Calum Gunn / Sebastian Camens - 'Slant Deviations'

The inaugural Conditional release comes in the form of a split from label boss Calum Gunn and Seattle’s Sebastian Camens. 

Two sides of ascetic electronic music, using minimal tools to assemble 20-minute pieces that flow and bend at their own leisure. Sebastian Camens wrenches new rhythms and ideas from his modular synthesiser set-up, drilling through sheets of white noise sleet and spring-loaded oscillations. On the flip side, Calum Gunn utilises live-coded synthesis and computer-controlled Yamaha synthesiser to conjure widescreen drones, sine wave mistakes and circular frequency modulations. 

Please, enjoy yourself.

Calum Gunn - 'Slant Deviations' A (CON001)

Conditional unleashes 'Efhksjerfbeskj', a bold-as-hell tape from Ewa Justka. 

Two sides of excoriating noise, bass and gabba from Polish-born, London-based artist Ewa Justka. Deploying her array of homemade instruments and effects, a cloud of distorted voices and low-end crunch morphs into an overcooked gabba nightmare. Just the sort of thing to completely ruin your day. 

Check out Ewa's work and machines: ewajustka.tumblr.com

Ewa Justka - 'First' (CON002)

Another curveball from Conditional, welcoming Neil Cosgrove to the fold with a full-length acidic workout, 'Bum Montage'. 

Neil is a jealousy-inducingly unique audio software developer and computer musician. Through creating and iterating on the brilliant LNX Studio application, he found he'd spawned a glut of dark, squelching tracks that effortlessly wind headlong towards some sort of acidic abyss. 

Over Bum Montage's 13 tracks, Neil Cosgrove creates a soundworld that is equal parts dancefloor-ready, ocean floor-ready, and kitchen floor-ready, and we're incredibly proud to be bringing it to you.

Bum Montage is released on April 15th via Conditional.

Neil Cosgrove - Acid Flop 4 v2 (CON003)

We're very happy to welcome Tokyo-based artist Moxus to the fold, with his album Mush Space.

Mush Space is a document of the many idiosyncratic sides to Moxus' work - deploying sheets of granular synthesis, tangle webs of sequenced noise and a good helping of bass to form a beautiful, almost accidental body of work.

Mush Space

Moxus - SC_060718_172129 (CON004)

12" and digital available here: http://shop.conditional.club/album/risc-chip

A heavy hitting long-player comes to Conditional in the form of Kindohm's magnum opus, 'RISC Chip'. 

Minneapolis-based Mike Hodnick, aka Kindohm, is widely known for his live-coded dancefloor interruptions, wringing splattered rhythms and textures from a text editor using the open source software TidalCycles. Adding analogue synths to his palette, 'RISC Chip' morphs and refines Kindohm's previous work into a bewilderingly singular work encompassing glitch, breakcore, IDM and techno. 

At once bruisingly complex and alluringly minimal, tracks like '32-bit Falcon' and 'Bit Dust' crunch and flex with pin-point percussion, opaque bass and paradoxical rhythm that only a mad-scientist approach to musicianship could afford. Elsewhere, 'Mint' and 'Practical Closures' let the sound open up a little more, giving some breathing room but keeping a stony gaze on the dancefloor. 

We're intensely proud to bring this destroyer into the Conditional fold. Roll up your sleeves and fall in.

RISC Chip

Kindohm - Bit Dust (from 'RISC Chip', CON005)

12" and digital available here: http://shop.conditional.club/album/risc-chip

A heavy hitting long-player comes to Conditional in the form of Kindohm's magnum opus, 'RISC Chip'.

Minneapolis-based Mike Hodnick, aka Kindohm, is widely known for his live-coded dancefloor interruptions, wringing splattered rhythms and textures from a text editor using the open source software TidalCycles. Adding analogue synths to his palette, 'RISC Chip' morphs and refines Kindohm's previous work into a bewilderingly singular work encompassing glitch, breakcore, IDM and techno.

