Almost exactly ten years to the day since his Unwoken EP, the inaugural release on his and BD1982's Diskotopia label, Matt Lyne dusts down his A Taut Line moniker for an intoxicating double A-side single, the first ATL release proper since his critically acclaimed album Distraction Provisions in 2017. 

For this return, Lyne has channelled his signature A Taut Line sound into a much tighter framework for two tracks aimed for closed-and-not-opening-any-time-soon dancefloors.

To Live and Die in Shinjuku is an augmented 140bpm brutalist roller that takes its cues equally from 90s new beat, UK 2009-era post-dubstep, and Anthony' Shake' Shakir records. Haunting crystal chimes send shivers down the spine of a crushed and chiselled 100v/50Hz rhythm section, ripping through distorted-guitar and fractured-synth static. 

Woken (see what he did there with the title?) is a broken 2-step zesty-yet-mellow opus that pays homage - in a very A Taut Line way - to MJ Cole, LTJ Bukem, Super Discount, Yuji Takenouchi, and Ron Trent all at the same time. Lush rhodes-&-strings atmospherics, a skuzzy electro bassline, slowed-n’-swung jungle breaks, and a percussion-vs-vocal-sample mutant-tango tussle are all locked together into an irresistible shuffling groove.

Potentially some of the best A Taut Line material to date that relishes in its Cabernet-Sauvignon-stained newspaper-cutting vibes.

A Taut Line - To Live and Die in Shinjuku / Woken

Artist: Ando Laj
Release: Remember
Format: Album (Digital & Cassette release)
Cat#: DSK056


1. I Will Always Be There For You
2. Eel Soul
3. Cool Autumn Day
4. Kinsmen Sound
5. Northern Ontario
6. Witness
7. Static Acid
8. Final Wash

We are excited to further our 10th year of the Diskotopia label with Ando Laj’s magnetic album, Remember. Formerly based in Toronto, now residing in Seoul, Ando Laj first released on Diskotopia in 2019 with his EP, Isle. With this return, he brings an even more evolved palette of kaleidoscopic textures and a mutant rhythm science to paint the enticing eight windows into different worlds found across this LP.

On this 2021 full-length offering, Ando Laj serves an assemblage of grained-n-granulated circa-2000-era post-rock, hip hop, and electronica, saturated with the liquid-crystal synth timbres of lost New Age catalogues, and all reprogrammed through a mixtape-like approach to storytelling.

Remember is essentially augmented healing music, with stone-washed sci-fi soundscapes engulfing fragmented strains of ASMR for droids. But in the midst of the metaphysical relaxation, there are also moments like listening to DOOM’s Special Herbs volumes on an intense acid trip or “Mike Ladd and Brothomstates Play the Hits of Sun Araw” on a water-damaged MiniDisc player.

With its introspective and erratic mood swings, a composed yet temperate work, Remember recites passages of inimitable dialogue in an AI-rendered future language that translate perfectly for both modern ambient and experimental electronic music 2021 world stages.

Remember

Ando Laj - Remember

Clips from Diskotopia release, Rabit - Sun Showers. Released 7th October 2013.

1. Sun Showers
2. Levels
3. 40 Below
4. Black Bag


Rabit - Sun Showers

Clips from Diskotopia release, BD1982 - Casings. Released 28th October 2013.

1. Bakkwaa (Digital only) 
2. Cassava (Vinyl/Digital)
3. Writuals (Vinyl/Digital)
4. The Ground Opens (Digital only) 
5. Casings  (Vinyl/Digital)
6. Blessed (Digital only) 
7. Blud (Digital only) 
8. Clear Walls (Vinyl only)

BD1982 - Casings

Seekersinternational Presents Ragga Preservation Society - Worldwide Sound

1.	Worldwide feat. wzrdyAV
2.	Kill-A-Milli feat. Papa Robbie
3.	RingRingRiddim
4.	SoundboyThunderbolt
5.	TrussUBad feat. Second Woman
6.	WatchuwannaDeuce feat. Wundrkut
7.	DreadRunner (Can’tKeep On)
8.	JamFlexEdit parts 1 & 2
9.	ConsciousVybz
10.	SoundTekOva

The enigmatic Manila-via-British Columbia ensemble SeekersInternational returns to Tokyo-based label Diskotopia for the follow-up to 2016’s Ragga Preservation Society. SeekersInternational Presents Ragga Preservation Society – Worldwide Sound comes after a prolific five-year creative journey exploring different sonic avenues across releases on Future Times, Ossia’s No Corner, Bokeh Versions, Berceuse Heroique, ICS Library Records, and Never Sleep, in addition to an acclaimed FACT magazine mix in 2017. 

This time the SeekersInternational crew are back with some collaborators—namely, Roger Robinson as Papa Robbie on Kill-A-Milli, Second Woman (Joshua Eustis of Telefon Tel Aviv & Belong’s Turk Dietrich), wzrdyAV, and the late DJ Wundrkut, who heartbreakingly passed on to the next world a month before this project’s release date.

The direction of Worldwide Sound takes the original Ragga Preservation Society record’s Mark Leckey meets Hype Williams approach to jungle dubs, radio rips, and soundclash tape samples—reaping Canada’s large ex-pat Jamaican community’s rich history of ragga-jungle—and douses it in high-octane rave & hardcore petrol before setting the whole thing alight to create a technicolor soundsystem polymetric fever dream. High-paced and restless, chopped and screwed beyond belief—for those looking to transcend to higher frequencies right now, you cannot afford to sleep on this unparalleled new album.

