one heavy slab from the industrial delicatessen!

Techno's Outer Limits - October 2016

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

‘Where is Agartha? What is the specific region in which it lies? Along what road, through what civilizations, must one walk in order to reach it?.’ Saint-Yves d’Alveydre in 1886

Agartha, the debut full-length album by Japanese producer Wata Igarashi, is a mysterious, divine thing. Named for the mythical secret kingdom, understood as a complex maze of underground tunnels, perhaps designed by Martians who colonised the Earth tens of thousands of years ago, it’s a similarly mystical, perhaps even cosmic trip – but this time, exploring an inner, deeply personal cosmos. Beautifully detailed and bustling with rich incident, it takes Igarashi’s music to new places, which still retaining his unique sonic imprimatur; in this respect, it’s perfectly at home with Kompakt, a label that’s always encouraged artists to make the visionary music they need to create, to take risks and make sideways steps into uncharted territory.

An eloquent producer and DJ, Igarashi has been releasing techno for eleven years now, appearing on such imprints as The Bunker NY, Delsin, Midgar, and Time To Express; he has also self-released his productions via his WIP net label. Throughout, Igarashi has consistently explored his unique approach to techno and electronic music, one that’s eloquent and poised, even when it shifts into more psychedelic terrain; he’s a master at balancing the sensual and the functional, and he has an unerring ear for the right texture, the right tone, at the right time. He brings all of this into Agartha, his most thorough-going expression of self to date.

For Agartha, Igarashi had a strong concept he wanted to explore. Visualising specific scenes from an imaginary film based on the titular secret kingdom, he created soundtracks for those scenes, spending time during the pandemic in his studio, working away carefully at the ten tracks here. Given his background in creating music for television and advertisements, Igarashi is well-placed to explore the marriage of the sonic and the visual in such intimate ways, but freed from commercial concerns, he let his imagination run riot. He also drew on a rich palette of musical influences – techno is in there, of course, but you can also hear the smoky, improvised jazz of the likes of Miles Davis (to whom the album’s title is an indirect nod), and the minimalism and systems music of Steve Reich.

The latter is particularly pronounced on the gorgeous, beatless drift of “Floating Against Time”, where an arpeggiated sequence lingers, lovingly, around your ears for nine blissful minutes, coasting across swooning drones and waves of ambient noise. “Ceremony Of The Dead”, originally composed as part of a Sony 360 Reality Audio spatial sound concert, is a deep pass into systems composition, with various patterns overlaid and interlocking, before a wordless vocal rises from the depths, a gorgeous counterpoint to the swarming textures that gather across the track. On the other hand, tracks like “Burning” and “Subterranean Life” nudge toward Fourth World territory, painting deluxe dreamscapes of uncertain provenance; the title cut is an abstract drift-world, Igarashi painting an alien tableau dotted by shape-shifting creatures.

Agartha’s conceptual framework means that everything on the album sits perfectly together; listening to it in one sitting is a dizzying, lush experience. Its imaginings of inner landscapes recall, in some respects, the nautical, aqueous mythologies of the Drexciyan universe, though from different perspectives. But the result is Igarashi’s own creation, a deluxe, enchanting trip through the visionary Agartha of this unique producer’s cinematic mind’s-eye.

Agartha

Wata Igarashi - Subterranean Life

Polarized Future Recordings 
releases June 17, 2024 
A1. Keep The Sheep
A2. Are You A Believer? 
B1. Exercise In Tragedy 
B2. Painless County 

Written & Produced By Yuval Goren 
Mastered by Rashad Becker @ Clunk, Berlin 
Distributed by Rubadub 
Artwork by Yuval Frisch 
Text Formatting by Allon Kaye

Exercise In Tragedy

Yogg - Exercise In Tragedy EP [PFR001]

𝑷𝒓𝒆𝒎𝒊𝒆𝒓𝒆: Homelander - Displai [NIO001]

𝑯𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒍𝒂𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒓
Soundcloud : https://soundcloud.com/homelanderwav
Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/homelande.r._/

𝑵𝒊𝒐𝒃𝒆
Soundcloud : https://soundcloud.com/nio5elabel
Bandcamp : https://nio5e.bandcamp.com/
Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/nio5elabel/

Psyte Seeing

Displai

Support & Buy

𝑷𝒓𝒆𝒎𝒊𝒆𝒓𝒆: Homelander - Displai [NIO001]

KAGRA's first EP release!
 "Kaisei - Sun Rising".

