Full of dreamy textures and languid melodies, XOOMIN is a soundtrack for drifting off into the abyss, but in the hands of Alloy Sea (a.k.a. Mor Elian), that journey feels downright playful. Although the Berlin-based producer is best known for her dancefloor-focused creations, 2020’s Petrichor (a 50-minute composition that officially debuted the Alloy Sea project) showcased an unexpected talent for abstract soundscapes and arrhythmic jitters, hinting at ambient techno but ultimately offering something much more adventurous.

XOOMIN—an album that was specifically written for Paralaxe Editions after label founder Dania Shihab reached out to Elian about working together on a new Alloy Sea release—ventures into similarly ethereal waters as Petrichor, but it’s also brighter and more colorful than its predecessor, its gleaming FM synth improvisations flanked by scuttling rhythmic bursts and the occasional wonky bassline, not to mention celestial snippets of Elian’s own voice. It’s not pop, but it’s not quite ambient either, floating instead in a nebulous (and sneakily fun) zone that borrows from new age, IDM and the weirder corners of bass music.  

______

Music by Mor Elian.
Mixed by Rhyw.
Mastered by Rupert Clervaux.
Design by Oficina de disseny.
Printed at L'automatica.
Text by Shawn Reynaldo.

Alloy Sea - You stepped outside

Limited edition 200 copies 12" w/ Screenprinted logo on new Ecstatic sister label Entropy Trax. Mastered by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering.

Artist: Gavin Russom
Title: The Purge / Enthroned
Label: Entropy Trax
Release Date: 23rd June
Format: 12"
Cat.#: ET001

ENTROPY TRAX, is the new sister label to Kompakt's WALLS helmed ECSTATIC imprint. Expect limited edition hand artworked white-label 12"s from a variety of artists, focussed on experimental dance floor sounds.

The debut release comes from DFA's Gavin Russom (The Crystal Ark/Black Meteoric Star) with a titanic double-header that announces the first of a series of releases for the label. Recording under his own name for the first time since 2011's 'Night Sky', this material finds Russom creating visceral and hypnotic dance floor tracks.

Gavin Russom on 'The Purge':
"I think of this as a meditation on the transformative power of illness. Cathartic purging and even the use of drugs to replicate states of extreme illness is a part of many healing traditions interestingly enough. In fact, after titling the track, I read in Jonathon Miller Weisberger's fantastic new book 'Rainforest Medicine' that in the urban version of the Yage ceremony the plant concoction they use is called 'La Purga' - literally 'The Purge' in Spanish."

Gavin Russom on 'Enthroned':
"David Brown's book 'Santeria Enthroned' was sitting on my kitchen table as I worked on this track and the titled seemed to fit it well after finishing it. I wanted to evoke a complex image of empowered femininity in the track, much like the images of orishas like Ochun, Yemaya and Oya that Brown describes in his writing. I was creating a kind of praise poem in sounds that describe a distinctly female type of energy. 'Drops' are eschewed in favor of rushes and shifts. There's an aspect of connectedness, especially with the powers of nature such as the river, the ocean and the wind that I wanted to capture…"

Tracklisting:
A. The Purge 9.44
B. Enthroned 13.01

PRE-ORDER!

Gavin Russom - The Purge

Gavin Russom 
'Telemetry / The Beneficent, The Merciful' 
Entropy Trax 
1st December 2014 
Format: 12" 
Cat. #: ETX002

• Mastered by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering
• Limited to 300 copies
• Screen-printed paper sleeve

Gavin Russom returns to Ecstatic sister label Entropy Trax for the fledgling label's second release. Building on the brooding atmosphere of 'The Purge / Enthroned' with a pair of throbbing, synth-powered & acid-infused cuts, the 'Telemetry/The Benificent, The Merciful' 12" draws together sonic touchstones found in Russom's many projects - Black Metoric Star, The Crystal Ark, and his work with Delia Gonzalez - melding them into two singular productions that pump and drive like the sequenced machines that power them.