Release date: 24th September 2021
12” Vinyl and Digital


Produced by Seekersinternational
Mastered by The Stunt Man at Suite Sound Labs, East Vancouver
Artwork and Design by Mysteryforms and ...
Nissan Pulsar photograph by TPZ

Seekersinternational Presents Ragga Preservation Society - Worldwide Sound

Greeen Linez - Secrets of Dawn

01.	Inner Path
02.	Winds of Paradise 
03.	100 People City
04.	Love Beams
05.	Night Code
06.	Hand to Hand 
07.	Home 
08.	The Call 
09.	Across the Heartland 
10.	Sagami Pulse
11.	Lacewing
12.	Surfacing
13.	Peas Hill
14.	September’s Game 
15.	Watch the Clock
16.	Frozen Touch
17.	Somatic
18.	Temple Moon
19.	Calibrate Zone
20.	Blue Tomorrow 3: The Dawn

Diskotopia concludes the label’s tenth anniversary year with an incredible record from one of their flagship groups, Greeen Linez. Also marking ten years since their first release under the moniker, Chris Greenberg and Matt Lyne return with the double album Secrets of Dawn—their most ambitious and expansive work to date.

In contrast to their darker, more downbeat last album Strange Energy, Secrets of Dawn is the result of a concerted effort to rediscover the joy, beauty, and melody that have been in such short supply worldwide in the two years since their 2019 release.

The creative process behind the album reflected the enforced solitude and introspection at the time of its inception. Consequently, Greeen Linez revisit every musical style and mood they have explored throughout their decade of releases, spanning from atmospheric ambient expansions to euphoric dancefloor anthems.

The influence of Larry Heard, Tangerine Dream, John Beltran, and Mark Isham is once again very evident. So too is the relationship with Japan, Lyne’s home for over 16 years. But rather than stepping back into the realms of City Pop— a genre that the pair helped introduce to the world with their 2012 album Things That Fade— here we can hear elements of Ryuichi Sakamoto, Toshifumi Hinata, and Hiroki Ishiguro, but fused with the sonic vocabulary of such artists as The Durutti Column, Cocteau Twins, Art of Noise, and The Cure.

Elsewhere, some of the dance numbers follow in the footsteps of Jam & Spoon, CJ Bolland, Étienne de Crécy, José Padilla, Cassius, Earth Nation, and even Gerald Donald under his Dopplereffekt and Japanese Telecom outfits.

At almost 90 minutes in length, Secrets of Dawn is a magnum opus built for deep listening and immersion. The album is both a kaleidoscopic journey inward and an open-hearted invitation to reconnect with the world.

RIYL:  Gigi Masin, Suzanne Kraft, Johnny Nash, Steve Hauschildt, Lone, Hidden Spheres, Jex Opolis, CFCF, Benedek, Palmbomen II, Boxcutter, μ-Ziq, Bullion…

Secrets of Dawn

Buy on Bandcamp

Greeen Linez - Secrets Of Dawn

BD1982 – Initiation Insight

01. Calibration Alive
02. Chapter Zero
03. Cutting Teeth
04. One Mind
05. Power
06. Open the Sky
07. Oblivion
08. Dungeon Rose
09. Bliss
10. Worlds We Know

Diskotopia is ecstatic to launch our 11th year with a bombastic new LP from label co-founder BD1982. Initiation Insight follows 2021's seminal Distance Vision LP - which garnered inclusion in Bandcamp's Best Electronic Music, JunoDaily's Best New Albums, and coverage in The Wire, RA, and Louder Than War - surveying the previously-plotted sonic ley lines and expanding upon them in drastically robust and kaleidoscopic directions.

Musically, the tracks across Initiation Insight have been composed with an ear towards ritualistic structures, with the album's themes touching upon spirituality, hermetic philosophy, dreams, and human evolution in the face of impending natural destruction.

On this release, BD1982 favors stylistically nomadic production and a drive for emotion over genre constraints to explore further depths of songwriting and structures not yet heard in his previous material. Tribal-informed industrial and molten-electro styles coalesce with both future-facing and ancient-rooted textures – spread across an underlying current of soundsystem-savvy sonics.

Initiation Insight proves to be another major step in the evolution of BD1982's sound, a caustic yet covalent natural mutation that will appeal to fans of Killing Joke, My Bloody Valentine, PJ Harvey, Cabaret Voltaire, Samhain, and Tricky alike.

released April 8, 2022

Written, performed, and produced by Brian Durr.

Mastered by Dominic Clare at Declared Sound.

Initiation Insight

BD1982 – Initiation Insight

Sseq – Sseq

01. Yttrium
02. Complex Bits
03. 1000
04. Jasdf
05. Junctions
06. Quizzes
07. Slo-Seq
08. Spoilsports
09. Spreadable
10. T-rex Joy
11. Whizz
12. XXX

The team at Diskotopia are extremely proud to present London via Tbilisi producer Sseq’s debut self-titled LP. Sseq has been honing his craft over the past several years releasing music as part of the Body Thrills duo as well as DJing and playing live at Georgian clubs and festivals before making his move to the UK. Here on his stunning self-titled debut LP, Sseq materializes twelve abstracted and microcosmic jewels of interdimensional techno alchemy. The compositions bend and weave, flutter and spiral across synthetic textures and abstract rhythmic expressions that at once beguile and inspire. Sseq’s sound is like an interstellar interpretation of what a sentient Buchla synth might dream of in zero gravity. RIYL Actress, Beatrice Dillon, Patten, Drexciya, Pole, and Björk-era Mark Bell productions.

Released May 26, 2022

Mastered by Dominic Clare at Declared Sound.

