Dimensions Festival: Featured

Disktopia (Tokyo, Japan)

Diskotopia

Afrikan Sciences carry the torch and grant the sight. This is his second offering for the ESP Institute. On the A side, 'The New Dun Language' shows us the meaning of loose. Literally everything about this masterpiece takes its time and operates in its own space, rhythms work together but stand apart, timbres inherantly laidback are made aggressively present, like the diffused attack of a shaker that’s shook with such purpose it’s no longer granular but razor sharp. The soundstage drops all around you like percussion shrapnel, splitting your attention every which way, while the string lines remind you that no matter how deep inside your head you’ve gone, there is always a nearby exit to the comforts of familiarity. Flip the record over, however, and the track 'In His Convenient Way' will even further discombobulate your sense of self. Do you have dreams you’re on a merry-go-round and with each revolution you try to hop off, but you can’t? Each time you cycle around, the tension grows and grows? Well, this is like that, menacing but not dark, a demented odyssey through an impossibly thick swamp where you swear the trees are whispering to you but can’t quite understand their language, yet still you manage to communicate. As the time passes, and you near end of the track, the impenetrable veil slowly lifts and you realize you’ve been in control all along. These two songs will two songs will help to heal, concentrate and transcend.

[ESP090] The New Dun Language b/w In His Convenient Way

Buy from ESP

[ESP090] AFRIKAN SCIENCES - A1 - The New Dun Language - SNIPPET

Promises

Movement 6

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 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.

Buy on Boomkat

SEEKERSINTERNATIONAL presents the RaggaPreservationSociety EP

Clips from DSK036: A Taut Line - Distraction Provisions released worldwide May 5th

Artist: A Taut Line
Title: Distraction Provisions
Label: Diskotopia
Release Date: 5th May 2017
Cat: DSK036
 
1. m15ntet
2. Purest Health2
3. Hatsudai
4. Arriving at the Lake
5. A Perpetual Medium
6. Carbon Joy
7. The Soft Touch
8. Natural Lawson
9. Hyacinthoides
10. FebruarySnow
11. Intertransmission
12. Estado Encontrado

Following on from last year's SEEKERSINTERNATIONAL presents the RaggaPreservationSociety EP, the first Diskotopia release of 2017 is the 3rd solo album from label co-founder Matt Lyne under his A Taut Line moniker.
 
More familiar to some as one half of Greeen Linez, Matt Lyne has also been producing very different sounds as A Taut Line for well over 10 years now. Distraction Provisions is his 3rd album release after 2013's Nitriding Portrait and 2015's Mutual Prints.
 
Initially not made to evolve into an album, the early workings of this collection were emotional reactions to the bleak social and political situation that unfolded throughout last year, and you can hear expansions of some of the more listenable of these sketches on tracks like Estado Encontrado, m15ntet and Arriving at the Lake. However, as desolate as some of the moods are on here, last year was one of intense mixed emotions as Lyne's first child was born, and there are also moments of sheer beauty, joy and redemption on this album too – the lush-yet-grainy pad-wash of A Perpetual Medium and the luminous tropicália syrup-tech of The Soft Touch being two examples that reflect that.
 
As residents of Japan are particularly aware, when two tectonic plates, or warm and cold air masses collide, there are very adverse results. When conflicting temperaments clash here, the product is the brutal choler in tracks like Purest Health2 (originally titled: A Taut Line in a Lairy Stress) and the weird dismantled hardcore-dying-at-samba-parade mess of Intertransmission.
 
Other notable tracks include the bleepy rave-tempo chalk dust electro number Hatsudai - although made as a tribute to those in the underground tirelessly keeping the declining Tokyo club scene alive (in the face of it being asphyxiated by industry players self-congratulating their own relentless mediocracy) - curiously illustrates an unexpected sense of optimism, albeit murky and dripping in paranoia, that does stealthily lie in places throughout the album. This same optimism can be found in the locked middle section of FebruarySnow, even though frozen in the centre of metallophone-led icy dub-techno melancholy.
 
But how to characterise the album as a whole in one effective soundbite? As Philip Sherburne wrote in Spin Magazine in 2013 of Nitriding Portrait - "What kind of music is this, exactly? Half a dozen listens in, and I’m still not entirely sure." - although Distraction Provisions has amalgamated mutant remnants of house, jungle, jazz funk, industrial, and new age 4th world neo-classicisms, once again, we're still not entirely sure either.

Distraction Provisions

A Taut Line - Distraction Provisions

written and performed by ashley koett
prod. by albert gordon & ashley koett
additional guitar by andres cordoba
mastered by michael stein
art by extra vitamins

call me

DSK001: A Taut Line & Hong Kong In The 60s - Unwoken

1. A TAUT LINE & HONG KONG IN THE 60S : Don't Wake Me

2. A TAUT LINE : Unwoken

3. A TAUT LINE : She Swims

4. A TAUT LINE : Luna 99

5. A TAUT LINE & HONG KONG IN THE 60S : Don't Wake Me (Dominatrix Remix)

6. A TAUT LINE / HONG KONG IN THE 60S : Don't Wake Me (Royalty Remix)

7. A TAUT LINE / HONG KONG IN THE 60S : Don't Wake Me (LDFD Remix)

8. A TAUT LINE : Luna 99 (BD1982 Remix)

A Taut Line & Hong Kong In The 60s - Unwoken

DSK002 BD1982 - VHS Nite

1. BD1982 : VHS Nite

2. BD1982 : Utukku

3. BD1982 : Amazon River Run

4. BD1982 : VHS Nite (Rewound Version)

5. BD1982 : Utukku (Ikonika & Optimum Remix)

6. BD1982 : VHS Nite (Starkey Remix)

7. BD1982 : VHS Nite (Slackk Remix)

8. BD1982 : Utukku (A Taut Line Remix)

BD1982 - VHS Nite

DSK003 Visionist - Rock The Flock

1. VISIONIST : Rock The Flock

2. VISIONIST : Survive

3. VISIONIST : Rock The Flock (Diskotopia Dub)

4. VISIONIST : Rock The Flock (Shy One Remix)

5. VISIONIST : Rock The Flock (Lamin Fofana Disingenuous Mix)

Visionist - Rock The Flock

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

DSK005: A Taut Line / BD1982 - DSK005

1. BD1982 : Calenture

2. A TAUT LINE : In This Heat

3. BD1982 : Calenture (Pacheko Remix)

4. A TAUT LINE : In This Heat (PhOtOmachine Remix)

5. BD1982 : Calenture (Murlo Remix)

6. A TAUT LINE : In This Heat (BNJMN Remix)

A Taut Line / BD1982 - DSK005

Mufaro’s Garden

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