Gavin Russom on 'Telemetry': "This came out of some deep digging into the abilities of one of my self-designed analog processors. I was demonstrating to someone how a second layer of filtering can turn a simple 16 step sequence into an evolving line which seems to never quite repeat the same way, sequences that don't strictly repeat but rather seem to have a life of their own that expands as their more rudimentary parts lock into repetitive motion... I built a track around it by building up layers around the central sequence that grow in impact as the track unfolds."

"The title 'Telemetry' sums up a nice connection between the machine and the body, as often it is used to track or monitor living creatures from distance. It also functions like a metaphor for what happens in a club as a DJ or musician uses the technological medium to bridge the distance between his own inner rhythms and those of the others, at a distance on the dance floor. Or at least that's how it works for me."

Gavin Russom on 'The Beneficent, The Merciful': "Although I think of all music as prayer this may be one of the most overtly prayerful tracks I've ever made. The title comes from the asmāʾ allāh al-ḥusnā or 99 names of Allah and is a phrase that opens many Islamic prayers. My mother, although not Arabic nor Muslim, was raised in the Middle East, and I grew up in an atmosphere of much celebration of Arabic and Islamic culture through food, music, art and spirituality."

"This prompted me to study Islam and its traditions deeply for some time and I found them to be incredibly beautiful, deep and poetic. There is nothing overtly Islamic or Arabic about the music, except perhaps some unconscious inspiration from Islamic devotional music that I love. I chose the title to recognize the depth of spiritual devotion and love present in these traditions and how it has inspired me. Total devotion to the divine is what I seek in my own life, and what I seek to express through my music."

Tracklist: 
A. Telemetry 
B. The Beneficent, The Merciful

BUY!

Gavin Russom - Telemetry

THE BIT B0015 FROM LTZCAST 14
ARTIST: LUTZFIRE

THE BITS | LTZCAST 14

THE BITS: B0015 | LTZCAST 14

Not Waving - Redacted

• 1st vinyl edition of Not Waving’s absorbingly raw, adventurous 2nd album
• Originally issued in edition of 100 gold tapes in 2013. Now sought-after 2nd hand
• A refresher of sorts, following the powerful new sound of Not Waving’s Animals LP for Diagonal
• Newly remastered for vinyl by Matt Colton @ Alchemy in an edition of 500
• RIYL Pye Corner Audio, John Carpenter, Edward Artemiev

With the necessary vinyl reissue of Not Waving’s sophomore solo LP Redacted (2013), Alessio Natalizia reminds us of his nascent psychedelic side in light of his lucid, skizzo deviations on the Animals album for Diagonal. While there’s a mutual sense of technoid momentum to both albums, Redacted is a far gauzier, freeform and sensual beast; one richly steeped in proto/post-club atmospheres and allowing his imagination to run away with itself.

Conceptually, Redacted pursues the “classified” themes of his Remote Viewing-inspired Umwelt (2013) LP into even murkier departments, drawing subtly ‘marish parallels between the cold war atmospheres that birthed original post punk, industrial and proto-techno, and the current pallor of socio-political unrest that pervades our present situation.

Omitting the original tape’s expansive closer for the sake of a single LP cut, this vinyl version plays out like an alternative soundtrack to scenes in the overgrown, radioactive zones of Tarkovsky’s Stalker, using an anachronistic palette of analogue machinery to emphasise a sense of fluid, shimmering motion and out-of-place-and-timelessness that genuinely goes straight to the head with trippy effect. 

Swampy slow techno horror themes vacillate with decayed pastoral panoramas and windows of synthetic optimism, both lush and disquietingly needling, using dissonance and sweeps of hazy noise to ultimately spell out a foreboding but dreamlike sort of electronic subterfuge and suspense that resonates with the nostalgic Stranger Things score as much as Leyland Kirby’s Intrigue & Stuff series.


Not Waving - Redacted 2 [ELP023]

Not Waving - Populist EP [E026]

• Not Waving recoils back to his Ecstatic label after an ace LP + 12”s for Diagonal 
• Four tracks flirting with sleazy New Beat, nEuro EBM, Acid n0!se and deep-raved Italo
• Edition of 500 copies, initial 200 pressed up on coloured vinyl. Housed in fluoro green/hot red jacket
• Mastered and cut by Matt Colton @ Alchemy

Not Waving takes 2017 by the scruff with his Populist EP, consolidating the myriad stripes of his acclaimed Animals album in four peaktime hammers forged for darkrooms, basements and warehouses alike. 