Sseq

Sseq – Sseq

1. Andoya
2. Rise
3. States 
4. Eternal 
5. Yield 
6. Drift 

We at Diskotopia are ecstatic to present Hyetal’s new EP, States for the summer of 2022. 

Hyetal is the alias of London based electronic musician/ producer David Corney. The project started after a move to Bristol from Southampton in 2003. At first affiliated with the city’s post dubstep and techno scenes, Hyetal released several acclaimed 12-inch singles before moving towards the album format with his debut ‘Broadcast’ in 2011 on Black Acre. After incorporating influences from ambient, dream pop and new wave rock, Hyetal found longer form releases a natural fit. ‘Broadcast’ was followed by ‘Modern Worship’ on True Panther in 2013 and then ‘Youth and Power’ on Other/other in 2017, the first to feature his vocals.

On this EP, States, Hyetal explores the intersection between hard dance music and shoegaze. Threads of dream pop, new wave, and ambient are paired with influences from early Bonzai and CJ Bolland releases to create an idiosyncratic body of work performed and recorded with 90s sound modules and synthesizers. The result is a collection of songs reflecting a blurred cycling through the emotions of nostalgia, melancholy, and optimism, and that sits somewhere on the spectrum between Electronic, Slowdive, Curve, and the Reactivate and React Test compilations. 

Opening number Andoya, feels like an instant classic and pairs a teeming chorus guitar riff with emotive vocals in a way that recalls Marr-Sumner, Hogan-O’Riordan, and Carpenter-Moreno partnerships. The second half of the track introduces soaring string pads, acid arpeggio undercurrents, and detuned DX-7-bell stabs to intone a gothic trance omniscience through the “every wave, in every ocean” refrain.

Rise takes its cues from 4th-world and Balearic ambient releases while retaining a driving energy. Sounding somewhere between a Sade and Mark Hollis collaboration produced by Dennis Bovell post Dreamscape ’92, and a joint Weatherall and Massey reworking of a Methany-written number performed by The Chameleons, Rise suits long motorway drives just as much as sunsets on the beach. 

Title track States is a slice of searing, emotive hyper-pop that distills the spirit of mid-90s trance-techno crossovers through a Teardrop Explodes ballad. Eternal is a gothic anthem built for slow-motion walks in humid sun showers that carries an essence of Hyetal’s early work, albeit put through some Disintegration-based AI Deep Dream Generator. Yield has an outsider festival pop vibe that bubbles over somewhere between Arthur Russell and Sam Prekop, while Drift rounds out the proceedings as a 909-new-wave ethereal comedown.

RIYL Bullion, Holy Other, Drab Majesty, and early Ryuichi Sakamoto. Hyetal’s States EP will be available as a limited-edition CD featuring a stark minimalist design as envisioned by the artist.

All tracks written and produced by D. Corney

Mastered by Benjamin Tregaskes, aka Lurka

States

Bandcamp

Hyetal - States

Clips from Diskotopia release Mau'lin - Wrecker. Released 5th May 2014.

Mau'lin - Wrecker

Clips from Diskotopia release Visionist - Can't Forget. Released 16th June 2014.

1. Can't Forget
2. Can't Forget (Moiré Remix)

Buy from Boomkat

Visionist - Can't Forget

Clips from Diskotopia release Greeen Linez - Izu King Street. Released 4th August 2014.

1.Chauffeur Driven
2.Jewel Of The City feat. Yoshihiro Nakagawa
3.Dreams In The Mist feat. Awa
4.Grafton Centre
5.Windswept
6.Landscape feat. Awa
7.Intercontinental Zone feat. Yoshihiro Nakagawa
8.Summer Somewhere
9.Geography
10.Dawn Escapes
11.Ice Water Bay

Greeen Linez - Izu King Street

Clips from Diskotopia release BD1982 - Operratorr. Released 15th September 2014.

1. Operratorr
2. Platinuum
3. And U Kno

BD1982 - Operratorr

Artist: A Taut Line
Title: Loss
LP
Cat#: DSK063
Release date: September 16, 2022

1.	Manada
2.	Roses Bled Grey
3.	Opaque State
4.	Is It Creation
5.	Loss
6.	Life Force (feat. Chocola B)
7.	The Scape I Float
8.	Hydrangea
9.	Inflex
10.	Tableau
11.	Brittle Ikari
12.	We All Fuel

Tokyo-based label Diskotopia co-founder Matt Lyne returns as A Taut Line for his first solo full-length in over five years.  A Taut Line is the principal of numerous monikers that Lyne releases under, his other most prominent being Greeen Linez, a collaboration with long-term musical partner Christopher Greenberg. 

Loss, the fourth album as A Taut Line, is a deep and polyamorous tour de force that expands and harnesses the explorations of 2017’s critically acclaimed album Distraction Provisions into an even tighter and more refined sonic narrative. 

Elements of acid house, dub techno, trip-hop, and jungle are pulled apart and smashed together again in a post-punk approach, creating a humid and disorientating fourth-world expanse that has become the A Taut Line trademark sound. There’s a clear nostalgic influence across the 12 tracks – particularly drawn from the musical heritage of Lyne’s birth town Bristol - but the album never feels revivalist or paint-by-numbers, as the touchstones that A Taut Line has mined from his youth are filtered through his 17+ years experience living in Japan and then juxtaposed in a fresh- and forward-looking manner. 

A central pillar runs through all the tracks, even as they shapeshift across a multitude of sounds and genres. Reoccurring motifs like Lyne’s use of lush yet decaying pads and — for the first time — his own voice provide a sense of consistency, while the intramural theme of loss that gives the album its title, lays down a strong contextual purpose.

