drums on Dodomzit, ‘신파 SHINPA’ is NET GALA’s interpretation of the Shinpageuk. The EP is packaged with remixes from Amazondotcom, ZULI and Menzi further reinterpreting the original work.

신파 SHINPA

NET GALA - Shpiral

Subreal is pleased to announce its sixth release, War Bride (SR006) from label co-founder Amazondotcom. 


Amazondotcom returns from a hiatus with a new 5-track EP, full of sonic and emotional dimensionality. In this work, she continues her ongoing investigations into twisting rhythms, deep sub-bass, heavy percussion, and the intertwining of organic and synthetic sound design. 


According to the producer, she worked with longer, but often simpler, loops to fill repetitive time with variation, which was reflective of her own personal time during production. She began these tracks with the “simple idea that small feelings and perceptions can scatter and morph across time, taking on their own narratives and life forces. This can happen melodically, rhythmically, in dance, and in personal and/or political experiences.” 


Amazondotcom is a music producer based in Los Angeles and one of the founders of electronic music label Subreal. Her first solo EP, Mirror River, was released in 2019.

Amazondotcom - LA Fiction

FREEZE (prod. Kai Whiston)

Taken from SBKT049: Osheyack - Intimate Publics
Release date: 8th June 2022

Intimate Publics, Osheyack’s second album, is an homage to Shanghai, the city he has called home since 2012. Over the past ten years the producer has evolved from an avid club-goer to a key member of the vital soundscape that emerged from ALL Club and its predecessor, the now defunct club The Shelter. As hinted by the title, which draws on American social theorist Michael Warner’s work on publics and counterpublics, the album expresses a commitment to mining the utopian potential of club music, forging new worlds and generating future social relations, just as the artist bids farewell to the city at a moment of uncertain transition. While tracks like 'Edging' and 'Thrall' continue to present his signature collage of harder club music, the rest of the record reveals a shift to synthetic approximations of acoustic instruments. 'Still', the central track of the album, is a piece composed almost entirely of samples found on Vocaloid (a vocal synthesizer developed by Yamaha, commonly used to give voice to Japanese virtual idols). While echoing themes explored in previous projects, like the nature of realism and authenticity in a techno-mediated landscape, Intimate Publics is charged with an unexpected emotional candor and vulnerability, unveiling a personal side Osheyack is only beginning to explore.

Words by Alvin Li
Artwork by Xiaofei Qiu
Design by Luke Griffiths
Mastered by Raphael Valensi

Intimate Publics

Osheyack - Being Online

@design-default - Quartz Silica EP
Format: Digital
Release: December 2nd, 2022
Artwork by Benfika

Marking the 100th record of the imprint’s prolific history, Infinite Machine are proud to present the release of Quartz Silica EP by new-comer Design Default. A self-described ‘tone scientist’, the Parisian delivers a 5-track of uniquely textural compositions which map out a sonic world influenced by dystopian anime titles like Trigun & Neon Genesis Evangelion. Like many on the IM discography, Quartz Silica acts almost like a simulation or audio-film representation of an abstract space you’re invited to traverse.

The EP opens with ‘Between Wasteland and Sky’; percussive assault on your senses which clearly exemplifies Design Default’s meticulous approach to sound design. Every detail, every sample and every automation is carefully considered to add to the heightened affective theatrics heard here.

‘A.S.K’ follows things up on this release, a highly inventive composition with a loose structure that evolves from phrase-to-phrase, refusing to sit still. Design Default’s interest in jazz and free-form arrangements is married up with an angular sonic palette of industrial groans and splutters; generating the impression of hearing a glitch (or hiccup, even) in the machine. There’s something refreshingly playful about the maximalistic breakdown of ‘A.S.K’ akin to the wry smile found in some of AYA and her YCO label’s output.