At once bruisingly complex and alluringly minimal, tracks like '32-bit Falcon' and 'Bit Dust' crunch and flex with pin-point percussion, opaque bass and paradoxical rhythm that only a mad-scientist approach to musicianship could afford. Elsewhere, 'Mint' and 'Practical Closures' let the sound open up a little more, giving some breathing room but keeping a stony gaze on the dancefloor.

We're intensely proud to bring this destroyer into the Conditional fold. Roll up your sleeves and fall in.

Kindohm - .lean() (from 'RISC Chip', CON005)

Brostep In The Style Of Florian Hecker is an eight channel electroacoustic composition that challenges ideas of economic and cultural values within sound art and contemporary computer music.

Drawing upon Florian Hecker’s piece Acid In The Style Of David Tudor (2009), which explored the similarities of acid house and works by Tudor such as Pulsers (1976) or Neural Synthesis (1995), Brostep In The Style Of Florian Hecker investigates the similarities of brostep with Hecker’s work such as Sun Pandämonium (2003) and Acid In The Style Of David Tudor (2009).

Using the consumer software Massive, and specifically the preset bundle Loopmasters Present Dubstep Synths Massive Presets, Buckley uses Ableton Live LFOs across multiple parameters to work with the presets in order to emulate Hecker’s work. The sounds are then placed across the eight speakers using GRM Spaces.

Brostep In The Style Of Florian Hecker

rkss - Brostep In The Style Of Florian Hecker (Excerpt, CON006)

Buy on cassette or digital: http://shop.conditional.club/album/clastics

The doggedly prolific and eclectic Phil Julian opens up a brand new deck of cards on the sublimely crunchy and elastic 'Clastics'.

Austerely described as 'five sets of interrelated pattern based / sequencer derived recordings', Clastics lays down a gauntlet of straitjacket electronics, fizzing and crackling into and out of life. Mutated patterns evolve and decay without a care in the world.

Supremely excited to bring this to Conditional. One for the believers.

Music by Phil Julian.
Art by Renick Bell.

Clastics

Phil Julian - 'EA' (from 'Clastics', CON007)

We are very pleased to present the debut album of Stockholm's Daniel M Karlsson, 'Expanding and overwriting'. 

Encompassing themes of transhumanism, capitalism, electronic music history and police brutality, 'Expanding and overwriting' is a work of intense focus and attention to detail, while retaining a sense of playful wonder in its many gleaming surfaces. Moving from processed acid workouts to topologically longform FM synthesis suites, Daniel M Karlsson's inherent curiosity and individuality make for a unique, sublime listen. 

Created with live coding software TidalCycles, along with processing both during recording and after, jittering rhythms boom and collide in an uncanny space, as if propelled through a viscous cloud. Monolithic tones fold in on themselves and reassemble. A new music for a new world.

Expanding and overwriting

Daniel M Karlsson - 'Untraceable bearer bonds' (from 'Expanding and overwriting', CON008)

A loopy brain-boxer from Sebastian Camens, last seen throwing down on CON001. How time flies! 

Tan Object consists of ten aggressively gooey structures of pin-sharp synthesis, constructed with the barest of tools and deployed with malicious intent. An ever-present, barely-shifting timbre runs through the entire suite, nipping at the heels of monotony but always demanding your full attention. With scant regard for pitch and dynamics, the Tan Objects sometimes convey a strange elation; others, a cartoonish deflation.

Released on CD and digital, 21st July 2017.

Tan Object

Sebastian Camens - 'Tan Object 2' (from CON009, 'Tan Object')

A group photo for Conditional’s tenth release; 19 tracks from the whole family, all sharing a disregard for genre and form. No filler. 

With love to Adam, Corinna, Daniel, Ewa, Florian, Henry, Kevin, Maria, Mike, Peter, Phil, Rachael, Renick, Robin, Sean, Sebastian, Steve, Tom.