Highlights on Loss include Life Force, a love song to 90s Major Force & Mo’Wax output, featuring Japanese singer Chocola B, Is It Creation, a no-wave avant-funk spoken word electro track with original lyrics penned by contemporary writer Thomas Kendall, and the beautiful yet heartbreaking Balearic-ambient nocturne Tableau.

Mastered by Lurka

A Taut Line - Loss

Artist: A Taut Line
Title: Never Any Gain
Type: Album
Label: Diskotopia
CAT: DSK065
Release date: 8th September 2023


1. Colour Science (feat. Chocola B)
2. Never Any Gain 
3. Silver Lake
4. Neutral Buoyancy
5. Carmine
6. The Limits and the Lows
7. The Following Contained (feat. Chocola B)
8. Kelsey Kerridge
9. Cameraphone
10. Chakka (feat. Chocola B)



Never Any Gain is the fifth album from Tokyo-based artist, creative director, and Diskotopia co-founder Matt Lyne under his A Taut Line moniker, following on from last year’s critically-acclaimed full-length Loss. Initially conceived as a yin to Loss’s yang before shaping its own creative path, Never Any Gain shares a lot of dualism with its predecessor. Shoko Sasano returns as a guest vocalist, but this time loaning her airy Japanese-language melodies to three tracks. Author Thomas Kendall has once again contributed his writing talents, penning the spoken-word lyrics of the title track. 

Never Any Gain marks a decade after the debut A Taut Line album Nitriding Portrait, and thematically the album is about a general lack of humanitarian progress manifesting into a personal mental stagnation amidst all the potentially terrifying technological advancements over the last ten years. 

Stylistically, however, there is a strong sense of renewal and reinvention throughout the LP. While there is a firm expression of the musical heritage of Lyne’s birth town Bristol — hinted at in places on Loss — a new kind of soul-searching can be heard in the disorientated fourth-world trademark A Taut Line sound. Mutant and contorted elements of dub techno, deep house, electro, trip-hop, post-punk, lounge, and garage can be found in unique juxtapositions across the ten tracks, while opener Colour Science fuses Japanese environmental-music ambient, 90s British electronica, and 80s 4AD output all at once.

Possibly the most accomplished and accessible A Taut Line material to date — a look back over the last ten years of albums and their influences while marking a shift into a new direction.

A Taut Line - Never Any Gain

Clips from Diskotopia release Silvestre - Frank Pike EP . Released 16th February 2015.

1. Frank Pike
2. Antes Éramos
3. Flash Fashion Design
4. Grito da Revolta

Silvestre - Frank Pike

Clips from Diskotopia release Computer Graphics - CCCP EP. Released 15th June 2015.
1. ​CCCP
2. ​Downloading
3. ​Itsnotaboutcomputers
4. ​Make_me_juice
5. ​Virtual Race

Computer Graphics - CCCP

Clips from Diskotopia release Greeen Linez - The Calm LP. Released 24th July 2015.

1. ​Dreamwalker
2. ​Asa Mist
3. ​Family Law
4. ​Secrets of Eden
5. ​Clutch
6. ​Findings
​7. ​Australasia
​8. ​First Blush
​9. ​The Calm Part 1
​10. T​he Calm Part 2
1​1. B​lue Tomorrow

The Calm is the third album from the duo of Chris Greenberg (from the British electronic pop band Hong Kong In The 60s) and UK-born/Tokyo-based DJ/producer A Taut Line (aka Matt Lyne, co-founder of the Diskotopia label). Following the anthemic dance, city-pop and BGM funk of their 2012 debut Things That Fade, and their kaleidoscopic, genre-spanning work with multiple collaborators on last year’s Izu King Street, with this album Greeen Linez close ranks and journey inwards.

Inspired by the deep and introspective atmospherics conjured by producers such as Larry Heard, Future Sound Of London, Soichi Terada, Move D and Newworldaquarium, on The Calm Greeen Linez have tried to apply similar principles to their own signature sound. The album draws equally from the optimism and euphoria of Britain’s second Summer of Love, the swooning romanticism of Golden Age Hollywood and the soft-focus, impressionistic soundscapes of Pat Metheny and Mark Isham - yet all tinged with a melancholy sense of reality rarely living up to youthful dreams.

The album begins with the duo’s first excursion into beatless ambience and ends with their most ambitious tracks so far - the two-part title epic and the florid aural melodrama of Blue Tomorrow - travelling in between from hyperreal braindance to fantasy TV movie score. The Calm is an album to soothe and stimulate, encouraging both escape and contemplation, and finding sources for deep listening in unexpected places. This summer, why not let Greeen Linez soundtrack your daydreams?

Greeen Linez - The Calm

Clips from Shy One - Other Side EP out on Diskotopia 8th April 2015.

1. Other Side
2. Mic Man
3. Beans
4. That Certain Something

Diskotopia is elated to launch into 2016 with the indelible Other Side EP from the inimitable Shy One. In addition to hosting her always incredible radio show on Radar Radio, Shy One released both her debut EP and LP with DVA Music and was also featured on Big Dada’s Grime 2.0 compilation as well as the Diskotopia VA Vol.1 compilation back in 2012. Here the Other Side EP is a presentation of tracks in which Shy One conveys a sense of exile; a grey and green insight into a suburban life of living and working in solitude surrounded by flora and concrete.