After two highly frenetic tracks, Design Default turns the tempo down slightly with the groove-laden ‘S.E.E.D.S’. Layers of rich, fuzzy synapses phase in and out of prominence over a bed of complex drum programming. The producer deploys negative space here to great effect, with the absence of a drum hit or sample where you might expect one adding to the hypnotic rhythmic swing of ‘S.E.E.D.S’.

Rounding out the originals of Quartz Silica EP, ‘SILEX’ is a club-ready construction with a paint-shaking bassline which seems to slip downwards in pitch as if it can’t get steady footing. Again, Design Default’s tone science/alchemy shines through clearly here, with stutters of melodies, bursts of white noise and stacked drum patterns managing to sit cohesively in this dynamic expanse.

Fellow Parisian De Grandi jumps on remix duties for ‘S.E.E.D.S’ to finish off the EP. The Paradoxe Club signee adds further syncopation and strips the original’s elements down to its fundamental core. The results are a spectral creeper of a tune - built almost intentionally with dark, low ceiling environments in mind.

Design Default - SILEX

Fragmento (Feat. Yvu )

The dynamic duo https://soundcloud.com/atricemiras?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing returns to their Swiss home label https://soundcloud.com/miras1000000?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing with a bold and experimental EP titled ‘Mutualism’. The duo presents the sentiment of playful dancefloor experiences as they expertly navigate through eight chapters of genre-defying soundscapes, ranging from ambient to deconstructed club and IDM.

Find the full read here: https://www.minimalcollective.digital/editorial/premiere-atrice-taxon

Mutualism will be out on January 23rd, 2023. Order a copy via https://miras1000000.bandcamp.com/album/mutualism.

Premiere: Atrice - Taxon [MIRAS002]

Taken from SBKT054: Gorgonn - Six Paths
Release date: 31st January

Artwork and layout by Akihide Monna
Mastered by Raphael Valensi

In Japanese Buddhism, it's believed that when someone dies they are ushered down one of six paths depending on the karma accumulated during their previous lives. A being might end up in the world of humans, animals, demigods, or celestials, but it's also possible to end up reborn as a pitiable hungry ghost, doomed to an existence of insatiable desire, or even worse - be sent to hell, or jigoku. Ruled over by the Japanese lord of death Emma-ō, this hell isn't quite like the Christian hell, it's closer to purgatory, and cleansing the karma can take hundreds of millions of years of excruciating torture in extreme cold or immense fire. Japanese bass alchemist Gorgonn takes these themes as the basis of his debut album "Six Paths", assembling a spiritually weighty set of futurist dubs that consider the possibility that our mortal domain might be closer to hell than we realize.

Gorgonn describes himself as a Japalien exile. He left the country of his birth almost two decades ago, and since then has been working tirelessly to formulate Jamaican dub, noise, techno, and no-wave into a sound he calls "sci-fi steppas". If you've not come across his name before, there's a good chance you've heard his reverberations. An established sound tech who's worked with The Bug, Hype Williams, Seefeel and others, he's part of G36 with Kevin Martin, Dokkebi Q with Kiki Hitomi, and a former member of Devilman with DJ Scotch Egg and Bo Ningen's Taigen Kawabe. Just last year he released the acclaimed "Disentegration Dubs" full-length alongside JK Flesh, the veteran producer who's best known for masterminding Godflesh. All this experience blesses Gorgonn's productions with remarkable sonic force, and "Six Paths" is his most crushing display yet, smelting cannonball bass and osmium beats into sharp-edged soundsystem weapons.

