All µ-ziq

1977

Belt & Carpet

Asda

Marmite

When we established Balmat in 2021, neither of us could have imagined that within two years, we’d be putting out an album by one of our musical heroes: Mike Paradinas (@mikep), aka µ-Ziq. The British producer has been an inspiration to label co-founders Albert Salinas and Philip Sherburne since the 1990s. In fact, his album-length remix project The Auteurs Vs µ-Ziq was one of the very first pieces of electronic music that Philip bought, way back in 1994. To have the opportunity to release his music now feels like a real full-circle moment. 

Paradinas, of course, needs no introduction. Under a slew of aliases, chief among them µ-Ziq, the British artist revolutionized leftfield electronic music in the 1990s—coincidentally, this year marks the 30th anniversary of his debut album, Tango N’ Vectif, for his friend and sometime collaborator Aphex Twin’s Rephlex label—and his label Planet Mu (@planetmurecords) has built up a formidable catalog of visionary, forward-looking records, mapping virtually every corner of the electronic spectrum. With 1977, he turns the clock backward in a sense, and not just with the album’s title: Rooted in classic ambient and electronic sounds, these 15 tracks evoke the anything-goes spirit of the early ’90s, before the tools and tropes had calcified into cut-and-dried styles.

There’s no shortage of familiar sounds on 1977. There are echoes of raves and chillout rooms and transmissions from the fringes of techno; there are detuned synths and glistening reverb tails and, above all, gauzy vox pads, the eerie glue that holds it all together. The title, he says, is meant to invoke a general sense of nostalgia, bookmarking a year in his boyhood when he became more self-aware. More than anything, 1977 sounds like µ-Ziq distilled: Stripped of his signature breakbeats and customary chaos, Paradinas’ first-ever strictly (well, mostly) ambient album presents the essence of his music in a whole new light.

Along the way Paradinas touches on dark-ambient drones (“Marmite”), horror-film themes (“Belt & Carpet”), jungle breaks (“Mesolithic Jungle”), and even house music (“Houzz 13”), which marks the first bona fide dance-floor moment on Balmat to date). Yet the album never—to our ears, anyway—feels expressly retro. Rather, Paradinas plucks timeless sounds out of the ether and gives them a gentle tap, spinning them into unexpected new orbits. At times, 1977 feels like an experience of extended déjà vu: When we first listened to it, we had the sense that we already knew this music. It was as though we had heard it years ago, perhaps on a battered cassette tape lent to us by a friend, and been searching for it ever since. We hope you feel the same.

µ-Ziq - 1977 [BALMAT05]

The release in 1995 of wipE'out'', a lightning-fast, razor-sharp, futuristic racing game that helped to launch the PlayStation in Europe and North America, changed video games industry. Equally striking was the game’s original music, which came from Welsh musician Tim Wright, aka CoLD SToRAGE, mixing the accelerated beats of drum & bass with the pure synth rush of trance to make music that sounded as breathlessly exciting as playing the game felt. 

The second single of the timeless wipE'out'' - The Zero Gravity Soundtrack presents two of the most iconic tunes of the score, the original intro track of the video game and the speedy 'DOH-T'. The package is completed with two masterful remixes by Planet Mu's founder μ-Ziq, aka Mike Paradinas (@mikep), and the braindance producer @wordcolour.

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General Blurb:

Back in the 1990s video games were still largely seen as nerdy: fun, sure, but basically a guilty pleasure that you’d soon grow out of. The release in 1995 of wipE'out'', a lightning-fast, razor-sharp, futuristic racing game that helped to launch the PlayStation in Europe and North America, changed all that. This was a game that looked and sounded both adult and cool, the kind of game you would put on display in your living room, rather than hide away under your bed. Key to this was the fact that wipE'out'' borrowed unashamedly from the clubbing experience and electronic music, in a way that put it at the heart of progressive mid 90s culture. It soon became a phenomenon.

wipE'out'' looked sensational, with Sheffield agency The Designers Republic - known for their work with Warp - creating the visuals, packaging and manual for the game, drawing heavily on the bright colours and excitable geometric shapes of the rave and club flyers of the early 90s.