Other Side brings us down to an otherworldly cellar with hovering synths and a disembodied vocal chant that eases into a broken g-funk groove. Fit for any forward-thinking function, Shy One makes prime use of all-encompassing sub bass, nimble percussion and Sheffield-indebted bleeps to bring Other Side to another level of dissociative dancefloor immediacy. 

Moving the proceedings to carnival territory, Mic Man adopts a jump-up feel full of neon-flavoured rubbery synths, island percussion and a dash of Northern bassline that would sit right at home atop a bionic palm tree. Just as Mic Man says, “Don’t be standing back there like a plum man I wanna come out here and do my shit with my DJ!” 

The digi-calypso vibes of Beans are dashed with generous helpings of codeine-soaked boogie, bashment deconstructed riddims and an undeniable swing. Beans soundtracks both the warm up to an intense night on the horizon and concurrently smooths out the the toasted come-down hours later.

Shy One swerves to the left a bit with That Certain Something as cerebral pads coalesce with transitory frayed electronics. Free-form in spirit yet tethered to this mortal coil by poetic percussion and heaving subs, That Certain Something invokes the spirits of generations of UK soundsystem culture and beyond. 

Buy on Boomkat

Shy One - Other Side

Clips from Silvestre - Floresta EP released on Diskotopia 29th April 2016

Artist: Silvestre 
Title: Floresta EP 
Label: Diskotopia 
Release Date: 29th April 2016
 Cat: DSK032

1. Floresta
2. Gosto de Ti
3. Ride
4. Camisola dos Morcegos

After debuting in 2015 with the Frank Pike EP, Lisbon born, London based artist Silvestre returns to Diskotopia with the Floresta EP; a kaleidoscopic and transcendental exploration inspired by the ecológico meets béton brut collision of natural and urban landscapes. Having recently launched the Padre Himalaya label with fellow producer and friend Renato, and performing live sets on NTS Radio, Silvestre has no trouble keeping busy with a dedication to his work. So much of Silvestre’s talent for textural detail within primal rhythmic workouts is on full display throughout the Floresta EP and at the same time feels like just the tip of an incredible iceberg of ideas. Playing with the idea of a chronologically void collage of multi-lingual dance music tropes, Silvestre pastes latin, techno, jazz and ambient loops on top of each other to create a coagulated fusion finally cut and formulated into a present-day club music framework. The Floresta EP provides a clear-cut model of the kind of work only achievable from a very engaging, enthralling and constantly evolving artist, and we at Diskotopia are very excited to be putting it out.

Floresta delves into reductionist yet magnetizing club territory with dusty cross-rhythmic, cross-textural percussive phasing, sky-high shifting arpeggios and glass-cut pads cajoling together in full technicolor. The direction of the energy and fervor that the prismatic serpentine motifs generate is seemingly best suited for an ayahuasca spiritual awakening somewhere lost within the urban jungles of tomorrow’s yesteryear. 

Gosto de Ti heads deeper under the canopies with swelling synth work, driving tribal percussion and gyrating subs. As inebriating as it is steady, it's easy to get lost in the litany, but the tape-rewind switch provides enough punch to keep your wits about you while in the thick of all that is known to be present and what is not yet decided to come.  

Ride sounds like a woozy decaying end-of-night theme and the pulsing beginnings of a bright new dawn placed together in a concurrent paradox. Crushed and stretched descending choral pad sequences form a heady and womb-like enclosure which is then rotated and alchemized into ebbing and flowing crescendos for the multi-spirited tour guides of a future-past millennia.

Camisola dos Morcegos closes out the Floresta EP on a triumphant and equally introspective note. Silvestre serves a diamond-chipped nod to hazy Detroit club nights circa 1992 wIth a Nintendo-64 indebted lead tragically beautiful enough to soundtrack any number of dancehalls from now to eternity.

Silvestre - Floresta

Clips from DSK033: BD1982 - Mbielu / Bionic Marabou released on Diskotopia 10th June 2016

Artist: BD1982
 Title: Mbielu / Bionic Marabou
 Label: Diskotopia 
Release Date: 10th June 2016
Cat: DSK033

1. Mbielu
2. Bionic Marabou

Continuing on from the exemplary Shy One and Silvestre EPs this year, label co-founder BD1982 shares a two-track single on Diskotopia just in time for a hazy summer reconnaissance. Having recently relocated back to Tokyo, both Mbielu and Bionic Marabou reflect the familiar but also the uncharted circumstances Jersey-born producer Brian Durr has been immersed in as of late. Taking cues from a notion of an amalgamous animal kingdom where both cryptids and studied species alike share an equal measure of reverence, both tracks on display here represent the vast known/unknown as well as an impartially skewed version of the natural world. 

Mbielu derives it’s name from the cryptid Mbielu-mbielu-mbielu, a Stegosaurus-like creature native to the Likouala region within the Republic of the Congo. Waves of psychedelic digi-chemtrails wash over densely layered thickets of shuffling percussion and kick drums. Live backchat echoes like incantatory ancient prayer through leaves of pixelated snare drums, all carried by a primal groove akin to a prehistoric beast trudging through overgrown analog moss.

The curious textural plume of Bionic Marabou is due in part to its live recording and mixdown; awash with idiosyncratic cracks, fissures and sample-overlay artifacts. Decayed, hovering dread undercuts a club-ready bounce that reflects the marabou itself: a beautiful yet imposing avian capable of inspiring equal measures of awe and dismay. 

As always with BD1982's unique sound, it's impossible to pigeon-hole it into one genre - Mbielu sounds like a dancehall track spliced with shattered UK garage fragments and peeled warped techno, hastily taped together and thrown into a spinning candy-floss machine loaded with sand instead of sugar; Bionic Marabou - a VHS recording of that happening, played in reverse on a constantly melting TV. File next to other releases like that in your collection.