Look no further than opener 'Abyss' for evidence of this: psychedelic synths draw the mind away from the mortal realm, while tangled, distorted beats push us back down to earth, our faces crushed into the grit and gravel. Using tweaked sub bass and unsettling drones, Gorgonn lays out a cinematic backdrop for the album, drawing us into a world that's terrifying, viscous, and nauseatingly familiar. There's a militaristic roll to 'Without Beginning and End', a track that juxtaposes spacey halfstep thrusts with death metal distortion, footwork polyrhythms, and unearthly pads that addresses the crushing endlessness of jigoku. On 'Invisible' meanwhile, Gorgonn torches the skeletal remains of D&B, abstracting familiar rhythmic patterns into fuzzy, ritualistic cycles that sound both ancient and humming with prospective technology. But on the closing track 'Life as a Beast', it sounds as if Gorgonn has come to a conclusion, and in a flurry of acid squelches and doomy foghorn bass blasts, he seems to have accepted that being reincarnated as an animal might be the best anyone can hope for. Who knows, you might end up as a cat.

Six Paths

Gorgonn - Invisible

Tzusing - 绿帽 Green Hat
Label: PAN
Cat.No.: PAN 123
Release Date: 31 March 2023
Purchase: PAN.lnk.to/GreenHat

Mastered by Enyang Urbiks
Mixed by Jondu
Cover photography by Xiaopeng
Artwork by Virgile Flores

绿帽 Green Hat

Tzusing - Muscular Theology (PAN 123)

Ouça agora MUGANGA na sua plataforma de streaming favorita: https://encr.pw/eNdnV

Siga IDLIBRA nas redes sociais:

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FICHA TÉCNICA 

Direção Criativa: IDLIBRA
Direção de Fotografia, Montagem e Edição: JEAN
Figurino: Efraim Tavares 
Maquiagem e Unhas: Taya Limeira 
Cabelo: Thalinda 
Making Off: Matheus Lohan 
Produção de set: Sumaya Nascimento 
Identidade Visual: Gabriel Furmiga 
3D lettering: Guilherme de Lima

Produção Musical: IDLIBRA
Mixagem e Masterização: Entropia
Distribuição e Assessoria de Imprensa: Fábrica Music 

Bookings: dressasalibra@gmail.com

#IDLIBRA #Breganbass #visualizer

IDLIBRA - RAÇÃO

ASEIX

KENEKI

video by ECCO2K
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFrvTbPoY9A

SNIPESTREET EP 12" vinyl and digital formats out on Halcyon Veil
https://boomkat.com/products/snipestreet
https://bleep.com/release/64860-why-be-snipestreet
bit.ly/1OPJ8FM
http://classic.beatport.com/release/snipestreet/1636418
https://itunes.apple.com/album/snipestreet-ep/id1050817954?v0=9988&ign-mpt=uo%3D1

SNIPESTREET

01 HEROIN HAT
02 WHALIN (KYSELINA OST)
03 DEEQ
04 LATE (LASER HA)


Mastered by Matt Colton @ Alchemy

Released by:
Halcyon Veil

Whalin (Kyselina OST)

Taken from SBKT024: Mun Sing - Scissor

Mastered by Raphael Valensi
Release date: 14th December 2018

For the final release of 2018, SVBKVLT are excited to announce the new EP from Mun Sing, the juddering solo project of Giant Swan‘s Harry Wright. 3 original tracks + remixes from Flora Yin-Wong and Osheyack

Mun Sing’s uncompromising ingenuity of sonic weaponry explores bone rattling, fragmented cyber grime and radioactive trap templates. An attack of fluctuating polyrhythms that pan from left to right creating a delirious effect. Amplified dissonant noise. Syncopated and visceral neo-EBM drum patterns that disintegrate, dissolve and accelerate then starkly shrink with an adrenaline fuelled industrial intensity.

Mun Sing is Wright’s tool to challenge the conventions and aesthetics of modern day club culture. To experiment with ideas of inclusivity and positivity, influenced by mainstream pop music by injecting pop’s marketing methods into the more serious, austere club world. Dance routines, obnoxious visuals and brash costumes all feature in the live show, where Mun Sing uses these elements as a means to highlight inclusivity, movement and fun.

