Electronic in Spatial Audio

Buy → l-ky.me/eli

New York based percussionist and composer Eli Keszler is set to release his new album Icons on June 25 via LuckyMe. Icons is an immersive work in perpetual motion, evoking a glorious and dystopian western world. Known as a frequent collaborator to Oneohtrix Point Never, Laurel Halo, Kevin Beasley, and Rashad Becker, Keszler’s latest solo venture offers up a latticework of melodic percussion, drum set, and electro-acoustic instrumentation, built upon fragments of American abstraction, ancient scales, industrial percussion, and jazz-age film noir to achieve its feeling of imperial decay. Keszler’s instrumental performances are framed by panoramic recordings of New York City and the Odyssey Cave, along with other on-location audio from his global travels, defining an expansive music that takes on hyperreal forms difficult to describe outside of the loss and wonderment that defines our age.

“Icons is the music I made during a time where travel and trade were effectively suspended,” states Keszler. “I spent nights wandering around Manhattan collecting recordings of the empty and silent city where a car alarm was audible from blocks away, where the hum of the electrical grid and the clash of bicycle gears suddenly occupied a massive amount of space. I spent the entirety of that year in Manhattan, probably the longest I’ve stayed in one place in over a decade. The island was essentially shut down and running at an erratic pace. The speed of the city seemed to oscillate from intense speed - ambulances, protests, helicopters — to near stasis — a sort of beautiful, strange, serene stillness. I saw something strange and beautiful happening: power cracking and people changing. With Icons, I was working with these mythological tropes that are deteriorating and decaying before our eyes to create a music that finds beauty in our fragile and unstable reality.

Keszler has released music on Shelter Press, Empty Editions, ESP Disk and PAN. His 2018 album Stadium was awarded Boomkat’s Album Of The Year. Most recently, Keszler wrote the original score to Dasha Nekrasova’s feature The Scary of Sixty First (which made its recent premiere at Berlin Film Festival) and contributed to Daniel Lopatin's original score for Josh and Benny Safdie's Uncut Gems. Keszler’s music, installation, and visual work have appeared at the Whitney Museum, Lincoln Center, MIT List Center, Victoria & Albert Museum, Sculpture Center, The Kitchen, South London Gallery, Hessel Museum, Harvard's Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Luma-Foundation, Barbican, Walker Art Center, and MoMA PS1.

Icons

Static Doesn't Exist

Back to the source of it all, London’s Charles Green revives the initial grit of techno through hi-NRG blends of powerhouse percussions and dusty atmospheres. Teaming up with Neighbourhood boss Tasha for a special B2B, the British jockey and his acolyte grace us with a two-hour masterclass flush with propulsive old-school rippers, acid-drenched delicacies and further mind-expanding rave material. A true sense of pristine pioneering and enjoyably broad-spirited collagism flow across Green and Tasha’s transmission, making this listen a much essential listen. Lock in!

soundcloud.com/charlesgreen
soundcloud.com/dj_tasha

Reclaim Your City  

Reclaim Your City 476 | Charles Green b2b Tasha

Blume

Blume (Bendik HK Edit)

Christopher Willits - VISION

It’s Perfectly Clear Right Now is the lead single from Alt-Mobeat, the new album by London-based producer DJ Counselling. Conceived in a Berlin art gallery, the track captures the laid back hip hop vibe of albums that inspired Ash during the 90s — yet with a darker edginess,  low synth bass, heavy drums and a cinematic atmosphere. Drenched in organic textures and layered beats, this song elegantly deviates from Ash’s more dancefloor oriented tracks and underscores his esteem as a musician.

Alt-Mobeat

It's Perfectly Clear Right Now

Everywhere And Nowhere

Romancin EP

Somethin Bout U (ft. Yoshe)

Buy/stream: https://kompakt.fm/releases/the_floor_is_lava_2xlp_dl

Michael Mayer albums don’t come round too often, which is one of many reasons why his fourth collection, The Floor Is Lava, is a genuine event. It’s been eight years since his last one, the collaborative & released on !K7; its predecessors, Mantasy (2012) and Touch (2004), took their sweet time, too. It’s no real surprise, given the many hats Mayer wears – globetrotting DJ, revered remixer, inveterate collaborator, and boss of both Kompakt and Imara – that his solo productions are relatively sparing. But this also speaks to their quality: Mayer’s name on a record sleeve is a sign of quality, of music that’s both looking to the future and calling back to the past, that balances the imperatives of the dancefloor and the loungeroom, that’s as exploratory as it is functional.

On The Floor Is Lava, Mayer seems to be taking the temperature of both the music that surrounds him (past and present), and the ideas of the industry he works within. There’s that iconic album title, for a start. “The album’s mindset,” he says, reflecting on those four words together. For Mayer, it’s partly a critique of the way the industry boxes in both producer and listener, focuses them on genre, on market, on the next new thing: “Being a free minded spirit that transcends genres has become an uphill battle.” A battle worth fighting, though, and with The Floor Is Lava, the result is an album that’s varied, quixotic, idiosyncratic, charming, and deeply, addictively listenable.

Throughout, Mayer finds thrills in exploration and juxtaposition, allowing unexpected things to blossom and giving them their life, their platform, throwing the listener exciting curveballs: “It’s a DJ album by a DJ that’s easily bored.” Either easily bored, or endlessly curious, The Floor Is Lava is rich with ideas. It opens with “The Problem”, which looks back to look forward, embracing the rickety way early house productions threw samples together with gleeful abandon. Mayer mentions Pal Joey, and the scene around Rockers Hi-Fi and their Different Drummer imprint, as reference points, and you can hear that freewheeling spirit throughout.

That’s The Floor Is Lava: then and now, brainwaves and nerve structures, problems and solutions, genres on fire; the real, the unreal, and the surreal. An album for the easily bored and the endlessly curious. Mayer has the last word, telling us all you need to know about the album’s spirit: “Burning for the cause, being zealous, being addicted to the heat of the night, the exuberant powers of music.”

The Floor Is Lava

Ardor

Michael Mayer - Ardor

Barry Can’t Swim live at Brixton Academy

Still Riding (“Ridin Round”) - Green Diesel Version - Barry Can’t Swim (Live)

All Set Let's Swim

Back to Where We Were

Kill the Future

ELEMENTA ITINERA  -  V LUX MATERIAE  -  The Flying Carpet Band

Hydra Suites - Hydra Sunset iv

Response for a Deceased

Born in Central Asia in 1990, Liam spent his early childhood in the Tien-Shan mountain range. He started playing the piano at the age of 6 and began to record and produce music on mixers and tape machines early on. With a background as a singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist he was more and more drawn to enhancing his technical skills in music production. After moving to Berlin, Liam set up his own studio at the renowned Funkhaus Berlin.

Back to Where We Were

Liam Mour

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