LAB's

[ OE 009 ] : Suemori - Maebashi (Snippets)

Recording from Marandi 10/7/2021. Hvalfjörður, Iceland.
Design by: alexjean.design

MARANDI 2021 | XWIFE

Caged

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Lord Of The Isles - Betula

For more than a decade now, Fleck E.S.C. has marked himself out as one of the most playful and prolific producers in the electro game. Across dozens of releases for labels including Bass Agenda and Science Cult, the France-born, Japan-based artist has made his name through a production style which balances limber beats with exploratory textural work. 

Fleck E.S.C. debuted on Central Processing Unit in 2018 with the Discrete Opinion EP. Now, after stopping by the Sheffield label last year on a Silicon Scally remix job, Fleck E.S.C. delivers his second EP for CPU in the form of Rough Silk. The record’s intriguing title proves an apt introduction to this four-track affair. These cuts are at once sleek and abrasive, anchored by robotechnic machine-funk grooves yet also full of strange, shifting shapes.

The opening title-track expertly sets out Rough Silk’s stall. Heralded by gurgling synths and all manner of whirring percussive tones, ‘Rough Silk’ blossoms around the minute mark with the introduction of a wickedly buoyant lead synth. This is music at once visceral and full of mystery, the sound of wending through the back alleys, and the feeling carries through to the following cut ‘Hat in the Cat’ - as the synth pads spool out overhead, the machine-funk snap of the beat has an almost aquatic quality that links it back to Drexciya.

Much like ‘Rough Silk’, the record’s first B-side ‘Faking Sweet’ also shifts gears. The opening strains of the track seem to be preparing for another insistent, expansive broken-beat pulse, but it stiffens its neck around ninety seconds in. Programmed drums whirr around a jittery machine-gun bass while discordant synths pull at the edges of the track, all of which brings a strong dystopian energy that increases further as the percussion sounds become increasingly bug-eyed.

After so much excitement, ‘Digger Play’ closes out the EP with a softer touch. There’s still plenty of low-slung bounce to the beat, but the track runs a little slower, and there’s a warm wistfulness in the synths which gives ‘Digger Play’ a painterly, almost poetic feel. However, while it may take its foot off the gas, the production here is as deft as it is everywhere else on Rough Silk. 

With new EP Rough Silk, electro whizz Fleck E.S.C. brings the sort of casual mastery to proceedings that has characterised his career to date.

RIYL: Silicon Scally, Jensen Interceptor, Annie Hall

Rough Silk

Fleck ESC - Rough Silk

Bochum Welt’s 2019 LP ‘Seafire’ and its accompanying remix album are two of the Central Processing Unit label’s most beloved releases. However, links between the two parties run far deeper than just those records.

You see, the tracks that Gianluigi Di Costanzo cut as Bochum Welt in the 1990s and 2000s are in the very DNA of the celebrated Sheffield imprint. Bochum Welt’s drops on labels like Rephlex made for some of the most celebrated electronic music releases of the era and went on to influence producers the world over - including many of those who have turned up on CPU since it launched in 2012.

As such, it makes sense that two of the most crucial EPs from Bochum Welt’s first wave are now being given new life by CPU. ‘Desktop Robotics’ and ‘Feelings On A Screen’ initially emerged in 1997 via Aphex Twin’s Rephlex imprint. Now, Di Costanzo has curated this special CPU release to celebrate both of those EPs making it to 25. This is a reissue with a twist, though. While ‘Desktop Robotics / Feelings On A Screen’ features many crucial cuts from the original pressings, the record also serves up other gems gathered from Bochum Welt’s original master tapes - all of which have never previously been released on vinyl.

The ‘Desktop Robotics’ cuts which make for the record’s first half are dreamy, impressionistic things. On this quartet, Bochum Welt plays painterly synth work off of idiosyncratic drum programming to illuminating effect. The opening title-track, for instance, blooms from a clattering, distorted beat into an icily beguiling electronic soundscape, a vibe which carries through to following number ‘HMT (202 Mix)’.

Things become more weightless on ‘Leafs Brought By The Wind’, a potent vignette where you can almost see the leaves falling amidst its reverb-drenched haze. We then get ethereal ‘Marylebone (Demo Version)’. Anyone who’s heard the iteration of ‘Marylebone’ which appeared on Bochum Welt’s 2017 LP ‘April’ will be pleasantly surprised by this alternate mix. Here the track pulls away from pretty post-minimalist piano composition to widescreen ambience - it’s so warm and intimate that it feels like peeking behind a curtain to observe an artist at work.

Things ramp up a notch with the tracks taken from in and around ‘Feelings On A Screen’. The title cut kicks off the record’s second half in limber fashion, its nimble percussion programming dancing around a pulsing bassline. Like A Tim’s mix of ‘Greenwich’ is still as much of a party-starter as it was on the original ‘Feelings On A Screen’ release, with the Djax-Up-Beats veteran setting buoyant rhythm work against a playful, eccentric lead-line. 

Between these tunes we are treated to one of the gems of the Bochum Welt discography. In 2007, Di Costanzo split an EP with Heinrich Mueller, an artist best known as Drexciya’s Gerald Donald. That record featured Mueller’s ‘Z Version’ of Bochum Welt’s ‘Saint’, and the track’s appearance here, with machine gun bass burbling alongside strange textures, joins the dots between Di Constanzo’s style and the pulsating machine-funk that Donald helped popularise. Things close out with ‘North’, a frostily beautiful ambience which makes for a fitting bookend to this album when taken alongside ‘Desktop Robotics’.

