Though texturally inspired by early new age records like Iasos’ Inter-Dimensional Music, and sample-based collage ventures like Colleen’s Everyone Alive Wants Answers, Lava Diviner (Truestory) is reinforced with a robust percussive backbone.

Botany, otherwise known as Spencer Stephenson, never resorts to shallow MPC trickery or contrived mixtape clumsiness. Instead, his proto-new age textures float elegantly atop a primal boom-bap pulse to paint a detailed, rhythmic mural that has the scope of a ‘70s prog rock epic.

“On Lava Diviner, I wanted to conjure that same headspace that artists like Roger Dean, and even Zdzislaw Beksinski project in their iconic paintings,” says Stephenson. “I tried to evoke those grand, colourful, surreal landscapes that are mind-bending yet oddly comforting - sci-fi and epic and holy, all at the same time.”

Following 2010’s quietly applauded Feeling Today EP, Lava Diviner (Truestory) was created at various Texas locations using a jumble of equipment, from aging desktop computers, samplers, guitars, bells, flutes, tape recorders, turntables, violin playing room-mates and much more besides. Guest vocals from Brainfeeder artist RYAT were added to the mix and the final creation was mastered by Matthewdavid (Leaving Records / Stones Throw).

As the product of a lengthy gestation period, Lava Diviner (Truestory) follows Botany on an intensely personal journey as he makes his way home within himself, returning to his celestial centre.

Loosely a concept album documenting a religious sect that prays for a volcano to erupt, Stephenson set out to make a kind of instrumental storybook of an album, using only the emotional tone that his theme might evoke.

However, by the time the record was finished, it became clear that the emotional tone was really coming from own life, rather than any concept or allegory.

“As work on the record progressed, I began to realize that the musical journey was a direct reflection of my most hard-to-quantify life experiences.” he explains. “Lava Diviner is about very real transformations in my being, so it’s a true story in that sense… I always imagined my first album being like a volcano, with years of pent-up emotion and musical ideas bubbling up to a cathartic release. So, I always knew that symbolism would end up being a part of my first full-length.”

The volcanic sense of release is palpable. Lava Diviner (Truestory) easily moves past stale tropes of beat-based music, and brings to life a fully-realized, album-length outpouring of profound human emotion.

BOTANY "Quatic"

beat

01 Queens

"Magnétisme & Vibrations" is a tape project. Including some old works from Syncboy (Leipzig), Shitcluster (Den Haag), Tolouse Low Trax (Düsseldorf), Art & Technique (Paris). 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  It's not a collaborative work, it's a compilation. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  Limited press to 40 copies / NO MORE. Duration: 90min. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -   SUPPORT & BUY IT HERE - https://melodiessouterraines.bandcamp.com/album/syncboy-shitcluster-tolouse-low-trax-art-technique-magn-tisme-vibrations ( incl. digital files)

/// SYNCBOY /// rarely showing his head out the machines, was discovered by the live he played at Sameheads, Berlin, in 2016. This gloomy psychedelic & tenebrous universe pushed me in an total extase at the first listen. We could imagine it's a band playing ... But it's a one-man project propulsing into the most minimalistic aspects of electronic music through misty atmospheres.

/// SHITCLUSTER ///, long time collective or artisans/ Den Haag's duo explores sounds where nobody goes... Presenting an Harsh/Tech/No-ise world with delirious touch penetrating deeper & deeper into your mind. They are running the CHAN'S label, releasing self stuff or local musicians... . HERE, access to forbidden, rare disturbing archives: (http://www.loslaten.tk/blog/tag/shitcluster/) 

/// TOLOUSE LOW TRAX /// Kreidler's member, Salon des Amateurs's resident, one of the newest Düsseldorf activist appears a lot these days... But long time before all of that, he permitted to bring up attention to the local scene and be connected to a certain 'hyped' scene, bringing a lot of eyes on him and release on labels like... Bureau B, Karaoke Kalk,Wonder, Themes For Great Cities & Kiff SM/ Detlef Weinrich signed a non-compromised techno. His groove is slow, hypnotical, tenebrous & brutal, but not only ... This is a sensitive, orchestrated -   progressive sound. 
 
/// ART & TECHNIQUE /// is a late 70's french group run by Bernard Filipetti who was oriented into the purest objectivity of what is call "creation". Uniting with people sharing similar vision of art, he was firstly creator of dark ambient sounds with D. Grimaud (former of Camizole)and then, influenced by technical contemporary process, started to create what English journalists defined as 'industrial music, late 70's. Art & Technique only released 2 albums & 2 singles but never died... Still alive, composing music and playing live, Bernard is still exploring electronic sound through his large and organic parisian studio. 
The track from the tape was recorded in 1982 with a Bernard's friend called "Fernand", rue Chaptal, Paris.

BUY TAPE

Syncboy, Shitcluster, Tolouse Low Trax, Art & Technique - "Magnétisme & Vibrations"

No Sister - Overpass

mimikri

Con Conn Was Impatient

erosion,
jam w/ my dr-55,
final mix 181129
kiss

EROSION

OPL
scetched as a new tune for "hansen_windisch" february 2013 completly rearranged, overdubbed and downmixed for a planed tapecompilation on
181129.
love.

The Book Of Traps And Lessons

Three Sided Coin

LABLAB

shows:
150731 "syncboy", garbicz, camp wielki 
150803 "syncboy" w/gwen kyrg/hansi noak, leipzig, tonellis
150807 "syncboy", keine fische aber grethen festival 
150808 Humulus Lupulus, Vieth/Scheyern
150821 chemnitz, Wolkenkuckucksheim Festival 
150822 hamburg, gaengeviertel (tbc)
150905 basel, wasserstrassenfest (tbc)
150911 leipzig, odermannstr (!)