If last year’s LP saw you thru from day-into-night, or vice-versa, this one is aimed squarely at the gurny hours of abandon in between, with ferocious acid lines and jabbing drums stripped down and strapped up to prompt reckless behaviour on the ‘floor.

Containing his first material written in the wake of Animals, the Populist EP is Alessio Natalizia a.k.a. Not Waving’s strongest dancefloor statement since the 1-sided Get Serious (2015) bullet. It finds him taking the opportunity to make straight-up bangers, rather than ‘songs’, which were thoroughly tried and tested over successive tours of the USA and countless shows in Europe too in the last 9 months.

Too Many Freaks is an anthem in waiting, harnessing a barely-hinged sense of chaos between its careening synth lead, acid squabble and velvet-clad kicks, before the dry-rutting jag and plaintive vox of Vibe Killer takes a dog-grip like This Heat meeting Tuning Circuits.

Top marks go to the check-your-stylus intro for Control Myself on the B-side, which holds its fizzy line into a fetid crevice of what sounds Russell Haswell ramping with Powell, whereas the crooked clampjaw groove of Ur Lucky Ur Still Alive pivots around a sample of a lone raver at Atonal, Berlin “who had no idea how she got there and what she did the night before”. A ruddy good night all-round, then?

Alessio Natalizia a.k.a. Not Waving co-owns the Ecstatic label alongside Sam Willis. Not Waving is widely regarded a connoisseur of Italian new wave and post-punk music - he compiled the Mutazione (Italian Electronic & New Wave Underground 1980-1988) set for Strut - and has issued a series of acclaimed, sought-after, playfully anachronistic twists on that sound since 2013.

Populist

NOT WAVING - TOO MANY FREAKS [E026]

Quick Botta

Written by Berlin-based producer Linus Nicholson, aka Ausschuss, 'Room1' is a decidedly sci-fi take on electroacoustic experimentation — a grainy exodus into wistful neoclassical compositions and data-moshed found-sounds. At times the EP calls to mind Mica Levi’s Under The Skin soundtrack with its icy and foreboding soundscapes. Opener ‘Drown Later’ begins with caustic splashes of ambience, skittish percussion swaying to and fro lazily. Then there are tracks like ‘Blinding Partner’, a looming and sinister presence full of windswept drones and howling incantations.

With the release due on November 2nd, the Milan-based label generously offered up an exclusive preview of title track, a head-spinning mesh of granulated chimes, undulating low-end and gravelly atmospherics. 

Read more: http://straylandings.co.uk/news/premiere-ausschuss-haunter-records

Room1

Premiere: Ausschuss - Room1 [Haunter Records]

released in 2016 on a JJ funhouse compilation

Calypso Dream

"Flowers" is a new track from ELLLL, who's set to continue her prolific 2019 run with the striking new EP ‘Glisten.’ Fresh off releases on Glacial Industries and First Second, the Irish-born, Berlin-based shapeshifter takes a creative turn here, setting aside her bassy excursions and techno flirtations for something much more cinematic in scope. Rich in melody, this record finds ELLLL taking an orchestral approach, weaving together piano swells and delicate strings to create a truly immersive listening experience.

All music by ELLLL.
Mastered by Rupert Clervaux.
Artwork by Oficina de disseny.
Photograph by Claire Cichy.

Glisten

ELLLL "Flowers"

This three-way collaboration was initiated by Sugai Ken in the early months of 2019. His idea was to compose a track in the image of the Crape Myrtle plant with each artist expressing an element of the plant with sound, Andrew Pekler: "Flower", Ben Vince: "Soil" Sugai Ken: "Water". The parts were then mixed and mastered by Ken in August 2019.

pay what you like via bandcamp https://benvince.bandcamp.com/track/crape-myrtle

Gavin Russom - The Purge

ECSTATIC

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