 Kaisei, co-founder of alkaanet, is a producer and DJ based in Sydney, Australia, and now releases three avant-garde tracks reminiscent of hypnotic & psychedelic explorers.
 The remixes are by DJ MARIA. a highly sought after and talented DJ who is now active on the international scene. The remixes are groovy and floor-like. 
Ryogo Yamamori, co-owner of KAGRA, provides the glamorous and fast-paced sound.
Art work is by Heidi Yip. The art work Ancient Tears, in which she transforms what we feel from nature into the boundary between fantasy and reality.

01. Kaisei - Sun Rising
02. Kaisei - Grotto
03. Kaisei - Mandala
04. Kaisei - Para
05. Kaisei - Mandala (DJ MARIA. remix)
06. Kaisei - Sun Rising (Ryogo Yamamori remix)

Bandcamp
https://kagra.bandcamp.com/album/sun-rising-ep

.
.
.
KAGRAの第一弾EPリリース！
"Kaisei - Sun Rising"

alkaanetの共同設立者であるKaiseiはオーストラリアのシドニーを拠点としたプロデューサー兼DJ、今回ヒプノティック&サイケデリックの探究者を彷彿とさせる前衛的な3曲をリリース。
リミックスには今や世界でも活躍している大注目の実力派DJ MARIA.が参加。揺れ動くようなグルーヴィでフロアライクな一曲に。
更にRyogo Yamamoriが華やかで疾走感のあるサウンドを提供する。
Art WorkはHeidi Yipが担当。 heidiyiphy
自然から感じるものを彼女を通して幻想との境界へと変化させたアート作品Ancient Tearsを起用。

01. Kaisei - Sun Rising
02. Kaisei - Grotto
03. Kaisei - Mandala
04. Kaisei - Para
05. Kaisei - Mandala (DJ MARIA. remix)
06. Kaisei - Sun Rising (Ryogo Yamamori remix)

Bandcampにて9/25にリリース！
https://kagra.bandcamp.com/album/sun-rising-ep

Sun Rising EP

Track from NE106 SHXCXCHCXSH – ……t
Out on 2xLP in January. Digital release November 22nd

Pre-sale here: https://northernelectronics.bandcamp.com/
Worldwide retail distribution: www.spacecadets.world

Sonically, the Swedish duo SHXCXCHCXSH distort the club context they work from by rendering functionality with an exceptionally refined and idiosyncratic palette. As logophiles, they contort the little descriptive context they afford audiences by imploding language into splintered and barely comprehensible character sequences. The impression is that each is the result of mutual process-driven experiments. 
This is all true of '......t', their new album and debut recording for Northern Electronics. However, working at this scale, SHXCXCHCXSH play with wider parameters and explore broader functions to produce their most comprehensive and focused work to date. 
Across fifteen tracks, their bespoke dark matter is stacked with drone pyrotechnics, shredded vocals, and oblique, snatched sounds that eddy into frantic melodic storms. Sublime intensity is spiked with effervescent yet brooding intermissions throughout, staking '......t' as the most crucial volume of their catalogue as it gestures toward new references.” 

Artwork by Klara Granstrand. 
Mastered by Giuseppe Tillieci at EnissLab, Rome.

SHXCXCHCXSH – j.j.j.j.j.j.j.j.j.j.

V.A - 아름다운 사실 [OSC008]

Young hearts be free tonight
Time is on your side
Don't let 'em put you down, don't let 'em push you around
Don't let 'em ever change your point of view
Young hearts gotta run free, be free, live free
Time is on your side.

credits
releases December 30, 2024

Written & Produced by Various Artists
Mastered by Motion Symmetry, UK
Artwork by Clément Davout
Released by Oslated from Jeju Island, South Korea
Release Date : December 30th. 2024


아​름​다​운 사실 Beautiful Facts

Asllan - The Two Towers

The word hypnosis gets thrown around a lot. We don’t use it lightly.