Misapplications

CON010 - 'MISAPPLICATIONS' compilation - All tracks at once, compressed to ~1 minute in length

Dane Law rolls down the tinted windows for 'Back In My Life', the soundtrack to a frantic 1999 getaway down the M6. 

The EP sees its source material evaporate into clouds both furious and furtive, building castles in the sky from Alice Deejay's heart-stopping chart-topper. My final tears flow onward, stopping to snatch dropped kicks from the floor, wanting you back by my side. Call me, I won't leave again. Kinetically separated and repurposed into fresh tarmac. That's where you belong.

Back In My Life

Dane Law - Crying Out My Final Tears (from CON013, 'Back In My Life')

CON014. Released 12/03/2018.

Newcastle-based live coder co34pt lands on Conditional with a suite of exercises in reconstructing dance music form. 

'Half-Live for Conditional Records' displays a wide-ranging command of genre, touching on elements of minimalism, breakbeat hardcore, bassline and old-skool rave (airhorn fans, be ready). Created and performed live in audio programming language Supercollider, these tracks play tricks on the ear, bending pitch and subverting rhythm on a whim. 

Mastered loud for maximum airhorn impact. 

Read about co34pt's live coding practice: theseanco.github.io/howto_co34pt_liveCode/

Half-Live for Conditional Records

co34pt - 'acid_draft (take 2)' (from CON014, 'Half-Live for Conditional Records')

tuuun touches down on Conditional with a 14-tracker of barebone patterns and clashing frequencies, aptly titled FMTRAX after the frequency modulation synthesis the FLUF label boss used to create these mini-maximal, ascetic sounds. Beyond all that, though, it's serious FUN.

tuuun says: "I made these fourteen disembodied FM sequences using the PreenFM2 open-source DIY synthesizer, over the course of two days in Stockholm in 2017. It's a really nice little unit that I like the sound of, and it also takes scala files, so I was experimenting with trying out lots of differently-tuned scales and seeing how they sounded."

FMTRAX are rough and ready compositions, fizzing with stray overtones and breakneck arpeggiations. An unruly listen for all fans of fucked frequency fun.

FMTRAX

tuuun - FMTRAX 11 (from CON015, 'FMTRAX')

Available on cassette and digital from Conditional Records, June 4th 2018.

Glasgow’s Daniel Katinsky serves up a collection of ice-cold synth interjections on their Conditional debut, ‘Digital Concrete’.

Right from the opener ‘Dreariness’, Katinsky exhibits a startlingly unique new voice with complete mastery of their tools. Staccato bursts of precisely-modulated synth solidify with chemtrail delay lines and pinpoint percussion to form a captivating whole. 
12-minute centrepiece ‘Lock to Loose’ lays down a morphogenic groove, never sitting still but keeping its own time until it shatters and recombines into a double-time stomper. Elsewhere, ‘The Folds’ ruminates through to the gradual destruction of its core rhythm, allowing outside forces to take it apart. The glittering 2-step shuffle of ‘Kampii 2’ is beset upon by sharp stutters and rogue effects. Title track ‘Digital Concrete’ focusses on the space between the chaos, bending and stretching synthetic skin over melodic muscle.

Digital Concrete

Daniel Katinsky - The Folds (from CON017, 'Digital Concrete')

When John Chowning discovered FM synthesis it was seen as the promised land. Anything and everything could be synthesized, it was said, by use of this brilliant, simple idea: sine waves modulating other sine waves in any number of patch matrices, producing complex combinations of sidebands. And as such; almost infinite spectral potentiality for composers and performers alike! In other words - spectrum splitting potential, which is exactly how NYZ approaches it in this collection of mad and utterly unpredictable pieces. 