BD1982 - Mbielu / Bionic Marabou

Clips from DSK034: A Taut Line - 34 released on Diskotopia 1st July 2016

Artist: A Taut Line
 Title: 34
 Label: Diskotopia 
Release Date: 1st July 2016
Cat: DSK034

1. Burleigh St.
2. Timeplaza
3. SJK Legal
4. The Rouge

Hot on the heels of the sweltering split single from BD1982, Diskotopia continue their stride into the 2016 sultry season with a 4-track EP from Diskotopia founder and label co-conspirator A Taut Line. 34 is a succinct and poignant aperçu of Matt Lyne’s provocative trajectory under the A Taut Line moniker, a stark as ever contrast to his work as Greeen Linez, but also featuring some of his most club-focused material to date. As with his past two solo LPs, Nitriding Portrait and Mutual Prints, A Taut Line has static yet complementary influences working in harmony to forge unique "dance music" juxtapositions. 
Traces of rave and jungle’s fractured past coalesce with freestyle and Belgian beat moods on EP opener Burleigh St. As sun-stroked breakbeats buckle and deflect around stratospheric synth pads, hollow kick drums navigate a chopped and quantized Long Island MC lost-in-time through Moroccan flutes and heavy dancehall pressures.

Whilst revisiting the distorted-memory-of-mid-90s-handbag-anthems theme as heard on his 2011 track Luna 99, with Timeplaza A Taut Line delves a little deeper and heads into a subterranean abyss awash with chugging rhythms, dub-splashed chords, an acidic funked-out lead and strings that would leave a tear in LTJ Bukem’s eye. Pre-Millennium sci-fi crime vibes meet a Friday night out in the International Space Station rec room during a solar storm.

The UK funky after too much syrup and high-grade spliff vibes of SJK Legal works as a perfect auditory cocktail for hazy summer days. Recreating the experience of a humid August crawl through the streets of Shinjuku, with the relentless mélange of sounds imposing from all directions. Multifarious video screen audio, matsuri percussion and kawaii bell motifs captured from inter-dimensional FM frequencies percolate over a bassline cut straight from the cloth of the ever mutating hardcore continuum.

Deep but jagged house-not-house built for the late-night crew of millennials more inclined to construct neo-Mayan sundials than search the deep web for quasi-legal pharmaceutical remedies, The Rouge is a vow to the romance instilled into years of music built for the evening explorers of the world. Heaving and precise, the ghosts of 1993 come back in a vapor amidst the wails of a siren caught between memories of exasperation and ecstasy.

A Taut Line - 34

Clips from DSK035: SEEKERSINTERNATIONAL presents the RaggaPreservationSociety EP released worldwide November 4th

Artist: Seekersinternational
Title: RaggaPreservationSociety EP 
Label: Diskotopia
Release Date: 4th November 2016
Cat: DSK035

1. ​DubGanaGana
2. ​AmenBreadren (ft. Sipreano)
3. SoundDedication
4. DanceGwaan(EazeUp!)
5. NoCompetition (ft. K!dlat)
6. Bubblers(Inter­rude) (ft. Sipreano) 
7. TellURudeBwoy (ft. wzrdryAV)
8. Channel2(MurderousDub)
9. ForwardTheBass
10. GunRingoX1&2 (ft. Sipreano)
11. InterOuterNational

Diskotopia is elated to close out 2016 with a live-and-direct trajectile traced from Quezon City to East Richmond through to Tokyo as the inimitable Seekersinternational Presents the RaggaPreservationSociety EP. Self-described as “raw raggamuffin bizniz from a parallel dimension”, SKRS deliver eleven diamond-cut jewels born from a decades-long love of ragga jungle then sequenced into two mixtape-style A and B sides with accompanying digital-sliced tracks. Having melted minds and record players globally over the past several years, SKRS continue to thrill with their incendiary mutations of soundsystem-born musical exercises following incredible LPs on Bokeh Versions and Boomarm Nation. Throughout the proceedings of the RaggaPreservationSociety EP, SKRS lead an expedition through time, space and vibrational language like none has done before.

With such an expansive and breathtakingly singular approach to an undertaking such as the RaggaPreservationSociety EP we thought it best to share the inspirations from the SKRS crew themselves. SKRS OG Papa Cool Breeze states:

"These recordings were made at the unlikely convergence of London pirate radio transmissions, Filipino-Canadian mobile DJ crew gatherings and New-age music meditation communes. The sound palette may be familiar but the context and design are on some other sh*t. Previously known only in their own circles, peer-to-peer networks and Usenet newsgroups, we are now presenting them to a wider listening massive.”
Respected ethnomusicologist, Sipreano (Grammy-nominated producer/archivist behind Light in the Attic Record's Native North America and Jamaica to Toronto compilations) reports:

"We formed this project to archive and showcase works that widen our scope of understanding of this Ragga diaspora. Rather than a sterile preservation of established templates, the RaggaPreservationSociety aims at preservation-by-expansion; championing instead ragga jungle's intrinsic spirit of ghetto-futurism and back-a-yard innovation; simultaneously cultivating the roots while fostering new fruits.”
The RaggaPreservationSociety EP is an exemplary showcase of the untestable might of Seekersinternational; psychedelically fluid by means of communication yet rock solid in its construction. Reductionist, poignant and deadly in delivery, the level of creative freedom by means of musical dialogue spoken by SKRS is wholeheartedly awed upon and applauded by Diskotopia.

