Yula Kasp & MI.RO - Relfections

Those familiar with the world of dub disco and modern Balearica should know all about Layne Fox, a San Francisco-based producer who has released some killer records over the last decade as part of noted collective 40 Thieves.

The Bay Area ensemble has been responsible for some killer records, including gems on Rong Music and Leng, who released their expansive debut album The Sky Is Yours back in 2014.

Now, Fox has decided to go it alone for an outing on Magic Feet that marks his first solo outing since 2005’s Move Me under the Tuffy alias. It’s something of a gem, too, effortlessly combining many of his familiar influences with nods towards druggy Italo-disco and horizontal pop.

Fox delivers two contrasting versions of No Runnin’ Away. There’s a Vocal Mix, where Sunny’s icy, atmospheric voice drifts over a chugging mid-tempo groove built around a Moroder-style bassline, swirling electronics, dreamy chords and metronomic beats. Typically, Fox also provides a tasty Dub, where select vocal snippets drift in an out of a delay and reverb heavy mix that also gives increased prominence to his stretched-out synths and late night electronics.

Magic Feet boss Craig Bratley handles remix duties himself, offering a complimentary but notably different interpretation. His version subtly emphasizes the track’s downbeat pop credentials, pushing the vocal to the fore above a sparse electro groove, dreamy pads and flashes of acid-inspired electronics. Think Cold Wave vibes but with actual production values, not pretend ‘mastered on cassette’. It’s the perfect accompaniment to Fox’s hypnotic, head-in-the-clouds original.

Musik Nonstop-No RuninAway (Craig Bratley remix)

Stefan Schwander aka Harmonious Thelonious is definitely not a newcomer. He has been around for a long time and has already released lots of amazingly varied music on labels such as Emotional Response, Italic, Meakusma and Diskant. He’s also an integral part of the infamous Duesseldorf / Salon Des Amateurs axis that is an obvious hotbed of talent. He describes his style as "American minimalism vs. African drumming vs. European sequencing", a heady mixture which is clearly evident on this EP though with a definite Middle Eastern twist. At Versatile HQ they were introduced to this clutch of tracks by one of the members of Acid Arab and were totally blown away. Stefan has a very unique production style, fusing all of the above elements with a hint of Gamelan, a dash of tweaked FM synthesis type sounds with a dose of warm ambience and finally his own singular touch on the mix. Here premiered is the b1 "Defender", our fave cut of this delightful four tracker. revisiting some of the A-side sound palette, but catapulting those cosmic tones into a realm of amphetamine fuelled intensity - peaktime drummy psychedelia for any and all dance floors. Another winner on Versatile ! Cop it here : http://shop.versatilerecords.com/album/harmonious-thelonious-4-tracks-ep-ver117

LISTEN ON YOUTUBE

PREMIERE : Harmonious Thelonious - Defender

2ème morceau de la face A du premier album de Why The Eye, sorti officiellement le 4 Septembre 2017 sur les labels Angstrom et Plynt.

Why the eye

Plastique - album version

Gravedad Cinetica - Glass Melting (Original Mix)
Gravedad Cinetica - Glass Melting (Dark Vektor)
Gravedad Cinetica - Mental Projection (Original Mix)

MASTERING / ARTWORK:
MARV LIEGAT [BATTERY'PARK'STUDIO]
@battery-park-studio

Gravedad Cinetica - Glass Melting Preview

from Picadilly records:


"Benedikt Frey and Naia d’Alò's Init project received great initial praise through two well conceived pieces for John Talabot's Hivern disco back in 2015. Now the pair are back on Les Disques De La Mort with a four track EP rich with their moody techno delights.

"Stereometric" sees a swollen electric base gently plume as ghostly vox and slowly eroding artefacts are scattered through the mix; landing somewhere between Bay Area minimal wave and the taut techno meanderings of Marcel Dettman. 

"Nuts" is an anthemic slice of darkwave electro; tense, a little bit menacing and cinematic as hell - conjuring images of late night mutant car chases through guttural cityscapes. 

"Wheels" sees us dive down smacked-out electro-post-punk rabbit hole; landing in a drug stained bedsit around Hulme Crescents circa '89 with next doors party still in full swing two days since it began. 

"Mindwork" invites said neighboring crusties to an all-night post-Goa-trance rave up on some moonlit beach and populated by shady drug dealers and Mad Max type characters all locked into its full-throttle stomp. "

DLM019 B2 INIT - Mindwork  PM V2 1644 PM

Ciao ragazzi. Rome's Teslasonic (@mr_feedback) is next on Budapest-based Dalmata Daniel (@dalmata-daniel) with a 12-inch. The remix of 'Quantum paradox' was done by The Hacker (@the-hacker). The Frenchman also has a release on Teslasonic's MinimalRome (@minimalrome) label. The remix is a more technoid approach to the original electro track. The patterns are changed (it's a new track) and the result is a dance floor hit.

