Hidden Fees is Ivan Berko and Thomas Gluibizzi, lifelong friends and conductors on New York City’s underground dance music railroad. Travelers in multiple decades of the City’s ever-evolving time and space, the duo curate a perfect combination of grit and groove from each corner of the five boroughs and filter through the funky, spunky So What EP for Beats In Space Records.

Stricken of samples, loops and other tools typified in present day dance track crafting and screen mapping, “So What” is “organic music for the modern dance floor.” Berko and Gluibizzi depend on real humans – friends and fellow musicians – to originate proper live studio room works / workouts that breathe, smoke, snort and contort to the body clock’s unpredictable rhythm.

“So What” revels in this communal groove. The minor chord shuffle and percussion pump along rough n’ ready riffs rocketing from saxophone and guitars alike, each element stuffed in-the-pocket by a disco-indebted bassline. The spit-soaked vocals of Christopher Exits strut “So What” from the sweaty depths of a Brooklyn studio and onto the laser lit floor of a legendary night club in NYC’s disco party pioneers’ collective memory (or to the b-side of a Some Girls-era Stones single). Exits’ lyrics examine a narcotic urban codependence from the advantage of a man lost in his own sort of space, an experience we can all identify with or at least dream to believe still happens as cities sterilize.

On the flipside, Tiago touches “So What’s” humanity with acid reflex and a heavy-hitting kick over two strobe-ready remixes. “So What (Tiago’s One Good Mistress Deserves Another Mix)” dune buggies the original’s riffs into sparse terrains before introducing a rich, reverbed Rhodes melody to bring us back home. “So What (Tiago’s One Good… Dub)” embraces the house tendencies of Tiago with a little more pep in its step. The icey colorations of the original track form a slippery but solid glacial floor, while the hand-held rhythms mutate between alien and human pulses.

Each 12″ from Beats in Space Records features original artwork in considerate and serial form. Brian DeGraw of Gang Gang Dance contributes the glass-eyed tropicalia cover art for So What. The 12″ packaging constructed by Will Work For Good features a removable vinyl BIS logo cling.

Hidden Fees’ So What EP will be released on February 11, 2014 on Beats In Space as a limited edition 12” EP and digitally.

Buy the 12" or Digital

Hidden Fees "So What" BIS012

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Brett - Golden (Mark E Remix)

Geri Baird - Backside Of The Desert

Suzanne Kraft - Crest

Odyssey - Who

Charlotte Adigéry - 1,618

Rhythm Section INTL's latest release comes from Australian band Retiree with their new single ‘Pumice Stone’. 

Buy/Stream: rhythmsection.lnk.to/PumiceStone 

This first track from their upcoming album recounts a day when Tori was walking along the beach and dozens of dead birds had washed up on the sand. “Apparently this was the time when Mutton Birds pass Sydney on their annual 10,000km migration. They’re increasingly dying at sea and washing up on the beach because of overfishing, marine pollution and changing weather conditions. This song is a reflection on how that made me feel, on my lifestyle and human impact on the environment.”

Buy/Stream

Retiree - Pumice Stone

Early in 2018, the world was introduced to Mildlife through their debut album Phase. Few first releases amass praise from Mojo, The Guardian, BBC 6 Music, The Express, and Shindig, then go on to be celebrated by DJ Mag, Resident Advisor, Worldwide FM, Dummy and Indie Shuffle. But it’s precisely this eclectic mix of genres, tastes, and influences that brought Mildlife together, and what they committed to reflecting in their sound. After a surreal start to 2018, the four-piece completed a sold-out national tour of Australia, and recently announced plans to cross the oceans for their debut Europe and UK tours.

With the release of their debut imminent, Mildlife took retreat at Research Records HQ in Melbourne, staying overnight after recording each morning and afternoon. It resulted in the evolution of the title track, newly imagined and re-contextualised at increased tempo with swathes of improvisation throughout. The studio recording was the culmination of the song’s growth in a live setting, evolving on club stages and at festivals throughout 2017.