This 25th anniversary re-release of Bochum Welt’s ‘Desktop Robotics’ and ‘Feelings On A Screen’ EPs reminds us that, while time may have passed, the appeal of Bochum Welt’s electronic music remains as strong as ever.

RIYL: AFX, Mike Paradinas, Boards Of Canada, Mrs Jynx

Bochum Welt - Desktop Robotics & Feelings On A Screen (25th Anniversary Edition)

https://mrjay3.bandcamp.com/track/wavy-jone-bout-2-break-mrjay-remix

Wavy Jone$ - Bout 2 Break (MRJay Remix)

Goodbye

Piano un10 It happened

Foals - Rain
Exclusive Record Store Day 2016 release - http://smarturl.it/FoalsRSD

www.foals.co.uk

Foals - Rain

https://music.yuyay-records.de/album/element-8-yuy011
www.yuyay-records.de
Distributed via Bordello a Parigi (NL)

Written and produced by M. Viehweger
Mastered by Alek Stark at Fundamental Audio

“Nomenclature is an integral part of any society. E.g., today's western science can only make sense of oxygen if it is sorted into a scale as its 8th element. And because it's only a matter of nomenclature, fire can exist without oxygen. About 300 years ago in Phlogiston Theory it instead was called Fire Air. Yskay scientists called the same substance The Sun's Colonizing Soul. You see, we often talk about the same without even realising it.”

[YUY011] Carl Y. Scheele - Element #8 (Snippets) // 12" vinyl

Limited edition 12" vinyl in shrink-wrapped printed sleeve with paper inner. Includes Cobalt Blue, Scintillation, Asynchronous and Protocol 2.

Cobalt Blue

Silicon Scally - Cobalt Blue

prememory100N pt2

The union of Bochum Welt and Central Processing Unit makes perfect sense. Here we have a principal figure from IDM’s 90s heyday linking up with an imprint that has brought the sound and spirit of Rephlex Records into the modern day. As such, it is unsurprising that Bochum Welt’s label debut, the 2019 LP Seafire, has quickly become one of the most vaunted releases in CPU’s extensive catalogue.

A few months on from the release of Seafire, the Italian artist returns to the Sheffield imprint with Seafire Remixes. As well as a pair of new versions from Bochum Welt himself, this five-track set also contains a trio of tunes which rewire Seafire originals - one remix apiece from EOD, James Zabiela and Telefon Tel Aviv.

One can think of Seafire Remixes as chronicling a night at the club in reverse - at least until its final track. ‘More Light (Radio Edit)’ and ‘G1 (Ambient Mix)’, the two Bochum Welt originals which kick things off, maintain the heady glow of Seafire. Both are lovely, wistful lilts, full of gently-pattering drums, pluming synths and keening keyboards. They recall the most cerebral end of Boards Of Canada’s output, flushing you with the warm afterglow of the party as you begin to bed down, dawn just starting to break through the window.

If these opening jams represent the night drawing to a close, the mid-section of Seafire Remixes rewinds to the thrill of the dance. bbbbbb recors mischief-maker EOD and British dancefloor veteran James Zabiela both tackle ‘More Light’ on their remixes, and each producer makes the same decision to gee-up the track with drums. The former’s version plumbs a load of IDM-techno beats into the floaty-light original to give it a buoyant positivity not dissimilar to Andrew Weatherall (RIP). Meanwhile Zabiela’s snapping broken-beat electro rework is pure peaktime euphoria, with 303s squirming gleefully under clattering drums and a needle-gun bassline. It’s a distillation in sound of some of the very best aspects of dance music culture - rhythm, communality, utopia.

Telefon Tel Aviv’s reworking of Seafire’s ‘Color Me’ ends this otherwise-uplifting EP on a more pensive note. Unsurprisingly given the pedigree of the artist, Telefon Tel Aviv’s ‘Color Me’ flip is the most leftfield production on Seafire Remixes. Eerie, spectral synths clatter and churn away atop skittering drums which have a ghost of trap about them. This heady fug sounds very much like the morning after the night before, with Gold Panda, Teebs and TOKiMONSTA all recalled. 

Covering a large amount of sonic terrain - electro, IDM, techno, abstract hip-hop, ambient music - Bochum Welt’s Seafire Remixes EP is simultaneously one of the most stylistically diverse and most aesthetically unified Central Processing Unit releases to date.

Tracklist
A1 - More Light (Radio Edit)
A2 - G1 (Ambient Mix)
A3 - More Light (EOD Mix)
B1 - More Light (James Zabiela Remix)
B2 - Color Me (Telefon Tel Aviv Remix)

RIYL: Daniel Avery, AFX, Boards Of Canada, Autechre

Seafire Remixes

Bochum Welt - Seafire Remixes

qu 1

Central Processing Unit, commonly referred to as CPU Records, is an independent British record label, founded in Sheffield in 2012, specialising in electronic music.

Distributed by Kudos Records London UK.

We are not currently seeking unsolicited demos. Due to the volume of digital submissions, it is impossible to listen and respond to each one.

Bochum Welt - Seafire Remixes

CPU RECORDS

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