SEEKERSINTERNATIONAL presents the RaggaPreservationSociety EP

1. GREEEN LINEZ : Streetdancer

2. GREEEN LINEZ : Summer Bounce (Interlude)

3. GREEEN LINEZ : Moonlight Affair

4. GREEEN LINEZ : Crystalline Vision (Interlude)

5. GREEEN LINEZ : Feel the Pressure

Greeen Linez - Greeen Linez EP

ARTIST: Aemong
Title: 1000
CAT NO: DSK039
RELEASE DATE: 23rd March 2018

1. Slug
2. Chinese Tales
3. Mother Earth’s Twin
4. Dead Ghost
5. Mohawk
6. Old Lady Sings
7. After the Fire
8. Atheist
9. Bad End
10. Cymbal
11. Oh! Rain

Transitioning from Kym Sugiru’s fractal debut single, Diskotopia is elated to present Aemong’s staggeringly imaginative debut LP, 1000. Currently based in Berlin, Aemong is comprised of members Henrique Uba and Yu-Ching Huang; from Brazil and Taiwan respectively. The amalgamation of their shared backgrounds, influences and sonic identities encompass exactly what Diskotopia has been about from day one: the juxtaposition of cultures, sounds and ideas to forge exciting new paths.
 
Influenced by no wave, noise rock and legendary bands such as Fugazi and Big Black; Aemong had set out to build a denser sound with this album than with what they had done on their previously released material. The tracks comprising 1000 distill elements of new wave, dub, industrial and pop which are then meticulously siphoned into off-kilter compositions with mesmerizing effects. Unabashedly psychedelic, playful yet executed with deadly precision, Aemong have delivered a truly resounding body of work with the 1000 LP.
 
Album opener Slug fizzles to life with sludgy steps lumbering through splashes of feedback before a cyclical distorted bassline props up Yu Ching’s dreamlike vocal. Chinese Tales is perhaps the most literal meeting of minds with both Henrique and Yu Ching offering lyrics in their native tongues set against a dub-refracted backdrop sounding like Mad Professor engineering for Sonic Youth. 

Other highlights include Mother Earth’s Twin where some of the aforementioned hardcore influences shine through, albeit in an extremely splintered, chopped and screwed sense; the séance-like Dead Ghost with its static and stuttering interference squealing around Yu Ching’s lullaby-like melodies; and Old Lady Sings which kicks off a textured two-stepping dub psych-out, as if Adrian Sherwood’s mixing desk was circuit-bent with Mogwai’s pedal rack. 

The album as a whole showcases Aemong’s penchant for layering dense, cavernous tones and loping siren confessions, whilst driving bass, drums and vocals provide the only thing keeping our collective heads above water. With this paragon in polychromatism and disorientating cross-pollination, Aemong have succeeding in creating an impressive and incredibly apt climate barometer for those struggling to keep afloat in the modern world.

1000

Aemong - 1000

Clips from forthcoming Diskotopia release, Myakkah - Warehouse Soul. Out May 21st.

Myakkah - Warehouse Soul

ARTIST: Crysta Nagahori
TITLE: Pure Half Glass
CAT NUMBER: DSK041
FORMAT: Digital
RELEASE DATE: 8th June 2018

01. Do U Believe in Pure Love?
02. Half Moon
03. Cut Glass

We are happy to announce the next Diskotopia release of 2018, Pure Half Glass, 3 deep cuts from Japan based producer Crysta Nagahori.
The A-Side Do U Believe in Pure Love? is a kind of messy hybrid of industrial and slowed down happy hardcore. Mangled breakbeats, inspiriting organ pads, paper-thin synth bass arpeggios and detuned piano chords come together to create a delirious contemporary quasi-anthem. We don’t know exactly what this really is, or how to dance to it (if it was indeed made for that intention) but its sense of euphoria is contagious.

Half Moon is a hallucinogenic magnetite deep house number. Heavily worn and hazy it has a very reverie-esque quality to it. Like your memory of how the club scene sounded in that film your mate’s older brother videoed off the TV and you subsequently borrowed, except in reality it sounded nothing like this at all. 

Cut Glass has a heavy 80s Manchester influence, and the live post-punk percussion and bass almost totally obscure the four-to-the-floor 808 kicks propelling the rhythm through new age synth clouds. A heady psychoactive yet foot-shuffling closing number to an exceptionally divergent mini EP.

Crysta Nagahori - Pure Half Glass

ARTIST: Silvestre (@silvestre_pt)
TITLE: Girar EP
CAT NUMBER: DSK045
RELEASE DATE: 25th January 2019

01.	Ir a Sagres 
02.	Deptford Bus 
03.	RC Surfer
04.	Everybody Is Happy

Diskotopia is extremely proud to kick-start 2019 with Girar, a four-track EP of new kaleidoscopic productions from Lisbon-born, London-based producer Silvestre. 

Silvestre is no stranger to Diskotopia, this being his third release with the label, debuting with the gritty noise-and-thump Frank Pike EP in 2014, and following that up with the more buoyant, latinate Floresta EP in 2016. In addition to producing, Silvestre also co-runs the Padre Himalya imprint, putting out 2018’s critically acclaimed Focus EP from tombak virtuoso Mohammad Reza Mortazavi, Renato’s 2016 Alo Alo, plus his own Sport Theories and All The Things 12”s.

With the Girar EP, Silvestre continues to embrace the sonic culture-frictions between his home country and his adopted one. In doing so, he has created a pan-continental sound in which coarse-grained Ibero-percussive threads intertwine with digi-tropical synthetic tapestries; testimony of a truly unique artist in the modern current of electronic music. 