@munsing
@giantswan

Scissor

Mun Sing - Fantasy OD

Taken from SBKT026: Various Artists - Cache 01

Release date: April 26th 2019

Mastered by Raphael Valensi
Artwork by Kim Laughton

Cache 01

Mun Sing - A War in Heaven

Taken from SBKT030: Slikback & Hyph11E - Slip B

Artwork by Sam Rolfes
Mastered by Raphael Valensi

Release date: 6th September 2019

For the first output from an ongoing exchange between East Africa and East Asia, via collectives Nyege Nyege/Hakuna Kulala (Kampala - Uganda) and SVBKVLT (Shanghai – China), we are excited to present ‘Slip A’ and ‘Slip B’, two Eps made during Slikback’s China tour/residency in April 2019.

After making first contact online in late 2018 and subsequently meeting up at CTM festival, Berlin, in January 2019, Nyege Nyege and SVBKVLT founded the beginning of a long term project exploring collaborations between East-Africa and East-Asia based artists.

For the first stage of the project, SVBKVLT invited Kenyan producer Slikback to China for a 3-week tour and residency in April 2019. During these 3 weeks, Slikback performed in 5 cities (Shenzhen, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Nanjing and Beijing), spending time in the studio with artists throughout the tour. The results of these studio sessions are now being presented in the form of two Eps, to be released simultaneously across the two labels Hakuna Kulala and SVBKVLT on September 6th, coinciding with Nyege Nyege Festival 2019, Jinja – Uganda, at which Slikback and 2 of the collaborators, Hyph11E and 33EMYBW, will perform.

‘Slip B’

The second EP, entitled ‘Slip B’, is a 5 track EP from Slikback and Hyph11E, consisting of 3 collaborative tracks as well as a remix exchange of the artists' previously released works. During his China tour, Slikback spent the majority of the time in Shanghai, spending 3 intense days in the studio with Hyph11E. As well as presenting these works at Nyege Nyege 2019, Slikback and Hyph11E will play an exclusive b2b set at Unsound Krakow in October 2019. ‘Slip B’ will be released via SVBKVLT on September 6th 2019.

______________________________________________________________________

More info on 'Slip A' and the first track 'Zeno' by Slikback and 33EMYBW here:

Hakunakulala – Album-preview-slip-a-slikback-33emybw-zeno

Slip B

Slikback & Hyph11E - USINGIZI

Hyph11E - Black Pepper (Slikback Remix)

Taken from SBKT037: Hyph11E - Aperture
2 x LP / Digital - October 16th 2020

Artwork by Wang Newone
Mixed by Raphael Valensi
Mastered by Miles Whittaker
Text by megakira✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧

Aperture is the debut album from Hyph11E.

Holes are ontologically parasitic - they are always within something else and cannot exist in isolation. Holes accompany us throughout our lives, dilative and devoured, fillable but indispensable. On one hand, they are the driven force for evolution, on the other hand, holes are also the layer of scab that signals growth. Without tearing, cutting and gluing, we cannot create or eliminate a hole. Topologists use the number of holes to distinguish geometric objects. In the same method, in the closed circuit of Encrust and Erosion, we became idiographic individuals.

In her new album, Hyph11E guides the light to travel within and through the hole, and it becomes Aperture.

Aperture

Hyph11E - Doppelgänger

VTSS is teasing her upcoming 6-track EP with 'Goin Nuts' feat. LSDXOXO.
Available here: https://smarturl.it/VEYL022S
Veyl Bandcamp: https://veyl.bandcamp.com

https://www.instagram.com/vtss.pl
https://www.facebook.com/vtssvtssvtss
https://www.instagram.com/lsdxoxo
https://www.facebook.com/lsdxoxo
https://www.instagram.com/veylrecords
https://www.facebook.com/veylrecords

Goin Nuts

VTSS - Goin Nuts Feat. LSDXOXO

Music lover & collector. Art, technology, design and fashion fan, futurist.

deconstructed club / halfstep / bass / hyperglitch / postindustrial hybrids

Attis