wipE'out'' also sounded like a new rave dream. The European version of the game included music from The Chemical Brothers, Leftfield and Orbital, the kind of fashionable game syncs that were almost unheard of at the time. Equally striking was the game’s original music, which came from Welsh musician Tim Wright, aka @coldstorage, by this point already a veteran in the video games world, having worked on the music for Amiga titles such as Lemmings and Shadow of the Beast 2. His music for wipE'out'' was, if anything, even more extreme than the big-name syncs, mixing the accelerated beats of drum & bass with the pure synth rush of trance to make music that sounded as breathlessly exciting as playing the game felt.

These tracks were burned into the brains of millions of gamers; the soundtrack to a generation of late-night anti-gravity racing, as the sun gingerly rose beyond the curtains. But they haven’t, perhaps, quite got the respect they deserve, something that this release will address. In 2023, video game music is finally getting its dues; here, remastered and repackaged –and also remixed by cutting edge producers such as Kode9, μ-Ziq, Brainwaltzera, Simo Cell, Wordcolour, James Shinra, Surgeons Girl and Dattassette– are some of the most important, thrilling, innovative and most fun songs ever committed to game release.

wipE'out'' - The Zero Gravity Soundtrack

CoLD SToRAGE - WipE′out″ Intro (µ-Ziq Remix) / wipE'out'' - The Zero Gravity Soundtrack [LPS-PS14]

#6#6#6

Lexicon

ANX w/Gohda

NTS x PAN w/ Bill Kouligas & @floraytw - 7th November 2016
www.p-a-n.org
www.nts.live
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Oli XL - Tracer Wanz
Lorenzo Senni - Angel
Oklou - Defeat
ADR - Every Node
Quirke - Cylinders 
Chastic Mess - Skerc
Coby Sey - Active (Peak)
KYO - Untitled
FAKA - Ibutho Lamakhosazana
HEX - LightUp
Sandii - Zoot Kook
GIL - Onset (Imaabs Remix)
Franco Battiato - Il Mercato Degli Dei
Croatian Amor - Love Means Taking Action (Why Be Remix)
XAO - Untitled (sketch) 
Alley Catss - 3ro 
SHALT - Still Primal 
2 K - 2GEVA (NXT 2 U)
Kuedo - Bismuth 
Sikuri - Noche 
Eaves - Edgelands 
CORIN_ - Vexations 
Dj NinOo - Novus Plugins 
NARGiZ - O’youn Oyun 
Lorenzo BITW - Quiero Bailar (Remix) 
|| FLORA - 琴 
Tzechar - Bot 
D.Dan - DD² 
Hieroglyphic Being - This Is 4 The Rave Bangers

NTS x PAN w/ Bill Kouligas & Flora Yin-Wong - 7th November 2016

Portland Compressor ft. 21 Matt Tecson -  "Matt Tecson In Portland"

From 'v1984 - Pansori' out 5th May 2017 on Knives
Preorder Knives store: https://planetmu.bleepstores.com/release/81573-v1984-pansori
Preorder bandcamp: https://v1984.bandcamp.com/

Moving forward from last year's well received debut EP 'Becoming (N)one' on Glacial Industries, v1984 releases his debut for Knives, the label founded by Jamie Teasdale (Kuedo) and Joe Shakespeare. Jamie says "v1984 was the first artist we approached as a label, in 2014. He's been a core part of Knives as an idea, since before our first record."

v1984, real name Christopher Ramos, is of Korean/Filipino descent and the title ‘Pansori’ reflects his Korean heritage. It has the dual translation of a 'gathering place for sound' and it specifically refers to traditional storytelling, which in turn is a neat description of the EP.

The music here is delicate and meticulously laid out. Even when it approaches noise it's detailed and elegant rather than bludgeoning, like the piano and arpeggio that give way to a cold crystalline spray and shimmering drone in the opener 'SPfiNAL TAP re-JUVENescence'. The switches in mood from track to track suggest a loose narrative, even with a brief interlude in the shape of 'False Awakenings' that feels as if it's inspired by long forgotten anime soundtracks, constructed from beatless clustered pitch-shifting vocals, bells and airy whooshes.