Quantum Paradox

PREMIERE: Quantum Paradox (The Hacker Remix)

Strapontin is one of our favorite musicians. Having released on I'm a Cliche, La Belle and recently with Nein Records, it's fair to say we don't hear nearly enough from the Brussels based very talented producer. However, as Fondofunk attests to, sometimes, less is more.
The Legendary Optimo rightly bagged this for their sub label, Optimo Digital Danceforce and an industrial slice of Fondufunk, it is a track which would have fit into one of their legendary sets at Glasgow's Sub Club.  A maximal piece of machine funk which is well oiled and kranky as a krank fueled krank monster put together and reanimated by doctor Frankenstein and even if saxophones in dance music can be a bit like marmite...  even if it is, it is marmite smeared on a naked well toned and well oiled torso dancing in a dark room full of other naked well oiled well toned torsos. You need this in your lives, you sexy, sexy things.

https://soundcloud.com/strapontin
https://soundcloud.com/optimo-music

PREMIERE | Strapontin - Fondofunk [Optimo] 2018

Fantastic Twins - Lost In Germany EP

A1) Why Are You Here? - 8.04
A2) Wrong Place Wrong Time Wrong People - 8.15

B1) Fur Stunden Lang - 7.42

The fourth AF Trax release is a three track EP from our long time ally The Fantastic Twins, who has the following to say about her EP - 

This EP is a small collection of works I crafted over the past couple of years in the process of working on my live show. I have been performing versions of these tracks countless times and yet never played them twice the same way. To me, they have been material in constant motion, so shaping them into a “finished” form was a risky challenge. Something I was also wary of - would it mean they would become set in stone? Would it mean I’d have to somehow “rationalise" the music - via the mind - as opposed to letting it run into the wildness of its physical live experiences? 

Whilst editing these tracks into a format that could be released, I realised that instead of shaping them into the mould my mind first intended to give them, I could in fact use the power they revealed each time I performed them to an audience and inject some of that energy - as much as it is possible to capture and recreate it in the studio - back into this EP. Then of course, it meant letting go on things I usually like to control more, and better. 

But isn’t it the power of music to let it take you where you didn’t plan to go? And how incomplete would the music be if our inspiration didn’t feed off the collective experience of dancing to music together? I’ve lost myself (and my twins) many times throughout the process - not only on German soil - I have sometimes landed in the wrong place, but I may have found one answer yet in the form of another question. Why are we here if we can’t dance?

That reminds me of the words of Pina Bausch “Dance, dance or we are lost”. Lost in our internal struggles as individuals (or imaginary twins). Lost in a society where our relation to the other is often marked by fear, power or violence. We feel the need to resist. Yet nowadays, taking a political stance as an artist is too often being instrumentalised as another tactics or accessory to gather more popularity, reducing the political message to nothing else but a branding attempt. Isn’t it anyway the power of capitalism to assimilate everything, even contradictory or once-upon-a-time subversive voices? All to end up on a “Rave” or “Feminist” H&M t-shirt. Slogans that have been emptied of their initial force and substance, now replaced by their commercial value. I strongly doubt that more empty words poured in vain on social media will help us much. But, like Pina Bausch, like JD Twitch, I have always firmly believed in dancing as a physical, social and fundamental act that leads us to share a common space with others and embrace otherness. Standing together, dancing together when everything else forces us to divide. 

May the music on this EP be, I hope, a possible answer to its own title.

All label profits will be donated to Hope Not Hate (www.hopenothate.org.uk) which campaigns to counter racism and fascism.

Released on vinyl (and digital) on April 12th 2019. Distributed by Kompakt.

AF Trax 004 - Fantastic Twins - Lost In Germany 12" EP (sampler)

CDIII

Starwatcher II

This place was like a dream, a paradise beneath the clouds. Travelling downstream, rowing in Eden they watched as the tall reeds and the exotic birds passed by on the riverbank. Sat upon their little wooden boat they were at peace with the world as the rain began to fall softly all around them, it was not cold but warm and they smiled as they looked up at the heavens above. The clouds did not bother them any more for they had learnt to exist beneath the haze. 

Optimo Music are back with another release in their digital danceforce series. The series of releases is becoming quite the force having acted as an outlet for the likes of Tornado Wallace, Marcus Worgull, Vanessa Worm, Feon, Theus Mago and more. 

Now it's Bleaching Agent's turn to release a two track stormer of an EP described by himself below:

“A doe-eyed rave anthem replete with lush strings pushed to breaking point and a fistful of tuneful pleeps thrown in for good measure”.

PREMIERE: Bleaching Agent - Rowing In Eden [Optimo Music]

En una realidad paralela nos encontramos con este sujeto. 

Su primer contacto con los sintetizadores fué en una fábrica de sintetizadores cuánticos en una de las bases lunares de Júpiter. Allí empezó a experimentar con diferentes máquinas con las que generar grandes líneas de bajos, ritmos sincopados y arpegios cósmicos. 

Necesitaba más créditos para poder reparar el vehículo espacial, a si que a parte de trabajar en la fábrica buscó clubs nocturnos por la zona donde poder mostrar y dar a conocer sus creaciones musicales. 
Al mismo tiempo dichas creaciones las envía por código digital por diferentes puntos de la galaxia teniendo muy buena acogida en diferentes labels (Anti Gravity Device, Battery Park Studio, Elektrodos, Electroclub)

Después de años de investigación y con el vehículo espacial reparado decide adentrarse en el espacio y continuar explorando nuevos horizontes donde expandir su música. 
En esos viajes cósmicos encuentra nuevas constelaciones donde la música de forma analógica la imprimen en un disco de vinilo con una técnica milenaria.
Impresionado por dicha técnica decide enviar sus creaciones que finalmente ve editadas en vinilo por Waste Editions y Aspecto Humano.

Actualmente prosigue con sus investigaciones y experimentos armónicos en algún punto del cosmos.

Gravedad Cinetica - Glass Melting Preview

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