Opening with the bubbling Ir a Sagres, Silvestre constructs a basement-born psychotropic rhumba groove, strapped with fluttering arpeggios, nimble conga tappings and a firmly locked-in bassline. Following on, Deptford Bus is a woozier, mid-tempo spliff-house roller, stripped of the flora to leave a simple set up of haunted pads, crisp toms, and a deep sense of unease.

RC Surfer is perhaps the finest example of a soundclash of reggaeton, shoegaze and dub put to wax in recent memory. Here, Silvestre provides an ethereal soundscape with images of late-summer wining in city squares materializing through the cracks of the stoic riddims.

The Girar EP rounds out with the pseudo-rapturous Everybody Is Happy, a slice of breakbeat-house that nods lovingly to the halcyon days of rave past whilst holding a mirror at the present day with an unabating painted-on smile

Girar

Silvestre - Girar

Artist: Memotone
Title: Invisible Cities
Label: Diskotopia
Cat Number: DSK050
Release Date: 6th March 2020

A1. Eusapia
A2. Shadowed Grass
A3. Where Memory is Traded
A4. Measure for Measure
A5. Cities and the Sky
B1. Niigghht
B2. Peaches of Immortality
B3. Pyrrha
B4. Hidden Cities
B5. Wrapped One Within the Other

We at Diskotopia are incredibly excited to be presenting the new album Invisible Cities from Memotone, the principal alias for Bristol-based multi-instrumentalist, composer, and producer William Yates. As a solo artist, he has released on labels such as Black Acre, Bedouin, Project Mooncircle, and Brownswood either as Memotone or under his other alias Halfnelson. In addition to doing composition work for film and television, he works as a session musician for the likes of Dmitry Evgrafov, Connie Constance, and Phaeleh. He’s also part of the Avon Terror Corps project helmed by Bokeh Versions, Giant Swan. Noods et al., and is a member of ATC-affiliated Pheasantry Society. His music has been championed on the radio, a key influential medium for Yates growing up, by the likes of Gilles Peterson, Mary Anne Hobbs, Tom Ravenscroft, Nick Luscombe, and more.

In 2019, Memotone debuted on Diskotopia with the highly-praised split single Luaka / Sidewise Dub, and we are delighted to be working together with him again for the release of the stunning full-length LP Invisible Cities.

Informed by the atmosphere of the Italo Calvino novel of the same name, the ten tracks on Invisible Cities mutably shimmer somewhere between neo-classical-leaning ambient, fourth-world new-age exotica, and post-krautrock OSTs. By intermixing the different timbres of live string and wind instruments with astute synthesizer touches and skittish drum machine strokes, Yates has created an organic and ethereal magnum opus in which a brooding but graceful energy is manipulated into a delicately interwoven narrative.

The album opens with the spiritualist fusion of Eusapia, where a sensorial Saint-Saënsesque cello melody gets tangled between passages of Rhodes and piano, which in turn play call and response with Messiaen-Oiseaux clarinet phrases. Shadowed Grass provides an excellent minimalist second movement, evoking a collaborative live performance from Martin Denny, Yasuaki Shimizu, and Delia Derbyshire.

These two tracks provide the perfect prologue for Where Memory is Traded, a beautiful and evocative standout piece recalling the impressionistic-period soundtrack work of Alberto Iglesias, Mark Isham, and Mychael Danna that really demonstrates Yates’s exceptional composition & production skills, as well as his protean high-calibre musicianship.

Other highlights include Measure for Measure, a Nurse-With-Wound-plays-the-hits-of-Weather-Report number, and two tracks that teleport us to different periods of Bristol’s modern-music history; firstly Niigghht, a forest-floor, tribal-yet-jazzy downtempo gem reminiscent of the 90s work of Hooper, Marshall et al. and later Hidden Cities with its jittery electronic percussion recalling the circa-2010 prime of the city’s dubstep scene.

The album closes with the serene Wrapped One Within the Other featuring enchanting vocals from Stac Dowdeswell, a halcyon lullaby that eases us reluctantly back from the illusory world of the Invisible Cities to the stark reality from whence we came.

Memotone - Invisible Cities

Clips from Diskotopia release, Fujimoto Tetsuro - Sketches of the Other Tokyo. Out 25th February 2013.

1. In The Soil
2. Dramas
3. Puddle
4. Suminareta


Fujimoto Tetsuro - Sketches of the Other Tokyo

A1. Albion Dreamtime
B1. Left-Handed Capybara

Memotone, Bristol-based multi-instrumentalist, composer, and producer William Yates, returns to Diskotopia following his incredible Invisible Cities LP in March for a quick one-two punch snuck in before the end of the year. 

Albion Dreamtime is a much more stripped-down affair from his fourth-world concept album back in spring, and swapping his cello for an MPC, Yates bangs out a killer electro-noir A-side with a brooding quality that would strongly appeal to fans of Andy Stott, Delroy Edwards, and Helena Hauff. 

B-Side Left-Handed Capybara has more of a hip-swaying tropical-shuffle to it coming across like a Pat Metheny, John Herdon, and Equiknoxx collaboration. 

With the two tracks on Albion Dreamtime, Memotone gives us an adeptly balanced dance-floor-ready single — equally fit for home-listening — that perfectly encapsulates the dualism of our emotions as we near the end of the year in hibernation.

Memotone - Albion Dreamtime

Tokyo based electronic music record label and events collective run by A Taut Line and BD1982 with Am Rhein.

http://diskotopia.com/

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