Musically the EP references both the classical music Christopher studied as a child and contemporary electronic music, but it's shattered and smeared into unusual shapes that are, in the more abstract tracks, his musical interpretation of lucid dreaming. Even the club ready tracks have an element of the sublime, such as 'Too Much' which sounds like a synthetic take on the emotional soundtracks of Joe Hisaishi with crafted contemporary hip hop beats woven in, or the damp neon melancholy of 'Aria of Dawn' which colours a mood with a simple gentle glassy melody over tip-tapping drums.

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The final track 'beauty_IT5INYR-H3D' draws the whole EP together, into a track that contrasts the frenzied and the elegant with crashing, whirling imp-like voices and glassy noise dragged over a tender solo piano melody underpinned by depth charge bass chords.

As with every Knives release, visual communication is an integral part of this project. Berlin-based Maren Karlson's illustrative practice is absurd, technically sharp and walks a fine line between beauty and the corruption of aesthetics.  Maren has provided the artwork for 'Pansori', and these traits align perfectly with Christopher's compositions. Christopher says of the EP's imagery: "There was something immediately beautiful, yet maybe a bit unsettling as well, that felt quite tangible to me and resonated within my work.  For me, the image depicts some of these moments, between the real and unreal, like lucid dreaming."

Pansori

v1984 - Aria of Dawn

From the new Ekoplekz LP 'Bioprodukt' out 16th June 2017

Ekoplekz returns with his fourth album for Planet Mu, in the shape of 10-tracker "Bioprodukt". The unique lo-fi, woozy sound of Bristol's Nick Edwards stays intact while he veers towards the nineties for inspiration: the bleep and bass sound of the north of England is one touchpoint and the acid gurgles of the 303 are another.

While the murky lo-fi production levels and evocative melodies remain, they are now bolstered by a more muscular rhythmic chassis. Snappier kicks and snares mingle with dense layers of percussion and deep undulating sub-basslines adding a funkier edge, as typified by opening track "Elevation" where playful beats interlock with breezy keyboard flourishes to create something uncharacteristically upbeat. Similarly, the gentle, fluid motion of "Slipstream" and "Calypzoid" represent some of the most appealingly chilled grooves in the Ekoplekz canon to date.

But the darker-edged material remains. "Expedition" has a pensive, percussion-heavy feel whilst "Acrid Acid" is a dirt-encrusted slow-mo techno meltdown. "Transcience" displays the Ekoplekz trademark dub-fx in full flight over a driving lo-end, before "Descent" leads down to the final section, where the beats fade out, replaced by rippling layers of spectral ferric ambience on the epic "Low-X Over", before finishing with the radiant looped stasis of "Denier Daze".

The albums shifting, imperfect patterns and muted colours are visually mirrored in the beautifully realised sleeve by the Print Project.

Bioprodukt

Ekoplekz - Acrid Acid (16th June)

if you want to buy the track: http://smarturl.it/buynhoahzuremixen

NHOAH - Abstellgleis (µ - Ziq Remix)

µ-Ziq remixed a track from the upcoming album "La parole" by Vincenzo Ramaglia, feat. Laure Le Prunenec.

INFO ABOUT THE ORIGINAL TRACK

https://soundcloud.com/vincenzoramaglia/la-parole-5

Voice: Laure Le Prunenec.
Electronics: Vincenzo Ramaglia.

Electronic setup (without computer): Dreadbox Erebus, DSI Tetra, Moog Minitaur, Nord Drum 2, Pioneer RMX-1000, Elektron Octatrack, Elektron Analog Four.

Lyrics in a real time invented language: Laure Le Prunenec.

Recording: Laure Le Prunenec, Vincenzo Ramaglia.
Editing: Vincenzo Ramaglia.
Mixing: Elefante Bianco (Rome) - September 13th, 2019.
Mastering: Reference Studio (Rome) - September 19th, 2019.

La parole 5 (µ-Ziq Remix)

BOOKING: warren.morris@theplayground.co.uk

Lexicon

µ-Ziq

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