Read more: https://ra.co/podcast/815

@sky_h1

RA podcast

RA.815 SKY H1

Depending on who you ask, Yousuke Yukimatsu is the best DJ in the world. Or at least in Japan. The eccentric Osaka-born, Tokyo-based DJ has built up an arsenal of fans and disciples—most famously Tzusing—who revere his cross-genre approach and knack for out-of-this-world blends. Case in point: he recently released a mostly ambient mixtape that somehow felt more gripping and propulsive than many techno DJ sets. He also used that release, Midnight Is Comin, to highlight Japan's underrepresented experimental electronic music scene, another sign of his wide-ranging and unusual tastes.

To go with his voracious hunger for all kinds of music, Yukimatsu can play alll different kinds of sets, from the meditative to the peak-time, all with the blending ingenuity and expert pacing we've come to expect. Just check his mind-blowing Boiler Room set from 2020. If that performance was nightclub madness and Midnight Is Comin was a slowly unfurling coil of downcast textures and moods, then Yukimatsu's RA Podcast is something in-between. 

Over two captivating hours, Yukimatsu brings in beats only to jettison them, returning several times to artists like Palmistry, Tzusing and Ryo Murakami. He anchors the mix with familiar tracks and voices before letting it drift out to sea again. It's also deeply personal, focusing on tracks from people he played with at his Zone Unknown parties in Osaka and Kobe, as well as his friends who participated in Midnight Is Comin.

Some of these blends need to be heard to believed. But more important is the pacing: the mix moves at such a slow but intuitive speed that it's almost tantric, the work of someone who knows how to keep the party going at a simmer without giving into the temptation to go faster. (He even says that the mix was supposed to be longer.) With hooky tracks from Palmistry and Equiknoxx up against explosions of noise and heavy EQing, Yukimatsu's RA Podcast is like dipping your head above and below water, soaking in and appreciating the beauty of both realms at once.

@yousukeyukimatsu

Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/849

RA.849 ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U

Belleville

Basalt Crush

Echoic

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
John Duncan & Joachim Nordwall
LP/Digital

OUT EARLY 2019

iDEAL Recordings 2019
distributed by Boomkat

Conventional Wisdom 04:02
Hard Swallow 3:56
Intermission 2:32
Soft Eyes 04:54
Say No 3:01
The Joke 12:05
The Beautiful Attempt 5:17
The Red Hot Alternative* 3:22

John Duncan: vocals, lyrics, shortwave
Joachim Nordwall: synth, drum machines, arrangements, vocals on *
Philip Marshall: design

Cover photo: Birdcage Mask, © John Duncan

John Duncan & Joachim Nordwall - SOFT EYES (from the "CONVENTIONAL WISDOM" iDEAL182 LP)

A late-stage rehearsal straight to cassette for reference. Recorded shortly before going into the studio, probably at John Henry rehearsal rooms. This is Mark on guitar, Lee on drums, and myself on piano and organ (the bass was always addressed in the studio once the basic track was down, which is why it doesn't feature here).
It's best to take the 8 minutes out and listen to the end, preferably in headphones, and in a quiet space,

Eden rehearsal cassette

Brodinski x Low Jack (BZH009)

A1 Andaman Sea
A2 Parhelion Two
B1 Tango & Cash
B2 Armor Sunken

@brodinskiofficial @low-jack

BZH009

Buy at Bandcamp

Andaman Sea

Index - Kainos
iDEAL197 LP
Available soon
Distributed by Boomkat

‘Kainos’ is the debut album by Index, a new electronic music project by British musician Simon Scott, recorded in 2016 to 2019 in Los Angeles. Scott is a veteran British composer, field recordist, drummer and mastering engineer. 
Taking inspiration from the conflicting opinions of Brexit debates from the Houses Of Parliament, Scott fed these live streams into his modular synthesiser for improvising and composing with. These symbiotic jams formed the foundations for each Index track, with only the sparse nocturnal beats from a Roland 909 and transparent editing of each modular jam to accompany the synthesis. 

Scott’s association with shoegaze, as a member of UK band Slowdive, and ambient influences, present in his solo work on Touch and 12k, is replaced by the early electronics influence of Coil and Throbbing Gristle on Insides, early metal pioneers Black Sabbath rising on tracks such as Blackesh and Exit B. The throbbing 909 pulse on Sprinkles provides a Dubbed out groove that calls to mind Arthur Russell jamming with Basic Channel and the bottom heavy bass lines of dubstep on Countdown has is visceral and contains a brooding sample of Rachel Goswell’s (from Slowdive) voice sucking everything into the mix.
A key conceptual influence to Kainos is Luigi Russolo’s Futurist manifesto for music, The Art Of Noises who glorifies the use of “noise-sounds” and other nonconventional musical sounds. This captures the imagination of a modern culture immersed in ecological disaster (climate catastrophe) and surrounded by the constant noise of capitalism and consumerism. Other inspirations for this album were taken from literary and non-musical ideas such as Donna Haraway’s 2016 book ‘Staying with the trouble; Making kin in the Chthulucene ’ and its central tenet that “our task is to make trouble, to stir up potent response to devastating events on a damaged earth”.
Index is the musical expression of Scott’s profound discontent with the lack of equilibrium we have right now and how disconnected we have all become in relation to nature and each other. Kainos means “now, a time of beginnings, a time for ongoing, for freshness” (Haraway). It is born from ecological grief and political frustration at a time when electronic and ambient music is sitting too comfortably in safe areas of sonic experience with nothing to say and providing aural wallpaper that is safe and sterile.

Echoic

Kane Ikin

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