The well seasoned Tokyoite presents 6 originals in this list that tick all the boxes for an altered state of consciousness: long interlocking grooves, suspended in mercurial harmony as seen in “Varuna” and “Interplanetary”, heightened focus and concentration in the broken, escalating rhythm of “Orcus” and the low-pH levels of “Quaoar”. Ultimately seen off by the elegant mesmerism of “Edgeworth’s” cascading snares and looping vocal chant, and the ever shifting balance of “Albion” and it’s unnerving ambience.

A release deeply invested in spatial exploration, but is it the milky way, or a deep neural network we’re looking at?

DJ Sodeyama - Edgeworth [SNG056D] (Snippets)

Artist: Kontinum
Track: Pattern Recognition
Album: Kontinum - Hadal Biocenosis (w/ Són du Maquís + Esgeem rmx) [OS02]
Label: Obtuse Swamp
Cat. No.: OS02
Mastering: Tetric
Artwork: Fredonné
Format: Digital 
Genre: Electronics
Release date: 11/04/2025
Released by Obtuse Swamp, Spain (Barcelona)
Description: Obtuse Swamp's second ecosystem "Hadal Biocenosis" is the result of two years of sonic exploration by Leipzig-based artist Kontinum. Moving from conventional techno to a more bass-oriented sound, he left his comfort zone and experimented with unusual grooves and textures for this release. The EP is rounded off by two remixes from french dub expert Són du Maquís and fellow Leipzig producer Esgeem.

Buy it here:
https://obtuseswamp.bandcamp.com/


Artist SC: https://soundcloud.com/kontinum 
Label SC: https://soundcloud.com/obtuseswamp 
Artist Insta: https://www.instagram.com/kontinum.lpz/ 
Label Insta: https://www.instagram.com/obtuse.swamp/ 

Premiere: Kontinum - Pattern Recognition [OS02]

Indefinite Pitch PREMIERES. Edition 773

Ryft - Urban Engineering II (Pseudo500 Remix)

GIFKIKKER009
[GIFKIKKER009 | GIFKIKKER]

Production | Ryft
Remix | Pseudo500
Mastering | Stan Vuylsteke
Artwork | Stan Vuylsteke / Ryft

Released by GIFKIKKER from Brussels, Belgium
Release Date: April 25, 2025

Ryft

https://soundcloud.com/pro_ryft
https://www.instagram.com/ryft.music

Pseudo500

https://soundcloud.com/pseudo500
https://www.instagram.com/pseudo_500
https://www.facebook.com/pseudo500

GIFKIKKER

https://soundcloud.com/gifkikker-bxl
https://www.instagram.com/gifkikker_bxl
https://www.youtube.com/@gifkikker5172

Indefinite Pitch. Yantai

https://www.indefinitepitch.com

GIFKIKKER009

Urban Engineering II (Pseudo500 Remix)

Buy & Support

Indefinite Pitch PREMIERES. Ryft - Urban Engineering II (Pseudo500 Remix) [Gifkikker]

Patterns of Confusion
d_func, Pfirter

Vinyl: http://bit.ly/PD032_vinyl
Digital: http://bit.ly/PD032_digital
Feedback: www.paranoiddancer.com/PD032

A genuine sense of intrigue surrounds d_func.  Designed in the shadows of a distinctly deep and iconic techno character. Patterns of Confusion explores the complexities of his distinctive voice. Pfirter continues the narrative with a peak time odyssey.  Available on vinyl mid June 2016.

VINYL 

Patterns of Confusion | d_func, Pfirter

The newest entry in the Monad series comes courtesy of the French duo Charlotte Isabelle; and behind this unassuming name there lies an immediately perceptible depth and innovation. With a determined yet unpredictable approach that evokes the history of their home country’s creative avant-gardes, they deliver a uniquely organic electronic music that seems as if it has been finely aged for years in oak barrels rather than residing on a computer’s hard drive. This tension between atmospheres of ultra-modernism and pre-industrial craftsmanship makes for an intriguing listening experience from beginning to finish.
The leadoff track for their Monad contribution, “Anaba,” is an excellent introduction to their aesthetic, with the beat galloping along like some ingenious steam-powered contraption. A vocabulary of hisses and metallic hits adds to this feeling of an alternate history of technology, while creeping bass sequences keep the listener anchored in the present day. In the grand Monad tradition, it’s a danceable piece of storytelling. “Geridoo” continues this adventure in a slower tempo, with more steam rising up from Charlotte Isabelle’s machinery and with snare drum rolls snapping the listener to attention. A multi-layered droning undulates all around this percussive framework, making for an exquisite balance of the ethereal and the solid.
By the third track (“Desba”), the rhythms and environmental loops become more distinctly ritualistic and archaic, revealing Charlotte Isabelle’s skill as sonic time travelers. Tactile scrapings and distant vocal-like emissions point to an archaeological exercise carried out with beats and tones as the main exploratory tools.
After this excursion, the duo closes the EP with an immersive piece of stellar ambience that comes from an unknown time and place: an alien transmission that is the perfect capstone to a recording which, to this point, has kept its imagination tethered to the Earth. By the time the last glimmers of this track fade away, it’s clear that Charlotte Isabelle knows how to tap electronic music’s unlimited potential for fascination.