Seemingly held together by the determination (or lack thereof) of a chaotic system in a clinical, synthetic sound environment, these pieces are raw and made up of ploddy notes strolling through timbral in-between places from infamous synthesizer presets. Imitating organs, bass guitars and percussive instruments mutating seamlessly into alien non-referential sounds, some notes intensely are sustained and some strung together in vibrant and organic, breathing sequences by Burraston’s MANIAC Cellular Automata Sequencer. 

‘NTE GDN’ is a thoroughly eccentric and expressive musical experience containing melodic interval jumps of what seems to be an algorithm impersonating Schönberg, only stopping to descend into a dronal stasis.

NTW GDN

NTE GDN

NYZ - NTE GDN (from 'NTE GDN', CON018)

"It began when a car exploded outside my window in Paris. Some guy had made a mistake while fixing his car or something and now his car and a car parked next to it were burning through the night while fire fighters were spraying water on it and bashing it with an axe to make the car horns stop. 

This gave me the idea to write music exploring the idea of the state of emergency (in Danish: Undtagelsestilstand, which literally translates to 'state of exception') which was in effect at the time. I wanted to create my own sonic zones of suspension where all laws are foldable, perspectives may be modulated and time reversed in a deep, zen-like void." 

Two side-long computer music monoliths from Copenhagen's Mads Kjeldgaard exploring a deeply unsettling sound world of elasticity and uncertainty. This is an absolute trip, a deeply physical work that drops you into the centre of a weightless maelstrom of unknowable and uncanny forces. Headphones very much recommended.

States of emergency

Mads Kjeldgaard - 'DAF342wregsf' (excerpt from CON019, 'States of emergency')

You see a robot dog standing on four legs in front of a man holding a long stick. The man tries violently to knock the robot off balance. The robots sways back and forth, still holding its ground. You feel empathy towards the thing, while nonetheless recognizing it as an artificial being. It’s uncanny. Perhaps it’s the lifelike movement of the robot that tricks our brain into recognizing it as a living thing.

The robot in question is a prototype of Boston Dynamics, one of worlds most advanced robotics manufacturers. The company has strong ties with the US military research institute DARPA. Thus, it’s very likely that some day they might be used to fight proxy wars and kill humans.

‘Dynamics’ album was conceived in early 2018. While making it I noticed that there was an underlying theme of “robot-ness” in the tracks. Writing SuperCollider code that produced strange interlocking kick drums, shifting temporally almost in an autonomous manner, I felt that this is dance music better suited for artificial beings than humans.

The robots of Boston Dynamics came to mind. I named the tracks after the prototypes of the manufacturer and started to wonder, why can’t we make robots to rave and dance instead of fight our wars? Why is it that that the advancement of technology is often left to the military-industrial complex? Rather than producing killing machines, maybe we could produce robots simply because we can.

'Dynamics' is released 19th September 2018 on Conditional.

Forces - 'PETMAN' (from CON020, 'Dynamics')

Nancy Drone presents a new world of swirling ambience, arachnid techno mutations and bright shards of percussive mayhem on DISPLACEMENT. 

Committed to hard drive during a move from Pittsburgh, PA to Berlin, Germany, the album's seven tracks disregard time and place, giving themselves ample room to breathe and flex. The stuttering, skittering arpeggiated ambience of 'Reidentification' gives way to the molasses-thick bass and infectious rhythm at the backbone of 'Counter-Productive'. 

The back half of DISPLACEMENT unfurls with the faraway thunder claps of 'Lakes To The Sea' then ramps up the tempos considerably, hitting light speed for footworkian blasts of barely-controlled chaos. 'Olestati' baits the dancers into locking horns with mammoth bass and off-kilter rhythms, while 'Stim De Novo' brings down an acid rain of deadly snares and glassy synths.


Releases February 27, 2019, on cassette and digital.

Displacement

'Counter-Productive' - Nancy Drone

From 'ASCII SNAKE' EP, released 5th June, 2019 on cassette and digital.

Written and produced by Thomas Pujols, January & February 2019. 
Mastered by Calum Gunn.