Mildlife’s knack for locked-in grooves and celestial tones features heavily across ‘Phase II’, a more than 11-minute sonic journey. Kevin McDowell's synth soars while Adam Halliwell’s growing prowess as a flautist is peppered over James Donald’s shimmering percussion. Shortly after, Tom Shanahan's phased bass appears, and the four lock into a groove that gives a subtle nod to 1960s Krautrock band, Can. It’s not long before ‘Phase II’ erupts into a cosmic jazz-funk that urges you to move. It sucks you in, free of worry and consequence; utterly otherworldly. It’s no surprise that the band has been described as “kaleidoscopic”, “irresistible” and “enchanting”. With Mildlife, you’ll always leave wanting more.

Phase II

Mildlife - Phase II (RREP02)

Order Vinyl & Digital:
https://antinoterecordings.bandcamp.com/album/miniatures-de-auto-rhythm

August 2018: It’s already been three years since Domenique Dumont made its entrance in the music world with a debut EP named Comme Ca. Despite a seemingly very quiet musical activity (the opening song to Antinote’s compilation Five Years Of Loving Notes was the only song released by the band in 3 years) a few things have changed in-between these two summers: Domenique Dumont is no more the mysterious lone French producer we introduced last time but a Latvian duo, Arturs Liepins and Anete Stuce, which has been collaborating with “an enigmatic French artist whose existence cannot be confirmed nor denied” (sorry, but it sounds like there’s still some mystery in the air, and, again, we’re just as clueless as you might be), the duo have been touring live and, most importantly, they kept on broadening their musical palette experimenting in a definitely pop field. Eight of these experiments are now tied together in Miniatures de Auto Rhythm.

The record probably begins where Comme Ca ended: frantic but light drum programing backbones a solar and slightly melancholic melody on Le Début De La Fin (“the beginning of the end”). However, the scope gets enlarged as soon as one reaches the second tune, Quasi Quasi, or Quand, on the flip side, perhaps the most overtly pop-rock oriented song on the record with its Mediterranean guitar and emotional bridge.

The road towards the apex of the record, Le Soleil Dans Le Monde, is a narrow and windy one, punctuated by toy instrumentals like Ono Mambo Haiku or the Donkey Kong Country-friendly Message Of The Diving Bird; however it never departs from its original tongue-in-cheek attitude. It’s quite pleasant to imagine these eight “miniatures” as field recordings from an enchanted world of pop music designed by some Pierre & Gilles’ disciples – or are there
musical interpretations of half-mechanical, half-organic creations from a certain Otto Rhiesem (who might have inhabited the Locus Solus villa)? There might be no definitive answers to this second set of riddles by Domenique Dumont.

Bandcamp

DOMENIQUE DUMONT - LE SOLEIL DANS LE MONDE

Sillyboy’s Ghost Relatives can proudly claim to be “Greek radio’s favourite soft rock band”. The Athens-based quartet – fronted by bass-wielding former TV commercial composer turned Balearic popster Charalambos Kourtaras – are rising stars in their home country, with listeners warming to their distinctive blend of atmospheric guitars, retro-pop synths and head-in-the-clouds grooves.

So far, international stardom has passed them by, though their distinctive songs have caught the ear of a range of DJs across the globe. One was Claremont 56 founder Paul ‘Mudd’ Murphy, who has worked his magic on one of the band’s previously unreleased gems, “In A Small Place”.

Perfectly capturing the claustrophobic reality of life in a small, remote town or village where everyone knows everyone else’s business, the song sees Sillyboy plan his escape over a mesmerizing backing track rich in ghostly synthesizers, chunky bass guitar, spacey electronics and a shuffling groove that sits somewhere between pitched-down dub disco and early ‘80s West Coast AOR.

Murphy’s “Extended Version” allows the track room to breathe, teasing out the clandestine and atmospheric instrumentation – eyes-closed guitar solos included – before introducing Sillyboy’s rueful and paranoid vocals. You’ll find the Greek band’s slimmed-down – and arguably even more trippy – original version on the B-side, completing a fittingly high quality musical package to kick-start Claremont 56’s 2019 release schedule.

In A Small Place (Mudd's Extended Mix)(Clip)

Taken from the excellent "Kokning" LP, out now on Smalltown Supersound. contact: emilio@shadowagency.no

Bjørn Torske - Nitten Nitti

Rhythm Section - regular dance in South London
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Retiree - Pumice Stone

Rhythm Section INTL

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