"Contains elements of "Le bruit d'une porte qui... " 
Original material by José Luís Ferreira.

Charlotte Isabelle 'Monad XXIII' [SAM023]

Release date 25th July (Vinyl) / 1st August (Digital)

12" & Digital Buy links
Bandcamp - http://goo.gl/UYPMMa
Hardwax (DE) - https://goo.gl/iB8Pq0
Beatport (Digital) - https://goo.gl/clqvT7
Juno (UK) - http://goo.gl/ChiRhd
Deejay (DE) - http://goo.gl/NdLKdi
Decks (DE) - http://goo.gl/DPbhCE
Oye Records (DE) - https://goo.gl/n93m4g
K-Records (BE) - http://goo.gl/2eFSKm
Eastern Bloc (UK) - http://goo.gl/wyxIZX
Phonica (UK) - http://goo.gl/xg5PjD
Disco Piu (IT) - http://goo.gl/bnvbIe

After 2 revered releases since the turn of the year, Weekend Circuit return, welcoming Alfredo Mazzilli for his first EP on the imprint. Versatile in sound and challenging in his approach, Alfredo’s ‘Invisible Entity’ EP masterfully pushes ambitious ideas with great vigor to an international audience ever more ready to listen.

With artists such as Donato Dozzy, Aphex Twin, Sandwell District, Dino Sabatini and Substance making up a strong part of his most notable influencers, Alfredo favours the ambient & deep depths of the dark side of techno.
Enigmatic and unrestricted, Side A starts with Alfredo's original "Invisible Entity". A steadily unfolding juggernaut, the emerging energy soon engulfs the entirety of the track, percussian transcending the gloaming synth sound throughout.

Zadig's beckoning bass and kick drum driven remix will see sonic nods across the club with this four-on-the-floor gristle. "Statiform Region" is techno's answer to a cinematic interlude. A testament to Alfredo's lilting synth ability.

"No Way Out" kicks off the B side, with a algorithmic tinkering of sonic vs low hits and stabs. Rounding up, Echologist does what Echologist does best; a scattershot of intertwined and precarious techno sound, spliced with industrialised power.

A creative, radical, and emotionally skittering 13th release from Weekend Circuit, which will be released in stores worldwide on 25th July 2016.

Alfredo Mazzilli - Invisible Entity EP (incl. Zadig & Echologist Remixes) WCR013

Available at kabalion.bandcamp.com

Recorded in 2004 by @dannykreutzfeldt, also known as Periskop.

Love and light

North

North III

Periskop - North III

What are you thinking about, little duck?

Optical Illusions

Back in 2009, Italian DJ and producer Luca Mortellaro - better known simply as Lucy - established the Stroboscopic Artefacts label. And over the last 14 years, the imprint has nurtured a reputation for its line-blurring electronic abstraction and dancefloor experimentation, releasing influential material by artists like Speedy J, Kangding Ray, Donato Dozzy, Paula Temple, Rrose, Ben Klock, Wanton Witch, and of course Lucy themselves. Naturally following the label's ten year threshold, the pandemic pause and Mortellaro's subsequent artistic re-evaluation, OTHER FACTS emerges as a fresh entity, fully unplugged from Stroboscopic Artefacts' dancefloor mainframe, with its gaze pointed on widescreen cinematic sound design and audio-visual art.

Charlotte Isabelle 'Monad XXIII' [SAM023]

Other Facts (fka Stroboscopic Artefacts)

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