ASCII SNAKE

Nebulo - '488BPM' (from CON024, 'ASCII SNAKE')

Luke Lund throws us into the wormhole we deserve with 'Pattern Recognition', a soundtrack to the modern dystopian reality of normalised surveillance, malicious deepfakes, involuntary data collection, the AI arms race, and so on, and so ever onwards without end.

Four uneasy tracks ride the line between sturm und drang with the computer as conductor. Patterns emerge and break apart, cut down by chaotic decision-making against a grimacing cloud of stretch artifacts and microphone feedback.

Produced by Luke Lund in April - September 2018 at Solace, Turku.
Mastering and design by Luke Lund.

Released 14th August, 2019 on Conditional.

Pattern Recognition

Luke Lund - Conditioning Augmentation (from CON026, 'Pattern Recognition')

Voice, drums and code culled in sequence organize computerized free space into felt expression. Touching the real, folding the happening into a movable framework Horak and Bell sift through tangential possibilities in a serial production of live algorithmic beats and vocalizations. Steph Horak and Renick Bell’s coming together for a collaborative, conditional album widens the scope of the generative improvisation by superimposing a self over the enclosed circumstances of sound.

The concept of proxemics offers a diagnostic approach to the operable bounded zones of sound. Horak improvises through self-processed vocals meeting Bell who in real-time creates fractured conditions under which they can both engage in a social discourse, a choreography of variable entanglements of allowed freedoms. Horak’s use of an OWL pedal - an open source, programmable effects pedal - converts the voice into a stereophonic mass of sonic possibility. The throat constricts and opens, air compresses and congeals in response to the architectural development of the mouth and lungs; systems of the body and systems of acoustic formation interlock and augment.

The often referenced Criminal Justice Act introduced by the UK government in 1994 defined electronic dance music as a "succession of repetitive beats." The oversight and general misunderstanding of how music is generated are essential components of club culture as a commons of free expression outside of Western progress, acting as an ungirdled blank space. Heat produces kinetic energy, and presents new molecular spatial options for systems of matter. There is a naturally nurtured athleticism that comes with being in conditions of heat. Serial production by design disengages sound from material conditions and works as an acculturation of hopeful potentials, models towards happenings. Depoliticized in its semi-being, live coding takes blank space and recreates conditions within a predictive process towards new politics in a nonspace.


Conditional, 2019.
CON025.
Released 18th October, 2019.
Cassette / digital.
Text by DeForrest Brown, Jr.

Live at Pirate Studios, Bristol

Steph Horak & Renick Bell - Live at Pirate Studios, Bristol (Excerpt)

Kindohm returns to Conditional with Meme Booth, a startlingly focussed collection of ideas notated in characteristic fizzy synthesis and off-kilter rhythms. Persuasively addictive dance music.

Innumerable sine waves grapple for attention atop restless kick drums right from the off, with opener 'Articulator' setting out a blueprint for the movements to come. Elsewhere, the title track cycles through endless permutations of itself, looking for the perfect configuration and finding it over and over again.

The loping mechanics of 'Friend Suggestion' give way to the optimistic mutations of 'Flexbox', its lone synth swerving through myriad timbres. Moments of respite tumble into view, with the modulated waves of 'Unfollowed Silence' allowing a breath-catch before the dismantled recapitulation of 'It Me.gif' turns up to break itself into unhealthy shapes.

Meme Booth exhibits a fresh approach to synthesis and rhythm, resting both on and off the grid as if wrestling with time itself - only to dive off of the top rope and land squarely in the centre of the dancefloor.

Meme Booth

Kindohm - Meme Booth (from CON027, 'Meme Booth')

William Fields returns to Conditional with 'Shackamaxon', a colourful collection of no-messing volleys shaped by Fields' generative music system.

Released 28th January 2020 on cassette and digital, backed with remixes from Vytear, {arsonist}, Renick Bell and Kindohm.

Shackamaxon

William Fields - Ostinato Punch (from CON028, 'Shackamaxon')

The title Nth White Dot is a near-anagram of an enigmatic text message I received from an unknown number while touring this material along the west coast of the US: “Shot t Edwin.”

Releases 26th February 2020 on cassette and digital.

Nth White Dot

RM Francis - Fffffffffffff (from CON029, 'Nth White Dot')

Trash Panda QC TOTALLY Jumps 19!! Them quantum computer, quality control of cue sea. Qompassionate confusion on unenviably questionable content —— the queens qan council their quick conversion. Quiet comfort for qasual Sunday helps to quit quit caring. Another boar story, qold open on bird view from microbe.

A sound-wise taken; filed real quite concisely under “EXTREMITY / ROUND NOISE / QOMPUTER MUSIc”. The rash can sound now new seams. Qan’t ctop the bees.

Out 3rd April, 2020 on digital and delayed CD.

Jumps 19

Trash Panda QC - vy, fReet- (from CON030, 'Jumps 19')

Synalegg joins Conditional with ‘Beating The Odds’, a work of eroded rhythm and beauty. Across 23 minutes of scratched texture and vertiginous sequencing, Synalegg excavates sounds and patterns from a bedrock of raw data refracted through an arduous chain of destruction and reconstruction.

‘Aftermath’ opens the album with insistent percussion obscured by layers of dust and grit, wiping just enough dirt off of the surface to allow a window into a sound world of tightly controlled chaos. ‘Engineer’ allows a mournful melody to emerge out of the maelstrom, gathering up the ground as it goes. ‘Barricades’ introduces a mutant bassist to the ensemble, thrumming against a granular tide of white noise and stuttering rhythm.

Underneath the surface lies a pulsing heart of unique melody and driving rhythm, as if found buried under generations of rain and moss and given new life, embracing its erraticities. Beating The Odds is a startling collection of truly original music, at once familiar and unknown.

Beating The Odds

Synalegg - Aftermath (from CON031, 'Beating The Odds')

Associative logic in terms of the social interaction between two groups of individuals. In this context, a social interaction is generally defined by the interaction between two groups of individuals through the interaction between two individuals through the interaction between a group of individuals through physical interaction and the interaction between a group of individuals through social interaction. A social interaction is defined by the interaction between two groups of individuals through physical interaction and the interaction between a group of individuals through social interaction. A social interaction is defined by the interaction between two groups of individuals.

Composed and recorded by Matt Nish-Lapidus during 2019 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Everywhere

New Tendencies - Utility (from CON032,  'Everywhere')

WEȽ∝KER (pronounced “WET LOCKER”) present a voyage into the warm heart of computer music on “GULP”.

Messrs Dujat and Beedles dredge up a lucent world of fluctuating sound and rhythm, often narrated by an impossible throat hawking up glottal stops. Their playful approach to composition pushes “GULP” untethered through shimmering corridors, jagged rips of discord and rib-shaking bass weight.

GULP

WEȽ∝KER - 'velarized' (from CON033, 'GULP')

Heinrich Schwarzer's conversational 'Zähler, Figur, Puls 0​-​2' is precise yet playful, sharp yet warm. Terse rhythms and harmonic tones cast long shadows of organic radiance, providing the glue that holds this stellar work together.

The 'Zähler' series assembles a lattice of overlapping triggers and modulations, driving layers of chiming resonances and percussion. 'Figur' allows an unhinged director to take the controls, flowing and tumbling at its own pace while sparks of filtered noise fly. The culminating 'Figur&Puls' series puts ricocheting percussion in the foreground, with mutating delay lines spinning off into the void.

Zähler, Figur, Pulse 0-2

Zähler, Figur, Puls 0​-​2

Heinrich Schwarzer - Figur0_3-39 (from CON034, 'Zähler, Figur, Puls 0​-​2')

Experimental electronic and computer music.

CONDITIONAL

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